“Is the core too old?”
“Too stale?”
“Can this group still contend seriously for a Stanley Cup?”
If the Vancouver Canucks had lost in the first round to any other Pacific Division team, perhaps the questions at Monday’s locker room cleanout day wouldn’t have been so pointed.
With the Canucks bowing out to the Cinderella Calgary Flames — and doing so by coughing up a commanding three-goal lead — in Game 6, Vancouver’s aging veterans had to sit through a familiar round of interrogations on Monday, the multitude of press conferences punctuated by the same old questions.
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS: | Broadcast Schedule
Rogers NHL GameCentre LIVE | Stanley Cup Playoffs Fantasy Hockey
New Sportsnet app: iTunes | Google Play
Maybe the line of inquiry was repetitive, but that’s not surprising. These questions are, after all, the existential ones facing a Canucks franchise that hasn’t been past the first round in four years.
“We have no plans of getting any worse,” said Canucks captain Henrik Sedin, dropping an amusing line that might not make for the most inspiring promotional slogan.
No one ever plans to get worse of course, but it’s difficult to avoid when a handful of your key players are edging further into their mid-30s.
There seemed to be a keen awareness on Monday that the Canucks need to get younger — and quickly. It’s why the play of 20-year-old defensive centre Bo Horvat, who led the team in playoff scoring during the first-round series, has meant so much to Canucks fans, management and players.
“At the start of the year he wanted to do everything right,” Tanev said of Horvat’s in-season improvement. “He didn’t take too many chances, just played well defensively. Then as the year progressed he turned into one of our best forwards.”
Vancouver’s more veteran players were adamant that the team needs to get younger if they hope to stay competitive.
“Look at every team that is successful: they have young guys that come in and surprise every year,” said winger Chris Higgins. “This team is looking for guys like that.”
For what it’s worth, Horvat described a veteran-heavy ‘winning environment’ as a crucial developmental tool in his first year as an NHL player.
“Having the mixture of guys (with) the younger guys is going to help,” Horvat said. “Being able to come into a winning environment as a young guy was huge, so when you do make the mistakes you learn quicker.”
Youth for youth’s sake is hollow though, as Canucks defender Kevin Bieksa noted. What’s crucial isn’t age so much as player quality.
“I don’t think youth is always the answer,” Bieksa said. “I don’t think making the team younger is going to get us over the hump. You need the best players. Regardless of how old they are, you need the best players.”
And that right there is the rub.
One doesn’t find the best players in trades or through free agency anymore. The best players in hockey are drafted early, and then they’re almost impossible to pry away from the team that selects them.
As such, the focus has increasingly shifted to tanking — on tearing a team down and accumulating futures the moment the “core group” is seen to be unable to compete seriously for a Stanley Cup.
It’s a cynical approach that’s anathema to how the Canucks have operated for much of the past decade. When Canucks general manager Jim Benning was asked about tanking at a season ticket holder event last June, the result was an almost visceral negative reaction.
There will be changes to this team — for example, pending unrestricted free agents Shawn Matthias and Brad Richardson addressed the media like players unlikely to return next season — but don’t expect Benning to just light a match.
“Jim and Trevor (Linden) have a pretty clear plan of what they want do with this team,” Henrik said Monday, though neither he nor his brother would divulge specifics.
Based on new management’s first year at the helm of the Canucks, we can detect a few trends even without Henrik’s help.
We’ve seen the team invest heavily in goal and be willing to deal draft picks for successful AHLers. We’ve observed that they’re reluctant to deal futures for veteran help — even young veteran help.
We know that Benning will spend lots of time on the road scouting as the club prioritizes the draft, and we won’t be at all surprised to see the club look to recoup draft picks on the trade market over the next seven weeks.
Download Sportsnet magazine now: iOS | Android | Windows
The plan, evidently, is to restock rather than rebuild or retool, though we’ll hear more about that when management meets the press on Wednesday. Labels aside, it would seem that the Canucks’ plan leans heavily on the idea that there’s more than one way to build a hockey team.
The twins, at least, are on board.
“I think we have a lot of younger guys in the system that can come up and help us, so it’s exciting,” Henrik said.
“It’s the first time since we came (into the league) that we felt excitement with young guys and the prospects,” he later added.
Pivoting from defending the core to selling hope is a neat trick from the Canucks captain. It’s a maneuver the club might do well to emulate going forward, what with Alberta rising in the Pacific Division.
After all, the discerning hockey consumers in the Vancouver market aren’t buying this club as a serious contender anymore.