The Vancouver Canucks fired someone Monday. The recipient of the pink slip, however, was highly unexpected.

There have been rumors since the beginning of the season that the Canucks, who are 3-10-2 and in the midst of a seven-game winless streak, would ax head coach Tom Renney. But Monday the ax fell on the head of Pat Quinn, the team's president and general manager for more than 10 seasons.

Quinn, who was an expansion draft pick of the Canucks in 1970, is an experienced general manager and coach who has been highly regarded by others in the league for years. His firing is seen as odd due to all of the speculation that the coach below him has been under great pressure to produce, yet the team has failed.

This brings questions as to whether Quinn's firing could have been due to a disagreement with team owners over the immediate future of the franchise. Perhaps there were differences as to what direction the team was going. Maybe Quinn wasn't ready to fire Renney but the owners were. Whatever the reason, Quinn is out of a job in Vancouver. No immediate successor has been named.

Quinn was praised before the season for signing free agent Mark Messier to a three-year, $20 million dollar deal. It was expected that Messier's play and leadership ability would be enough to push the Canucks into the upper echelon of teams in the Western Conference. But unfortunately for the Canucks, that hasn't happened yet this season. Messier hasn't produced the points, his leadership apparently isn't doing what it should and the team is struggling. Add to the fact that all-star winger Alex Mogilny is still without a contract, and the season has been nothing but trouble for Vancouver.

Instead of firing the coach, the Canucks chose to fire Quinn. But that doesn't mean Renney's job is safe. He still has the shadows of ownership following him everywhere he goes.

And what about the team? What does the firing of Quinn do for them?

Well, not much. Quinn didn't lose 10 of the first 15 games of the season by himself. It was more of a team effort. But perhaps this firing, which was quite unexpected, will wake the team up and get them going in the right direction. Or maybe it will quicken Mogilny's return to the team.

Of course, as is the case with any Messier-led team, there's always speculation that the Moose had something to do with the firing. Could he have wanted more control over the team? Was Quinn getting in the way? Those questions could be answered within the upcoming weeks, but for now the answers seem to be rather basic.

"Obviously Pat is not on the ice, skating himself," Steve Bellringer, president of Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, said. "That's something he did in the past. I don't think it's going to make an impact tonight. But I think as we go forth, it will be a positive thing and that's obviously why we did it."

Canucks' fans throughout Vancouver can only hope that will be the case.

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