The thought has likely already occurred to some Vancouver Canucks fans, whether they’re doing their best to suppress it or not. And chances are it will strike a few more times when the Toronto Maple Leafs visit British Columbia on Saturday night, perhaps after Auston Matthews pulls a power move or Mitch Marner dances through the neutral zone like Michael Jackson in the Billie Jean video.
When it happens is irrelevant. But there’s an undeniable deliciousness to the fact an entire crew of West Coasters could simultaneously look skyward and say, “Good God, we need to become Toronto.”
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The dynamic between the two cities, of course, is what gives that scenario its entertainment value. If you’re wondering what the differences between Toronto and Vancouver are, spend five seconds on the topic with someone from the latter. For now, let’s focus on the numerous similarities as it pertains to hockey.
The Maple Leafs actually spent a good deal of the past 10 years being what the Canucks are right now. In the final Mats Sundin seasons, through the failed Brian Burke era—where an attempt to fly the dog leg buried the franchise further in the rough—Toronto’s plight worsened because it wasn’t willing to acknowledge the need for meaningful change.
If that doesn’t describe the Canucks today, it’s only because the condemnation doesn’t go far enough.
Since winning Game 5 of the of 2011 final to get within a single victory of the Stanley Cup, the Canucks have a grand total of three playoff wins. Only two teams—Toronto was one—finished with fewer points than Vancouver last year and the club is tracking similar results with a rickety roster this season. The Canucks are life and death to get to two goals each night, which isn’t going to cut it when you give up an average of nearly three.
Vancouver, only a short time ago, had a wonderful team—the kind of elite contender Toronto is taking a legitimate crack at building. But the horse is so far out of the barn that it’s halfway to Ontario, trying to get a glimpse of the blueprint for a right proper rebuild.
We’re not so naive as to miss the substantial obstacles standing between the Canucks and a fresh start, the type the Leafs got when it began jettisoning the likes of Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf.
Two of Vancouver’s challenges are identical and come with $7-million cap hits through this season and next. If the Leafs were once flummoxed trying to arrange a gracious split with Sundin—naturally, he eventually wound up with the Canucks—Vancouver has twice the dilemma on its hands figuring out what to do with Sudin’s countrymen Daniel and Henrik Sedin. Maybe there’s nothing to be done but let them play out the stretch.
Still, it’s one thing to be in a difficult situation with two franchise icons; it’s quite another to go out and ink veteran Loui Eriksson to a six-year, $36-million deal last summer so the Sedins have somebody to play with.
Why double down on your problems?
For years, the suits in Toronto were said to be staunchly against any full-scale renovation. Then came Brendan Shanahan and the Age of Enlightenment. Shanahan was the second overall pick in the 1987 NHL Draft, a hometown Hall-of-Famer who returned with a plan to end decades of pain.
Trevor Linden was the second overall pick in 1988, a Canucks legend who took the helm of Vancouver’s hockey operations a few days before Shanahan did the same in Toronto in April of 2014. Is there any chance Linden can pull a Shanny and convince reticent ownership that there’s only one bump-filled way out of this mess? Bite down and get on with it.
Should the approach ever dramatically shift, there’s more good news in terms of overlap with the Leafs. If you mark Shanahan’s arrival as the turning point in Toronto’s plight, it’s important to note contributors like Morgan Rielly, Nazem Kadri and James van Riemsdyk were already in the mix. Vancouver can’t match that, but Bo Horvat is an emerging force up the middle and Olli Juolevi, the fifth overall pick last June, figures to be a top blue line contributor a few seasons from now.
What if you add, say, the second overall pick this year and the third selection in 2018 to the nucleus? The Canucks are headed toward that type of draft position even with their vets, but would be even better positioned for high draft positions if they could move some old bodies out the door. It would also return more picks in later rounds, something the Leafs have benefited from the past couple Junes.
We understand scorched-earth overhauls are most easily accomplished in the minds of fans and media with no employment skin in the game. Just last spring, the Canucks caught the short end of the lottery stick, getting bumped to No. 5 when they could have been in the top three. Losing can have its silver linings, but there are no silver bullets when it comes to constructing a team. That said, a teardown is still the best option you have in an NHL landscape where premier free agent talent almost never hits the market.
That the Maple Leafs could be a model for what Vancouver does next is only chuckle-worthy because of the aforementioned—and somewhat baffling—rivalry between the two cities.
Geographically, they’re so far apart that if they were located on any other continent, there’d be between two and five different countries between them. The Leafs and Canucks see each other just twice a year and it’s hard to believe there’s much lingering animosity from a final-four playoff series in 1994 that was just one year removed from being called the Campbell Conference final.
Suffice it to say, a lot of water has passed under the bridge.
Still, in a country where deriding Toronto gives hockey a real go as the true national passion, Vancouverites often offer up the most vitriol.
That was a defensible approach, at least in the context of the Maple Leafs, for many years. Today, however, Canucks supporters need to channel that emotion in a different direction.
