What We Have Learned About the Vancouver Canucks

We are a little over a week into this fresh NHL campaign and the city of Vancouver has already lost it’s cool with the on ice performance of the team as well as ran out of patience with upper management.

After last nights 7-3 drubbing at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens, the Canucks hold a 2-4 record and are being dealt a handful of injury problems right off the hop in 2021.

Vancouver came into the season with a new look defensive core after losing some key pieces in the off season, understandably, the defensive unit as a whole is struggling to keep pucks out of their net and are constantly leaving their goaltenders out to dry by giving up high quality scoring chances.

Newcomer Travis Hamonic has shown rust in the early going, as he was one of the players to veto his opportunity to play in the bubble last Summer, and hadn’t seen NHL action since March 2020. Nate Schmidt was brought in to solidify some of the minutes lost with Chris Tanev’s departure, but he too, is struggling.

If two of the defensive mainstays struggles weren’t enough to already create problems on the back end, injuries have already began to pile up for Coach Travis Green. Hamonic left Wednesday nights game with an injury, as did Alexander Edler. The night after, rookie Jalen  Chatfield did not return to action with issues of his own.

That left the Canucks shorthanded on both nights with an inexperienced and unbalanced defence core. The Canadiens found ways to exploit these voids, especially former Canuck Tyler Toffoli.

This brings us to the discussion of upper-management. I believe in giving people time in laying out their vision for a product, yet in the offseason coming off an impressive and unexpected playoff run, the Canucks really did find ways to actually make their roster worse on paper.

As if giving up a pretty blue chip prospect and an early round pick for Toffoli at last seasons trade deadline wasn’t enough, seeing him sign in Montreal on what appears to be a complete steal of a four year contract for the Habs is what really doesn’t have an explanation to it whatsoever.

This was always my number one most criticized move ever since Toffoli left the Canucks. It never made any sense to me as to why General Manager Jim Benning paid such a steep price for a scoring forward mid season, then basically gave ZERO effort to retain his services in the offseason.

Aside from the obvious incompetence of not resigning key pieces, the Canucks bottom six is a joke. Their bottom two forward lines combine to make double any other bottom six in the league in cap dollars, and they provide little to no impact in the games when they are tight.

We have been talking about this for years now, and I believe with age and deteriorating games, players like Brandon Sutter, Antoine Roussel, Jay Beagle and Jake Virtanen do not provide much, if ANY value to a team that needs help behind their top players.

After allowing twelve goals to Montreal over the last two nights, it is difficult to determine where the Canucks are going. The vision has become very blurry in the early going of this short season, where you will be playing the same teams over and over again.

One thing I know almost for certain, is that this Canucks roster is no where near built to perform at a high level in this certain division. This division is high tempo, whoever can score 6 goals a night wins, or it is 2-1, duke it out with defence type play, the Canucks are not a team that can do either of these right now.

Heading into their third and final game of this mini series vs Montreal, the team is most definitely aware that their backs are already somewhat against the wall. At this point, the players may be playing for the jobs of their coach and GM.

As players, they know the situation they are in. This core is led by the perfect person who has been through these types of droughts before, and that is Captain Bo Horvat. Horvat has been putting the team on his back since the first night of the season and hasn’t had a bad game yet. As for their other top players, JT Miller and Brock Boeser get a pass as well. The rest of them are where this team needs to wake up.

The team currently hasn’t had one good defensive performer. Tyler Myers is likely to miss Saturday’s showdown due to a suspension for a very dirty hit on the Habs Joel Armia. If there was a time for Nate Schmidt and Quinn Hughes to be at their best it is now, and that just hasn’t been happening.

On the other side of the fence, there is us fans.

As supporters, we are in the bigger picture a pretty important part of how the Canucks run. Social media has been in an uproar about the quality of play and rightfully so, but there is a time to be “ultra angry” and a time to let the team slow it down and take a deep breath.

We are only six games into this season, and yes it doesn’t look good. Although there were high expectations coming off of last seasons run, we need to realize that this team is still young and this is quite a new situation for them. When top offensive players like Elias Pettersson are struggling, it is easy for fans to take out frustration.

If things get turned around, as supporters of the team we must be accountable for all the things that we have said or demanded. Whether it is calling for heads in coaching or management or begging for more from a player. It is in our best interest to remain loyal and supportive of the team until we have enough of a sample size to justify these types of statements.

Let’s hope they get it right on Saturday Night.

Evan Power, Evolution 107.9

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