Vancouver Canucks fans have been treated to four consecutive wins by their hockey team. It’s the first time that’s happened all year. Unfortunately.
Here We Go Again, Again
The Vancouver Canucks face some criticism for the way they treated the 2023 trade deadline. Not that it was particularly bad, exactly, but more questions about the team’s direction.
With Bo Horvat getting moved out early, the assumption was that the Canucks would carry at least two first-round picks into the 2023 amateur draft. In a city that desperately wants them to rebuild, it was a great start. Trading the acquired pick came as a shock.
The trade isn’t a bad one – it provides a much needed-piece – but it’s not what’s wanted. The majority of Vancouver fans want an actual rebuild – starting with a collection of high-draft picks. Already missing this year’s second-round pick, losing a second first-rounder straight-up enraged some fans.
The reason is that it’s all too familiar. This management group has always promised they’d look to improve the team, and that means not taking a step back. This year, the players seem to agree.
Groundhog Day vs Russian Doll
Everyone involved with the team wants them to improve. That’s Vancouver Canucks fans, management, players, ownership, sponsors, TV producers… everyone. The problem isn’t sabotage. The problem is that the approach of the new management sounds an awful lot like the approach of the old management.
The old management, we shouldn’t need to say, didn’t succeed. They didn’t come particularly close, either, except for the bizarro-world “bubble year” with playoffs in Edmonton in August. And the Canucks only made the playoffs then because of a play-in series against the Minnesota Wild.
Hearing, once again, that Vancouver would be looking for “diamonds in the rough” who slipped through other teams’ development systems was an old, unwelcome refrain. Canucks fans don’t want Groundhog Day, they want Russian Doll.
The problem, of course, is that they are fans and don’t actually get a say in running the team. Which is probably just as well, given it’s a city of 2 million combination head coaches/GMs.
Groundhog Day – Canucks Ownership
You almost certainly know the ubiquitous tale of the 1993 movie, even if you’ve never seen it. Bill Connors spends a day – literally – on repeat. It starts over again when his alarm goes off at 6:00 AM* no matter what he does.
Unsure what to do about it, he flails about in existential dread before finally narrowing his focus. Yes, he goes for what he wants, but plates full of doughnuts end up being unsatisfying. Eventually, with slow, incremental changes, he learns to work on what makes him better.
Lots and lots and lots of incremental changes, that is. Some people have done the math, the most common answer is that it takes Mister Connors almost 34 years to learn his lesson. Yeah, he’s a better person when he’s freed, but oof, that’s a while.
Every season is a new start for every NHL team. Few of them want it to be an ACTUAL fresh start, with little carryover from the previous year. Progress, for most, is a matter of stacking changes together built over seasons.
Some teams do that so often that they never have any actual starting point at all. After a decade of the attempted shortcuts of getting NHL-ready players and small, bottom-six changes, Canucks fans were hoping that trading away their captain was a sign of a whole new start.
Russian Doll – Canucks Fans
Obviously, not all fans feel this way, but enough do that the generalization is handy. In Russian Doll – great show, but mind the language if you’re sensitive – our main character repeats a time loop. Each loop ends when she dies violently.
Unlike Bill Connors, Nadia Vulvokov only breaks free by getting to the start of the day and changing everything. She does everything she can to escape the loop, but until she recognizes the problem, she’s stuck.
Every season comes to a great crashing halt out on the West Coast. And right now, every Canucks fan and most casual observers think they recognize the problem. They just haven’t been able to convince the owners to at least avoid taking the stairs, please?
Even if the Canucks were using the presence of Daniel and Henrik Sedin as an excuse not to rebuild, they retired in 2018. That was an ideal spot to start a rebuild and take a step back to move forward.
That 2018 offseason, for those who blocked it out of their memory, was the year that saw the team sign Jay Beagle, Antoine Roussel, and Tim Schaller. That, uh, that didn’t work, either.
Lessons From The Recent Past
As the team improves their standing position after any hopes of the playoffs are gone, cries of woe abound. Understandably, too. The top of this year’s draft looks extremely strong and moving from fifth to tenth lifts the team away from the best options.
But there’s a reminder that it’s not just top picks that can improve a team. The odds of finding an NHL regular get longer the further down the draft you go, but that’s where having more chances can help.
That 2018 draft year, where Vancouver has six selections, produced Quinn Hughes at the top and not much else just yet. There may be four players coming out of the 2019 draft, though, where they had nine picks. Getting more picks, even later ones, helps.
This is The End
There is always some luck of the draw in the draft, of course. Players may or may not pan out for a wide variety of reasons, only some of which involve skill. Having them higher is better, and that repeats itself through each round.
But the Canucks are worried about more than just their draft position, obviously. Coach Rick Tocchet wants a team that can play to win, even when they are shorthanded. The Canucks are playing three or four AHL defencemen right now, so they can’t rely on skill.
Even so, sometimes skill simply outshines the situation. The suddenly-deadly penalty kill is amusing, but not really sustainable. Going 7-2-1 in ten games is a case of enough talent given enough time will get some wins.
Vancouver Canucks fans can relax a little right now, even as the players apparently sabotage their management. Despite the despair about their four-game win streak, they’ve needed extra time for two of those wins, and that’s not the sign of a casually good team.
Surviving Fate
Here lies the fate for Vancouver Canucks fans. Getting Conor Bedard was always going to require winning the draft lottery, and we know that doesn’t happen. But if that’s still your fear, do yourself a favour: stop watching the games.
No, seriously. You’ll just feel bad watching the team lose while at the same time never enjoying wins. Scan the box scores for your favourite players getting goals or shutouts or whatever the next day.
Just get that little bit of distance between yourself and the minute-by-minute fear of success. It numbs the pain a little and you can still enjoy Elias Pettersson chasing 100 points or Andrei Kuzmenko approaching 40 goals. You’ll feel better for it. How do we know?
Let’s just say Bill Connors has nothin’ on some of us.
*Yep, it’s a horror.
Main Photo: Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports
