Is it time for the Vancouver Canucks to clean house?

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For what might have been a rebuild that was moving a bit too fast for comfort, the ceiling is beginning to cave in on a hockey team and everything they have worked so hard to build over the past few seasons.

After a solid, COVID shortened season last year, flashes of brilliance and plenty of heart were not hard to come by, a stretch where everything about the organization seemed to fit perfectly.

As a matter of fact, just one year ago around this time the Canucks had recently traded for Tyler Toffoli prior to the 2020 trade deadline, solidifying themselves as a team ready to push and compete, not just for the now, but for the future as well.

They conquered the big, bad Boston Bruins by a score of 9-3 in an electrifying home game with a packed Vancouver crowd, times seemed too good to be true. Fast forward 366 days, we are now witnessing a stage 10 tire fire.

Another night, yet another blown multi-goal lead for the Vancouver Canucks as the 2021 season is rapidly going from awful to impossible to watch.

For the third time in 10 nights, the Canucks managed to put together a near-flawless first frame, propelling themselves to early 2 or 3 goal leads that seemed to get them out on the right foot. Yet, setting the tone for the entirety of the game is really the opposite of what they have done, they build up their own confidence as a unit just to have it all come crashing down through a series of short lapses.

On Tuesday night, it was a 20-minute effort before packing it in and deciding they no longer felt the need to apply any pressure or push pack against the Edmonton Oilers. For a season that already feels lost, had the Canucks just finished the job and beaten the Oilers in regulation, they were still within striking distance of a top-four playoff position in the North.

That hunger and drive we saw in the opening twenty minutes seemed to fade without a reason, and as it has gone for the previous two months, it didn’t return for the remainder of the night.

To pin the mind-blowing errors and hysterically bad losses on any certain issue is not justifiable at this point, but for the sake of trying to put it into perspective, that’s exactly what we need to do.

Firstly, the powerplay is a major problem. The way the unit seems to never be able to break down an opponent’s penalty kill and generate high danger chances while up a man is a mystery. A complete lack of creativity and movement has a talented group with high powerplay potential looking like it doesn’t even belong on the same ice as other teams with less skill (LA Kings, Chicago Blackhawks).

In all honesty, this is not a player problem. The players on the powerplay are only able to do so much with the system they are utilized in. Brock Boeser is a top 3 NHL goal-scorer this season, yet finds himself as a lost commodity down below the goal line when the Canucks have a man advantage.

Newell Brown is a highly regarded powerplay specialist amongst people involved in NHL team personnel, but this season it seems he doesn’t have touch with where the league is regarding the powerplay system and it is proving itself nightly when the Canucks are unable to capitalize in key situations.

Next, the bottom six is glaringly inept when it comes to making an impact offensively. It has reached the point now where you can see Antoine Roussel dump the puck in before it even happens on the ice, you just know it is coming.

Same with the likes of Jay Beagle and Brandon Sutter, players that were brought in on lucrative contracts to provide a spark and generate chances through hard work down low and applying pressure, it is all non-existent.

Not to come down too hard on the goaltending, but it is just another area where the Vancouver Canucks can’t seem to get any type of reliability. In years past, the Canucks still gave up high-quality scoring chances at a high rate, but they had the ability in goal to bail out the skaters and make timely saves.

This season, it feels like they are getting the polar-opposite, the overtime winner against Winnipeg by Pierre-Luc Dubois, 10 nights ago on the Johnny Gaudreau winner, and tonight with the brutal, unforced giveaway leading to Dominik Kahun’s 3-2 goal, less than a minute into a crucial third period…

All of this and plenty more details about the Canucks play lead us to where we are at right now as fans, wondering what happened in 7 months to completely flip the narrative around what this team had built.

The on-ice product is unacceptable, so much so that not having fans in the building has truly been the franchise’s ultimate blessing.

This is the COVID version of throwing jerseys on the ice, paper bags over the head, and “FIRE BENNING” chants echoing around a half-empty Rogers Arena.

Although owner Francesco Aquillini has come out publicly to provide reassurance about the job security of GM Jim Benning, head coach Travis Green and others, it feels like that’s a half-hearted way of saying he is not in the mood to what the problem is with this team.

Keeping in mind that many still may consider this a rebuild, and that is fair, but at what point is enough going to be enough in regards to the blowing leads, game-losing errors in their own end, and inability to make a simple breakout pass? These don’t feel like problems that will go away overnight, so why do we keep reliving the same nightmare without any call for consequences?

Where they stand now, the Canucks are not even going to sniff a playoff race in 2021, a monumental step back from where they were just 365 days ago. As the halfway point of the season nears and Vancouver looks like more of a lottery team than a competitive one, where do we go from here?

Evan Power, Evolution 107.9

 

 

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