Last Friday, Vancouver Canucks coach Willie Desjardins was one of the speakers at the TeamSnap Hockey Coaches Conference.
Willie's topic was "Building the Foundation for a Winning Team Culture," and part of his presentation focused on the gruelling training regimen for prospective Navy SEALs.
Neil Acharya of Yahoo's Eh Game was at the conference and spoke with Willie after his presentation.
Talking about the Canucks' rough season in 2015-16, Desjardins said "It was the hardest year I have ever gone through. I was disappointed in myself, I was disappointed in the team."
The other key points from the interview:
On balance, Desjardins says the Canucks' team culture is good, but "can be refined a bit."
He says new acquisition Erik Gubranson will be an asset in that department. "There is a really passionate guy that brings that to the game," he said. "I talked (in the presentation) about how much you need that (for a winning team culture)."
Interestingly, Willie doesn't completely dismiss the idea of first-round draft pick Olli Juolevi making the team out of camp this year. "If he could step in this year it would be amazing, I wouldn’t expect him to but I didn’t expect Ben Hutton to step in (last season) either."
Hutton, of course, was 22 when he made the leap from college to the Canucks last fall, while Juolevi just turned 18 in May. Willie agrees that it would be extraordinary to see the skilled Finnish defenceman make the leap, but he hasn't ruled out the possibility.
Desjardins is coming into the new season with the attitude that everybody is looking for redemption.
"I’m excited because we have good people and I know they felt every bit as disappointed in last year as I did," he said. "Everybody knows we don’t want to do that again."
I'm not sure if it's good or bad that we can say that recent history is on Desjardins' side in this case. After the disastrous Torts year in 2013-14, when the Canucks finished with 83 points, they bounced back well in the first year of the Willie/Benning regime.
Last year, the hole was even deeper—75 points—but there's almost nowhere to go but up, right?
NHL To Seattle Back in Play?
After awarding the new expansion franchise to Las Vegas in June but deferring a decision on Quebec City, the NHL still has an opening in the West to balance out the conferences.
Interestingly, the idea of putting hockey in Seattle is back in play, thanks to
this article from veteran Seattle sports columnist Art Thiel at SportsPressNW.com.
The article focuses primarily on the events that caused the City of Seattle to lose the Sonics to Oklahoma City back in 2006, and why that bodes poorly for the possibility of Chris Hansen getting the new NBA franchise that he covets as the anchor tenant for his new arena. If you get through all that, the NHL stuff comes in the last three paragraphs.
Greg Wyshynski of Puck Daddy breaks down the story from a hockey point of view. Hansen has been stonewalled by the government on his arena development proposal, but now has the opportunity to kick in more money to help get a much-needed bridge built. If that happens, he might be able to sway the powers that be in his direction.
If that happens, he'll need an anchor tenant for his arena. And it almost certainly won't be an NBA franchise—at least, not right now. That's where the door opens once again for the NHL.
As Wyshynski says:
The NHL’s dance with Seattle has been one of the most mysterious ones during the expansion process, which ended with Las Vegas getting a franchise last month. There’s always been speculation that the League wanted a team there more than anything, and the fact that the Western Conference is only getting one expansion franchise didn’t exactly temper that speculation.
Will this latest development be enough to convince one of Seattle's potential bidders that now is the time to move on trying to make the franchise a reality?
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