Travis Green excited for upcoming season, looking for youth to take a step (canucks)

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Travis Green excited for upcoming season, looking for youth to take a step

By Carol Schram

Sep 8, 2021 • 2:36 pm

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With the Labour Day long weekend behind us, the news cycle is beginning to ramp up as we prepare for the 2021-22 NHL season.

Travis Green is already making the media rounds, preaching a message of hope, redemption, and improved results.

On Friday, he guested on Sportsnet 650. Then, on Tuesday, he was on 'Donnie and Dhali,' and also spoke to Ben Kuzma of The Province.

He's not shying away from the forces that led to such a disappointing 2020-21 campaign in Vancouver — although I haven't heard him talk much about how the nasty cross-Canada travel in the North Division forced the Canucks to make more long trips, at a time when the inter-divisional play actually kept many other clubs closer than usual to home.

This year should be better. If you missed it, I took a look at the upcoming schedule last month — and it actually looks pretty decent.

On Wednesday, the NHL announced a few relatively minor tweaks to that schedule. The only change in dates comes right at the end of the season. An April 16 game in Edmonton which would have broken up a four-game homestand has been moved to April 29, and the home game against L.A. which had originally been scheduled for that night has been bumped one day earlier, to the 28th. So now the Canucks finish out the regular season with three games in four nights, and with their last game on the road in Edmonton instead of at home.

Green sounds legitimately fired up to get going.

"This is the most excited I’ve been coming into a season as a coach," he told Kuzma.

"Getting back to regular hockey — or as close as we can be — with a full camp and fans in the building and the changes we’ve made along with the evolution of our young group, I expect them to be better."

Full of optimism, Green continues to say that he wants — and expects — that Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes will be under contract and ready to go by the beginning of training camp.

"Any coach would say it’s important, but we understand that sometimes these contracts take a little while and probably longer than the player or team wants," he told Kuzma. "I’m confident they’ll get things sorted out and be in camp."

He also says that he expects the growth of the club's incumbent young players to contribute to the team's success as much as any of the newcomers.

"Never mind the additions, a major reason will be our younger players coming back and being better. We were on the right road going into the bubble year and we’ve been taking steps, but last year was tough. We’re not going to hide from that, we didn’t have a very good season and I expect a bounceback year."

I'm expecting Thatcher Demko to lead that charge as he takes another step toward establishing himself as one of the NHL's elite netminders. He may not have been able to deliver a winning record last year, finishing at 16-18-1, but his .915 save percentage was the best of his career to date while he faced one of the heaviest workloads in the league.

Demko was 12th in the league in total minutes played, but fifth in shots against — not surprising, given that Vancouver ranked 29th overall with 33.4 shots against per game, narrowly ahead of Buffalo and Chicago. All four goalies above Demko in shots faced appeared in more games, and played more minutes.

The leader, Connor Hellebuyck, saw 1,335 shots in 2602 minutes of action — or, roughly, 30.8 shots per 60 minutes. Coming off his Vezina-winning season, he had a save percentage of .916 and a GAA of 2.58 last season.

Demko saw 1,164 shots in 2,087 minutes. That works out to 33.5 shots per 60 — significantly higher. His save percentage was .915 and his GAA was 2.85.

The Jets knew they had defensive issues last season, and worked to shore them up by adding Brenden Dillon and Nate Schmidt in the offseason — while letting Tucker Poolman go. The Canucks, of course, are hoping that their defense will be improved by Poolman, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Luke Schenn, plus a full season from Travis Hamonic, a bounce-back year from Quinn Hughes and perhaps even some nice rookie contributions from Jack Rathbone and Olli Juolevi.

By the way, players need to play 25 games in a season — or six games in each of two seasons — before they lose their rookie status. Juolevi finished with 23 last year, so he'll still officially be a rookie in 2021-22.

If you missed it, we also got some video on Tuesday of Vasily Podkolzin's first skate in Canucks colours out at UBC, courtesy of Kevin Woodley.

And finally, condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Canucks' Swedish scout Patrik Jonsson, who has passed away after a battle with prostate cancer at just 50 years old.

Last season, Thomas Drance of The Athletic wrote at length about Jonsson's close relationship with Nils Hoglander, how he advocated for the Canucks to draft him in 2019, and the pride he took in seeing his star pupil have success in the NHL.

I like this story, too:

Taking a look at Detroit's draft record, I'm assuming that player was Lucas Raymond. He was selected fourth by the Red Wings in 2020.

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