Jim Rutherford’s name has plenty of weight in Detroit, but it doesn’t sound like he’s in the mix for the Red Wings’ open general manager job.
That’s the word from Jeff Marek, who said on Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff’s "The Sheet" that he has not heard anything to suggest Rutherford is part of Detroit’s search. Marek also said there has been no traction between the Red Wings and the former Vancouver Canucks president of hockey operations.
The lack of momentum is notable because Rutherford’s ties to Detroit run deep. The Red Wings picked him 10th overall in the 1969 NHL Draft, and he played 457 career NHL games over 13 seasons. Of those, 314 starts came in a Red Wings sweater across 10 seasons.
Rutherford finished his playing career with a 97-165-43 record, a 3.69 goals-against average and an .876 save percentage in an offense-heavy era.
His connection to the area didn’t stop on the ice. Rutherford got his first hockey management job as general manager of the Ontario Hockey League’s Windsor Spitfires from 1984 to 1988.
He later served as president and GM of the Detroit Compuware Ambassadors, later renamed the Detroit Jr. Red Wings, from 1990 to 1994.
That path eventually led him to the NHL front office. Rutherford joined the Hartford Whalers as a minority owner, president and GM, his first NHL job since his playing days ended. He held those roles through the franchise’s move to Carolina and remained with the Hurricanes through the 2014-15 season before leaving to become general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
He stayed on as a Hurricanes owner through the end of the 2015-16 season before stepping away completely. Rutherford then remained with the Penguins until resigning in January 2021, and after that he joined Vancouver’s front office as president of hockey operations. He also briefly held the interim general manager title before it passed on.
Now 77, Rutherford is moving into a senior advisor role with Vancouver, a shift that takes him further from the daily grind after 45 years in hockey.
His résumé is packed. Rutherford won three Stanley Cups as an executive - one with Carolina in 2006 and back-to-back titles with Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017 - and he earned the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award in 2016.
In 2019, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the Builder category.
For all that experience and all those Detroit connections, Marek’s reporting points in a different direction: the Red Wings and Rutherford don’t appear to be circling each other for this opening. Detroit’s GM search, then, continues with other names in play.
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