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Elias Pettersson is the star of the show on Day 2 of Canucks' training camp |
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It's still early, but the first scrimmage of 2019 training camp gave Vancouver Canucks fans a small taste of sort-of-game-action at Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre in Victoria on Saturday.
Through a two-period, running-time contest, Team White defeated Team Blue by a score of 5-0. True to form, Elias Pettersson kicked things off on the scoresheet, followed by Brandon Sutter, Tanner Pearson, Justin Bailey and Tyler Graovac just before the final buzzer.
Thanks to our reader, Codes, for all his great updates during the scrimmage on Saturday and his on-the-scene chat with Jordie Benn's parents. Sorry we didn't get to meet up — next time, for sure!
If you missed it, scroll through the comments from the previous blog for Codes' and my real-time updates from Saturday. I'll do the same today - and if anybody else is at the rink, feel free to chime in. It's not easy following all the action with no replays!
Here's another angle on Petey's goal, as he danced his way through traffic to the net.
Calgary Hitmen teammates and friends Jett Woo and Carson Focht were drafted a year apart, but both are at their first pro camp this year. I'll have more from them coming up later this week, as well as my chat with Thatcher Demko.
Woo and Focht have both been skating in Pettersson's group, so I asked them what it was like to get a firsthand look at his skill while sharing the ice with him.
"It's unreal," said Woo. "I picked him as one of my players on my fantasy team (last year) and obviously he did really well. It's funny, being in the room with him now and obviously seeing how he is on the ice and how well he performs in person too. it's pretty exciting."
"Yeah, for sure," added Focht. "Just being able to see what he does on a daily basis is pretty cool. He's super shifty, always makes plays. A bit of a lighter guy, but he always finds a way to get out of corners and stuff and I guess we saw firsthand when he scored that first goal in the game today. Just very elusive. Makes great plays with the puck. It's really cool to see."
Group A skated after the scrimmage on Saturday. At the end of the session, after the stretch, Woo and Focht (whose last name rhymes with 'cloaked,') were part of a small group — including Pettersson — that stayed out to take a few extra shots.
Pettersson also drew praise for his willingness to sign autographs for everyone who asked.
Two days into camp, Petey is reminding us once again why he caused such a stir at the beginning of last season — and giving us every reason to think that his second NHL campaign will be as special as the first. His work ethic and commitment to the fans have also reignited the captaincy debate.
I've said it before — I can see both sides. Bo Horvat has been the presumptive captain-in-waiting for a couple of years now. He's going into his sixth NHL season and has worked hard on and off the ice to be ready to take that next step. He's also now the Canucks' NHLPA player rep, and attended the meeting in Chicago last week where the players sat down to talk about whether or not to exercise their option to re-open the current CBA this year.
The players will be announcing their decision on Monday.
I'm honestly not sure which way this will go. While the owners declined to exercise their re-opener option, saying that they're basically happy with how things are, the players are definitely still concerned about escrow — the mechanism that sees as much at 15 percent taken off of each of their paycheques. The CBA dictates that all hockey-related revenues must be split 50/50 between the players and the owners and the actual size of that pie isn't determined until well after each season has ended.
Escrow deductions are made because the league's estimate of that HRR number has been quite a bit lower than the dollar-value total of all the players' salaries for the last several years. When the final number is eventually calculated, the players can get a bit of a rebate but my understanding is that it's usually just a couple of percentage points — and it takes a long time before that final balancing entry is made to close out each year's books.
At this point, it seems like the hope is that the easiest way to alleviate the situation is to make the HRR number bigger — perhaps by changing some of the details of how it's calculated and including more revenue streams and, of course, simply by continuing to grow the NHL's overall business. But if the calculation of the salary-cap ceiling is done the same way, that wouldn't change the percentage that's lost to escrow, although it would continue to increase base salaries like we've seen over the past few years. Tweaking the calculation process could make escrow smaller, but it would also probably slow the relative growth of the cap ceiling, which will continue to squeeze teams as they assemble their rosters, like we've seen this year.
Since negotiations so far have mostly stayed behind closed doors and have been characterized as relatively amicable, there has been a suggestion that the path to resolution will be easier if the players opt not to exercise their re-opener. If they do, the gloves may come off. We'll see.
Anyway, back to the question of the captaincy.
Travis Green praised Pettersson's leadership when asked about it after Saturday's session.
"Yeah, i think that's always what you're hoping out of your young guys is that they slowly develop into the leaders of their team.
"As a second year guy, i have no worries about Petey becoming better in all areas of his game. We've had a lot of good conversations, with him being one of our best players on the ice, the locker room, in the weight room, every part of his game and being a pro. He's a driven kid and he wants to do well and he's going to do well."
Following up on the key storylines from Friday:
• Jake Virtanen did indeed get moved into the main group and take part in the scrimmage on Saturday. Here's what Green had to say when told that Jake held himself accountable on Friday.
"I think that's good to hear. You want young players to take responsibility, and much like a lot of us are parents, coaching is a lot about that and trying to develop players and hoping they can learn some lessons. I know Jake well. I want him to do well. Sometimes tough lessons are the ones that sink in most, so hopefully there's a lesson learned."
Virtanen elected not to speak with the media on Saturday.
• Taking a page from the Toronto Raptors and Kawhi Leonard, Green called the decision to move Olli Juolevi out of the scrimmage groups on Saturday "load management." Juolevi raised some red flags when he looked completely spent at the end of Friday's hard skate, but he was a full participant in the Group C practice on Saturday and was all smiles at the end. So far, it seems like his surgically repaired knee is holding up just fine.
Green was reluctant to get too specific about any players and emphasized that it's impossible to isolate much on individuals when there's so much happening on the ice at any given time. I'll vouch for that!
He also said the groups that he has been using through the first two days of camp have no bearing on how he'll break up the team for the split-squad games against Calgary on Monday, and that he *might* do his first special-teams work of the year on Sunday — but could put it off until practice next week.
Here's the schedule for Sunday's final day of training camp, which features another scrimmage at 11:10 a.m.
I'll be at the rink again today, then heading back to Vancouver a bit later. If you'd like to hear more of my impressions of training camp and what we should expect from the Canucks next season, I'll be guesting on The Early Edition on CBC Radio on Monday morning at 8:20 a.m. Please tune in!
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