Given the three amigos — headed by Mike Gillis, and accompanied by sidekicks Laurence Gilman and Lorne Henning — have given the Vancouver Canucks the best management in club history, we have undertaken something of a retrospective review of managements past in this season’s White Towels — and we pick up today at the firing of Harry Neale.

After Neale was let go in 1985, the president, Arthur Griffiths, the son of then-owner Frank Griffiths Sr., decided to try to halt the management musical chairs by undertaking a search for a hockey “czar” — as he was termed by the man who would begin the pursuit. The young Griffiths ultimately did succeed, but not without some embarrassing moments along the way.

With the team GM-less, Griffiths approached just about every thought-to-be solid executive in hockey, asking them if they’d like to run the Canucks. Harry Sinden, Sam Pollock and Scotty Bowman were among at least seven candidates who turned Grififths down for one reason or another, and time was getting short. They needed somebody to at least be a figurehead for the draft in the summer of 1985; they were so utterly desperate they asked poor Jack Gordon, the then-assistant GM, if he wouldn’t mind doing the job.

From the moment he was introduced, they tried to pretend he was the czar, but everyone knew Griffiths’ management shopping adventure had been a bust, and poor Gordon looked and behaved like a fish out of water. He was no more suited to be a GM than he was to win the 100-metre sprint gold medal at the Olympics. He hunkered down in the Renfrew Street offices after the draft, and virtually nary a peep was heard from him through the entire 1985-86 season — so much so that the media took to calling the place Sleepy Hollow.

With Griffiths still looking feverishly behind the scenes, his dad and a couple of the members of the board of directors decided something needed to be done. That something was a centre, and ownership decided that man should be restricted free agent Barry Pederson of the Boston Bruins. They signed Pederson but it’s decidedly unclear whether Gordon even knew it was going on.

Regardless of the truth, Gordon — along with the man who really made most of the decisions, coach Tom Watt — were left to pick up the pieces. Compensation rules demanded that if a deal for compensation couldn’t be worked out between the teams, the Canucks had the right to protect two players and a goalie from their roster and the Bruins could take their pick of any others.

Determined to protect Doug Lidster, Petri Skriko and, of course, Pederson himself, Gordon eventually worked out a deal with Sinden on June 6, 1986 for Cam Neely — whom Watt had determined would be no more than a third-liner — and a first-round pick. That No. 1 pick could be exercised that year, or the following season; it was to be the Bruins’ choice.

Not entirely the best moment in franchise history, this one.

Three weeks later it led to one of Gordon’s most memorable quotes, although that was largely because he gave so few. Upon emerging from the draft, after Boston had waived their right to Vancouver’s pick that season, Gordon greeted us waiting scribes and mike carriers, after having taken another right-hand-shooting centre seventh overall, in the immortal Dan Woodley.

“I can’t understand how Boston could pass up a talent like Woodley,” said Gordon.

History did not treat that remark kindly, as Woodley couldn’t play and, after another disastrous Canucks season, the Bruins took the Canucks’ pick in 1987: Glen Wesley. He played seven solid seasons with the Bruins before being traded to Hartford for another three first-round picks, a deal which today would be inconceivable. That Neely trade gave and gave to the Bruins.

With Griffiths still pounding away at trying to find a real GM, he finally settled on former Vancouver defenceman Pat Quinn, who was coaching the L.A. Kings at the time. The two struck a secret deal whereby he was supposed to become the Canucks’ boss at the conclusion of the 1986-87 season. But news of their little scheme leaked out — broken in fact by Tom Larscheid — and probably the biggest story in Canuck history at the time, nicknamed “Quinngate,” began to unfold.

Whether this series should include a piece on Quinngate is best left up to our sports editor, Jonathan McDonald, and it will be. But with Quinn’s arrival came the beginning of the factors that really began to shape the way the team has evolved into what it is today: a tremendously successful, professional and socially responsible organization, with legions of loyal supporters who live and die with every outing.

Follow Tony Gallagher on Twitter @tg_gman.