You’ll be hard-pressed to find a Canucks fan who misses the regime of Coach John Tortorella and President/GM Mike Gillis. Around these parts, they’re nearly as reviled as Coach Mike Keenan and…  Acting GM Mike Keenan.

There are loads of similarities. But who was worse? The answer doesn’t come as easily as you might think.

Unmet expectations
Torts presided over a team that boasted two Art Ross-winning forwards and a Vezina-finalist goaltender. They started well, but badly underperformed, scoring less often than a middle aged Axe salesman at a supermodel convention. They plummeted in the standings and eventually missed the playoffs.

Keenan coached Pavel Bure, Alex Mogilny and legendary potato chip salesman Mark Messier to the third worst record in the NHL. According to an AskJeeves search, they were mathematically eliminated after just two pre-season games that year.

Bad trades
In 2013-14, Gillis traded away fan favourites Cory Schneider and Roberto Luongo, leaving the net empty.

In 1997-98, Keenan traded away fan favourites Trevor Linden, Kirk McLean, Martin Gelinas, Gino Odjick and Dave Babych, leaving fans’ hearts empty.

Dumb moves
Torts stalked the hallways during an intermission to get into the Calgary dressing room. He wanted to singlehandedly destroy the entire Flames organization.

Keenan scowled his way into the GM’s chair, then actually singlehandedly destroyed the entire Canucks organization.

Long-term results
John Tortorella inherited a team with expectations to win — so much so that when the San Jose Sharks bulldozed the Canucks in the first round, they fired the winningest coach in franchise history. Still, he failed to acknowledge personalities in the room; even after Gillis moved Schneider, Torts managed to fan goalie controversy flames until eventual Hall of Famer Luongo got moved for a bag of pucks. Let’s not even start on his mishandling of the Sedins — check out the end of Henrik’s iron man streak — and his turning Ryan Kesler’s on-ice crank into off-ice bullshit. In the short term, Torts and Gillis burned this puppy to the ground. Still, it will be a few years before we know the overall effects on the franchise.

Iron Mike was immeasurably awful in the short term. Behind the bench, the team went from Tom Renney and Pat Quinn to all Keenan, all the time. (To be fair, the mistakes started before Keenan got to Vancouver: Quinn signed Mark Messier after botching another attempt to get Wayne Gretzky, then allowed Moose to usurp Trevor Linden as captain of the team.) The Canucks didn’t just miss the playoffs; they pretty much ignored the possibility. On the plus side, however, they stunk the joint up so badly, a pre-hobo haircut Brian Burke was able to snipe both Sedin twins in the draft. Not only have they won serious hardware and rewritten the Canucks record books on the offensive end, they’re two of just four 1990 first-rounders who are still active NHL players.

Pavel Bure developed such a bad taste for YVR that he was eventually moved to Florida in a seven-player trade that brought Ed Jovanovski to the Canucks. Later, Keenan gave back to the Canucks: as the GM of the Florida Panthers, he accepted a post-Moore incident Todd Bertuzzi and shipped Roberto Luongo to Vancouver. By the way, how did the Canucks get the best seven years of Bertuzzi’s career? They got him when Keenan moved Trevor Linden to the woeful New York Islanders.

Short-term woe, long-term fun
The mismanagement of Gillis may have shut the window on the twins winning it all, but they didn’t tank the team enough to buy any future stars.

Keenan, on the other hand, turned the Mark Messier experiment into nearly two decades of solid offensive hockey in Vancouver. Torts sucked behind the bench, but Willie Desjardins is still using some of his tactics to good effect this season (Sedins on the penalty kill, for instance). Keenan, on the other hand, fracked the bejesus out of the Canucks locker room and left it a toxic wasteland.

Given the careers of Bo Horvat and Zack Kassian won’t outdo those of Todd Bertuzzi, Roberto Luongo and the Sedin twins, Mike Gillis wins the award for worst Canucks GM in recent memory. It’s Iron Mike Keenan, though, that wrests the worst coach award from Torts.

Next week: Willie or Won’tie?