When talking about the Vancouver Canucks flaws, it’s a bit of a trick to separate the team from the players. Players have flaws, obviously, but the least of them is that they are employed. If someone hands you a six or seven-figure paycheque, you’re probably not too inclined to ask deep questions. So we’re questioning the White Collar crew.
The players are just going to have to sort themselves out without our help.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
Heard that HNIC had the clip of J.T. Miller and Luke Schenn arguing at the end of the second, went back and grabbed it from the tail end of the intermission.
This isn’t a happy team at the moment. #Canucks pic.twitter.com/FhA99eSys6
— Lachlan Irvine (@LachInTheCrease) October 23, 2022
First off, a winless team losing at home arguing on the ice isn’t a fatal flaw. Sure, they’d prefer it to stay in the locker room, but it didn’t. Trials and tribulations of being on a losing team and actually caring about it. Now one of these guys signed a seven-year, $56 million deal this Summer and is a 99-point forward. The other is an older, second-pair defenseman brought in for his veteran savvy.* So who do you think we should listen to in this argument?
We’re going to go with the one with two Stanley Cup rings. Who the team decides to listen to is just as interesting. Ownership brought in an entirely new management group and has clearly let them hire who they want. For all the surprising silence early in their tenure with on-the-ice moves, they completely rebuilt the team’s off-ice structure. It was a sign that a rebuild was on its way. After all, why would you clean house just to bring back the same guests?
And then this happened.
They had good parts, prefer to rebuild on the fly, and the playoffs were within reach. Fan reaction was… mixed. Because yes, there are good anchor parts on the team. There are all-star players at forward, on defence, and in goal. There are some good ancillary pieces here as well. Something needs to be done to improve the defence, but otherwise, there is reason to hope. All of which sounds horribly, horribly familiar.
Fatal Flaws and Configurations
It’s good to have solid pieces at each position, but a house is made of more than the foundation. The forward mix is fairly solid – on paper – but there are still question marks. The team has insisted that J.T. Miller is a centre, and if that were the case then their centre corps is excellent. That hasn’t really been the case, though.
We’re not going to ride the player on this, because he’s playing where he’s told to play. For management to expect the 29-year-old player to become a well-rounded centre at this point in his career is a surprise. A recurring theme around his contract negotiations was whether he should be paid like a centre or a winger. In the end, it was a mid-way point with expectations of a VERY high-end winger or first-line centre. Not an unreasonable expectation, but what did that mean for the team?
Despite NHL commissioner Gary Bettman giving some positive news to teams, the Miller deal means very hard questions very soon. And by soon we mean now, or more specifically Saturday’s home opener.
Here Comes… The FLAW!
The obvious difficulty remains obvious – the defence is missing a major piece. It’s no coincidence that the first game Quinn Hughes misses is also the worst loss of the season. Hughes is averaging 27 minutes a night over five games, and when he is gone there is literally no one to take his place. Though to be scrupulously fair, that’s true of most other teams as well.
Note that it’s not depth at defence that is missing, exactly. The Vancouver Canucks flaws don’t include a lack of bodies on the blue line. Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Tyler Myers are decent second-pair defencemen, and Jack Rathbone might be if he ever gets to play. Tucker Poolman and Travis Dermott are among a slew of third-pair guys who the Canucks have fingers crossed earn a higher spot.
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What’s missing from that list is the same thing that was missing last season and the season before. Vancouver needs someone to play as a #2 defenceman. Yes, Nate Schmidt was a reasonable gamble to make for a low cost, but when he didn’t pan out there was literally no one else. And now, three years later, there still isn’t.
Okay, but Plural
Ah, we said Vancouver Canucks flaws, didn’t we? You’re very clever to have caught that. So clever, in fact, that you probably know what we’re going to say is the OTHER great flaw in the makeup of the team.
The owner.
Now, we aren’t at the board meetings and we’re not in the room when Francesco Aquilini talks to his general manager. Whispers abound regarding interference in what should be hockey decisions, and his rejection of a full rebuild is likely what moved Trevor Linden out of town. But nothing highlighted the hands of ownership like the disastrous, mid-COVID 2020 offseason. The decision to follow modest playoff success with walkaways and cost-saving moves set the team back dramatically.
Some fans are under the illusion that real live hockey management is like the video game version. Put in the players with the highest stats, out pops the best team. This isn’t what happens for a simple reason: players are humans. Someone who says they are “paid lots of money to play” is someone you don’t want in charge of people anywhere, anytime. They aren’t androids and they aren’t idiots – recognizing cost-saving moves isn’t hard. Seeing your employer putting profit ahead of product – however logical that decision is – is demoralizing in any industry.
Cash Cash Money
Because of the NHL’s salary structure, players aren’t actually paid by their teams for playoff games. That is to say, there is no extra money for a player that comes from a team’s pockets. There are exceptions for entry-level or 35+ contracts, but those are the exceptions, and they show up the next year as often as not.
While teams love making the playoffs, team owners love it more. The Aquilini Group has a lot of tourist- and travel-related holdings and those took a beating over the past two years. Not only was a lot of money lost, but the only playoff run their NHL team had in the past seven years was in Edmonton. The “Playoff Bubble” wasn’t a real money-maker for them.
Again, for those fans not existing in the real world, the general manager does what the owner wants them to. Pretending that you are either Jim Benning or Jim Rutherford and would take the team in a bold new direction is delusional. They got the jobs in large part because they told the person hiring them what they wanted to hear. And what they want to hear is “I can make you money.”
I Can Fix It!
So, are the Vancouver Canucks flaws fixable? If the biggest flaw is that you’re building on mud, how can that be repaired? The foundation can be perfect, but it’s still going to sink if you don’t consider the ground beneath. Ownership needs to realize that stacking new floors on top of vanishing old ones isn’t getting them any higher.
Maybe this disastrous start will get through to them. It took years of fan disappointment – finally leading to repeated “Fire Benning” and “Fire Green” chants and the team getting booed off the ice before they acted. That was 25 games into the season after years of disappointment. This time, the first jerseys were thrown onto the ice in their home opener.
The Vancouver Canucks flaws aren’t on the ice, or behind the bench. They aren’t even in the general manager’s offices. It took less than one game for last year’s message to be sent, once again, to ownership.
Are you listening, Francesco?
*All veterans have savvy
Your 2022-2023 Vancouver Canucks! pic.twitter.com/2YlDYg09Bu
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) October 23, 2022
