With the hue and cry that has surrounded the Canucks for the past week or so, it's fair to say that Trevor Linden and company now have their work cut out for them on the P.R. side of the equation.
Most of their player personnel work is—presumably—complete for the summer. I understand there's another Town Hall meeting coming up next week. I hope they livestream it so that they can reach all the fans, not just the season ticket holders, and I hope they get their talking points in order.
If I may be so bold, here's what needs to be emphasized:
• When Linden took over the team a year ago, it was coming off an 83 point season that saw the team drop to 25th overall in the NHL—just two years after winning back-to-back Presidents' Trophies.
• The decline began as soon as that second Presidents' Trophy was captured in 2012, with the first-round playoff loss to Los Angeles. The Canucks dropped to eighth overall the following season, then the major downward momentum kicked in with the arrival of John Tortorella in 2013-14.
• As soon as Linden and Benning came on the scene, they oversaw a culture change that included adjustments in things like hospitality and game presentation, but also saw some significant player moment—and the hiring of Willie Desjardins.
• The result was a 101-point season—18 points better than the previous year and all the way back up to eighth in the NHL—where they finished in the lockout year.
• Even though the playoff loss to Calgary hurt like crazy because of *how* they lost and because of *who* they lost to, two playoff wins in one series is still one more win that the old regime managed to record in the three previous seasons put together.
• No one expected the Canucks to ice a competitive team last season, but they did. And we saw a lot of heart and determination from a group that thrilled fans with come-from-behind wins, gritty victories against old nemeses and the emergence of Bo Horvat, possibly the Canucks' best rookie since Ryan Kesler.
At this point, I'd roll a video of some of the best highlights from those awesome second-half wins. Emphasis on players still with the team, for obvious reasons!
• Next season, the team will add secondary scoring to support the Sedins and Radim Vrbata via young players like Sven Baertschi and a bigger role for offensive defenseman Yannick Weber. Defensive woes have been addressed by bringing in a puck-moving defenseman in Matt Bartkowski. And Jacob Markstrom has the potential to become the next Cam Talbot or Martin Jones as he settles into his backup role behind Ryan Miller.
• The other area where the team needed to improve was in grit and character. The Canucks got pushed around by Calgary in the playoffs, and a player like Brandon Prust will help make sure that doesn't happen again. Prust will stand up for veterans like the Sedins as well as youngsters like Baertschi and will help create an overriding sense of team toughness that will help everybody "play bigger."
• Change is never easy but all around the league, we've seen how the teams that stand still end up losing ground. The moves the Canucks have made over the last week set a foundation upon which the team can move forward—and can still have a good year next year.
For all the talk of muddy messages, the objective has been clear since Day 1, and the team is still on the same track. The goal is to develop young players within a winning environment, adding speed and grit to the lineup.
What do you think? Did I miss anything?
The Canucks have an excellent chance ahead of them to generate excitement for the future with the development camp, which got underway last night at Shawnigan Lake.
As Derek Jory explains in this piece from Canucks.com, the 18 draftees on the roster will be spending the weekend doing some team-building before the rest of the camp invitees show up on Monday to start the on-ice work.
Today, it's medicals and fitness testing:
Push-up, then 10 second hold at the bottom. And repeat until you can not.
I'll keep an eye on the action on the island as the week progresses.
Finally today, a bit more on Brandon Prust. On the day of the trade, I suggested that he'll become a fan favourite once folks in Vancouver get to know him. His first round of media supports this assertion.
Prust already has a pretty high profile for a grinder. He earned a chapter in Bob McKenzie's book "Hockey Confidential" last winter, talking about the determination it took for an undersized guy to get himself drafted in the third round, then to stick in the NHL despite not having a skillset that's as good as other players in the league. Like Derek Dorsett, Prust is a fighter who's willing to fight about his weight class thanks to a defensive strategy, where he fights to make sure he absorbs as little damage as possible.
Bob's book is a great place to get to know Prust a little better.
So is "Hockey Wives." Prust's girlfriend, Maripier Morin, was one of the most interesting characters on the show in Season 1—a french-language TV host who has been working to establish more of a national presence in English media across Canada.
The big story during this year's episodes was whether Brandon would finally step up and ask M.P. to marry him—which he did just a couple of weeks ago, while the pair were on vacation in Rome.
Maybe they can get Prust to come out and talk to the season-ticket holders firsthand. He sees a lot of similarities to when he first arrived in Montreal three seasons ago:
"They had made some changes in the (front) office and the coaching staff and they had got some new young players coming in,” Prust said of the Canadiens. “I had a lot of fun my first year in Montreal. It was fun to prove people wrong, when people think maybe you are regrouping and you come in and you stun some people and start turning heads and doing a lot of good things.
“This (the Canucks) is a great team, with great goaltending, there are a lot of good players and a lot of good, young kids that are going to be great players. I have obviously done some research the last couple of days looking up what we’ve got and it’s a pretty impressive lineup. So I think we are going to do a lot of good things."
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