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Today Marc Crawford was fired as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks. The official press release says he was “relieved of coaching duties”.

After finishing the 2005-06 season with a record of 42-32-8, the Canucks missed the playoffs for the first time since the 1999-2000 season. The Canucks have been perennial underachievers in the playoffs, never living up to the hype generated at the beginning of each season. Even though Crawford led the Canucks to a winning record overall, they faltered late in the season to end up three points behind Edmonton.

Some may question the firing of Crawford, Vancouver’s all-time leader in victories with 246. There are two primary reasons why Crawford was fired. The first is the aforementioned underachievement; the farthest they made it in the playoffs under Crawford was to the second round in 2002-03. A shake-up may help, uh, shake things up and spur the Canucks to greater things. The second is that Crawford could be seen as the vestiges of the Brian Burke era, and Dave Nonis, the Canucks’ GM who replaced Burke in 2004, might want to be seen as putting his stamp on the team. Hiring a new coach would be such a stamp.

Look for big moves out of the Canucks in the future, including the obvious trading of Todd Bertuzzi and the not-so-obvious trading of Markus Naslund.