The next step

VANCOUVER - "We're the most hated team in hockey?" Kevin Bieksa said, by way of confirming what he believes to be his Vancouver Canucks' status across the National Hockey League.

"This isn't going to help."

The "this" he refers to is Ryan Kesler's beefcake photo in Body Issue of ESPN's The Magazine.

It has gone viral on the 'net, while inside the Canucks dressing room -where these guys see each other naked everyday for 10 months - the picture has been viewed as, well, somewhat bold.

"Jealously," Kesler said of his teammates. "That's all they've got is jealousy."

"As Kes would say, he's got the body of a Greek god. So he can pull it off," said Bieksa. "We'll get it on a billboard somehow. Maybe in the rink, up in the banners."

Ah, the banners.

That, of course, is why we're here in Vancouver on the eve of the opening of the 2011-12 season, isn't it? To talk about the state of the Rogers Arena rafters, and whether or not the close-but-no-cigar Western Conference banner will one day soon be accompanied by another, more meaningful one.

Wednesday, on the day Kesler was cleared for contact after his summer hip surgery and practiced well with his teammates, the 2010-2011 Western Conference Champions banner hung quietly overtop the ice surface at Rogers Arena. It was hung without ceremony, and while the Boston Bruins hold a ceremony Thursday to lift their banner to the ceiling, Vancouver's will serve as a reminder of business left undone.

How to make sure that banner gets replaced with a bigger, better one a year from now? Who better to ask than Penguins defenceman Brooks Orpik, who manned the blueline for Pittsburgh in 2008 and 2009 - the last time a team lost the Stanley Cup final one spring, only to return the following season and win it.

"You'll have a lot of people telling you, 'It's hard to do... You're supposed to be tired…,' he said. "You have to try and block that out, because that can really get to you. If you think you're supposed to be tired, you'll probably be tired."

And, of course, the opposition will give the Canucks every reason to feel tired this winter.

"Once you get there, whether you win or you lose it, you don't sneak up on anyone anymore," Orpik said. "Every building you go to, that team has had the date checked off for a while. There are just no easy games.

"It's about getting your workouts in. Away from the rink, being a little smarter. Whether you've got to sacrifice a few things … it's tough."

Kesler stands as a metaphor for his team. So beaten and abused by the playoff run was Kesler, that only Wednesday did he recover enough to fully practice with his teammates.

Later, he admitted that playing injured in the Stanley Cup final likely made the hip injury even worse - not that there was any question a player of his stature would suit up in that situation.

"It's tough to say, but I think it did (get worse). It was definitely more extensive of a surgery (because of the Final). But who knows?" he said, reaffirming that he won't hurry back to the lineup this fall.

"I don't want to limp back in," he said, even though he looked like he could play in a week. "No, probably not to be honest. I'm not going to come limping in. I want to be an immediate impact. Get my minutes. I'm going to be patient with this, wait on my hip. That's the tough thing about it.

"I can't get much more out of skating on my own, at this point. This was the next step."

"The next step."

There is one of those allusions again.

How will the Canucks take "the next step?" What is it that makes these Canucks a better team today than it was a year ago?

"It's more up here," Daniel Sedin said, pointing to his head. "The grind we did last year, it will help us a lot. But right now, we're starting a new regular season. We have to be careful not to think we can make it to the playoffs easily."

The experience of climbing the mountain is a two-edged sword, points out his brother Henrik.

"It's good to know what it takes to get there, but it makes it tough, too," he said. "You know what it takes to get there."

Mark Spector is the senior columnist on sportsnet.ca