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Columnist: If Canucks can’t come back, fire Vigneault

Vancouver Canucks v Boston Bruins - Game Six

BOSTON, MA - JUNE 13: Head coach Alain Vigneault of the Vancouver Canucks talks to the media after being defeated by the Boston Bruins in Game Six of the 2011 NHL Stanley Cup Final at TD Garden on June 13, 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Bruins defeated the Vancouver Canucks 5 to 2. (Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

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Given the pitchforks are already out in Vancouver, no surprise scalpels are being brandished now too.

With the top-seeded Canucks down 3-0 in their opening-round series to No. 8 Los Angeles, the Vancouver media has already begun looking past the idea of a comeback (and hey, fair enough -- teams up 3-0 go on to win 98 percent of the time).

Instead, they’ve started conducting the autopsy.

There have been healthy debates about personnel decisions, trade ideas, who should be the starting netminder and today, Tony Gallagher of the Vancouver Province added another topic to the list:

Who the next head coach should be.

Because of his long tenure enjoyed as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, it might be a useful exercise to mount something of a defence for Alain Vigneault after another season whereby it looks all but certain his team is going to come to another crashing, miserable end in the NHL playoffs.

Granted this agent may not be the most qualified for this, but those who worship the ground the man spits on will doubtless come out of their boots trying to keep him around because he’s an easy man with which to work...

...“I’ve been on teams where the coach has been fired a couple of times but it’s not decisions we make,” said Samuel Pahlsson, who was on hand when Scott Arniel was fired by Columbus in January this season. “We didn’t think it was the coach’s fault there.

When asked about here in Vancouver should the team lose this series he thought for at least two seconds and finally said: “It’s the same here.”

Players at this level always take the blame, publicly at least. Barring a recovery of historic proportions in this series however, it says here this group, however comprised next year, deserves to hear a different voice.

Some notes:

-- Vigneault’s the most decorated (and arguably best) coach in Canucks franchise history, though his chief competition is Pat Quinn, Marc Crawford and two seasons of Roger Neilson. AV won a Jack Adams, was nominated for another, captured the club’s first-ever Presidents’ Trophies and got to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. Very healthy resume.

-- There’s heavy speculation that Vigneault’s in the “fired at sunset, hired by sunrise” category of NHL head coaches. Ergo, if Vancouver cuts him loose there’s a good chance he ends up behind a bench at the start of next season (and given his ability to speak French, you can see where this is going...)

-- To put Gallagher’s work in context, he wrote this in March after the Canucks went 5-6-2 over a 13-game stretch. The team then proceeded to win eight of its next 10 and finish first overall in the NHL.