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Is it too late for Canucks’ core to survive turbulence?
Five-star performances like Saturday’s come with exasperation, because they show what the Canucks, as currently constructed, remain capable of but have failed to achieve with any consistency. Iain MacIntyre has more on Patrik Allvin’s comments and where the team might go from here.
VANCOUVER — Three of their last six games have been among the Vancouver Canucks’ best games this season.
They just beat the Edmonton Oilers 3-2 on Saturday night and held the highest-shooting team in the National Hockey League to a season-low 15 shots.
A week before that, they shut out the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-0 on Hockey Night in Canada and held Auston Matthews’ team to 20 shots. That was the same road trip in which the Canucks dominated the powerful Washington Capitals over the final two periods of regulation time and outshot them 30-13 before losing 2-1 in overtime.
These games were the Canucks at their best.
And in between them, they had an uninspired 2-0 loss against the Carolina Hurricanes, and blew their winnings from Toronto on a 6-1 loss to Winnipeg Jets, which was followed by a 5-1 embarrassment at home against the Los Angeles Kings.
Those latter two losses were the Canucks at their worst.
This is, in a span of 11 days, their season.
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Had the Canucks been able to string together games like Washington, Toronto and Edmonton, there wouldn’t be the corrosive conjecture about them that have clung to the Canucks like radiation for weeks.
There probably wouldn’t be stories like Saturday’s bombshell that the Canucks had been close enough to a trajectory-altering trade with the New York Rangers that Vancouver considered keeping top centre J.T. Miller out of the lineup against the Oilers. Instead, Miller played, set up two goals, figuratively sat on Connor McDavid before Canuck teammate Conor Garland did so literally, and generally looked the big-game, 200-foot impact centre that Vancouver general manager Patrik Allvin should be terrified of trading.
But this season, the Canucks haven’t been that team — nor Miller that player — often enough.
And so when Allvin held a mid-season press conference on Monday, he was unable to silence the noise around the Canucks that is getting deafening.
“I could say that the inconsistency probably sums it up the first 44 games here,” Allvin said near the start of his 20-minute session with reporters at Rogers Arena.
“I’m not going to go into any specific comments on any talks around the league. But, you know, since I got here, I’m always trying to explore (ways) to make our team better in discussions and see if it makes sense or not. The toughest part has been to evaluate the group we have with all the injuries. But again, you see the signs of a good team and coming together and playing the right way, as we did here against Edmonton, as we did in Toronto. So we’ll continue to see if that makes sense.”
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But there have been enough troubling signs that Allvin and Canucks president Jim Rutherford have been working for weeks to explore the trade value of polar-opposite stars Miller and Elias Pettersson, apparently determined to end any turbulence in the dressing room and re-define identity and leadership.
Even five-star performances like Saturday’s come with exasperation, because they show what the Canucks, as currently constructed, remain capable of but have failed to achieve with any consistency.
In golfing terms, this is still a team that can still go low. But they’re always prone to a shank and double-bogey.
“When we take a look at the way we were last game, the way we were in the dressing room last game. . . that’s the level we want to get to more consistently,” senior defenceman Tyler Myers said. “I think we’ve brought that level a lot this year, but we haven’t brought it enough. We have these ebbs and flows of, you know, good games and then slipping for one or two, and then coming back up. We’ve got to find a way to sustain that level of commitment.”
The way they were in the dressing room?
“If you dumb it down to one word, ‘engaged’ is probably what I’m thinking of,” Myers explained later.
“Well, it’s amazing what your mindset can do, right?” coach Rick Tocchet told reporters. “A group of individuals that buy in and can block out noise. . . but you’ve got to do it consistently. Like I said to the team today, you know, sustainable stuff. You can’t do it once in a while. We can’t be a once-in-a-while team. You’ve got to do it every day.”
Last week’s lopsided losses against Winnipeg and Los Angeles were just the second time all season the Canucks have gone two games without earning at least one point. But they haven’t won consecutive games since Dec. 1.
They will try to build a two-game winning streak Tuesday against the visiting Buffalo Sabres.
“We’ve all seen when they’re playing at their best and what they’re capable of, they’re still very good players,” Allvin said of the long-standing Canucks core. “Age-wise, it’s an intriguing group. Kind of the core here, they’re committed to play here, they’re committed to work towards getting back up to the level they’re capable of. And I do still believe that we have a good core here.”
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Maybe that core — Miller and Pettersson up front, Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek on defence, Thatcher Demko in goal — can still survive all of this intact. Or maybe it’s already too late. Maybe Allvin and Rutherford think they erred in coercing Pettersson to re-sign one year ago for $92.8-million after Miller had begun his seven-year, $56-million extension.
But, as Allvin conceded Monday, it is difficult to make sweeping conclusions about the Canucks when all of their best players have missed significant time this season due to injuries or, in Miller’s case, a leave of absence for personal reasons.
The GM did clarify one thing: he’d like Tocchet to continue as coach.
“I’m very proud of how Rick has handled this season here. . . under the circumstances,” Allvin said. “My relationship with him, and the way we communicate every day, and trying to find solutions making our team better, pushing the right (buttons), I do believe that he is a good coach. And I see him (here) long-term, too. Obviously, it’s a two-way street there. Up to this point, it hasn’t been an urgency for us to do anything with a club option (for next season). But I’m sure we’re going to sit down and talk about it here.”
Allvin clarified that it is, in fact, a club option on Tocchet for next season, not a mutual option as has been reported.
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Still, given the relationship between Allvin and Tocchet, if the coach has had enough of the circus and wants to leave Vancouver after this season, it’s hard to see the Canucks standing in his way.
“Honest to god, my 24/7 energy is: How do I get this team to play consistent?” Tocchet said. “I honestly don’t think about my future. I’m not lying. I don’t worry about that sort of stuff. Especially now where we’re at, I just think of every day: How do I approach the new day? I think that’s the best approach for me, personally, mentally, to think that way.”
Will the Canucks be stronger for what they’ve endured through their first 45 games?
“Well, if you get through it, yeah,” Tocchet said. “I mean, you go one way or another: you either wilt or you become strong.”
At this stage, like so many of the Canucks’ games, it feels like a tossup.
• Myers and McDavid will miss the Canucks-Oilers rematch Thursday in Edmonton after receiving three-game suspensions Monday afternoon for separate cross-checking match penalties on Saturday.
This is what Myers said about getting his stick into Evan Bouchard’s face: “I’m not ignorant to the fact of how it looks in real time. But you know, if you slow it down, I did start lower (with my stick) and as he started to bring his hands up, it kind of redirected my stick a little higher. I never intended to hit him in the face. I’ve never cross-checked anyone in the face my whole career. I mean, I was talking to him at the red line after and he seemed to be OK. So, yeah, I don’t want to hit a guy in the face like that. And it was unfortunate that it ended up that way, and I’m glad he’s OK.”
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