VANCOUVER – National Hockey League teams obsess over team-building. Not roster construction and player development, although that, too. But bonding – getting players together away from the rink in order to build inclusiveness and relationships.
The theory, of course, is that a tighter team is a better team. You will play harder if you actually know and like the guys around you.
So teams have mandatory dinners, and rookie dinners. When schedule and location allow it, they stage fishing derbies and golf tournaments, they go hiking and biking and zip-lining. They do yoga. The Vancouver Canucks once sent their players stock car racing, although it wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds because the vehicles were all Volvos. (Sweden, training camp, 1990). They also visited ground zero shortly after the 9/11 terror attack in New York.
In terms of bonding and togetherness, you know you are on to something as an organization when you set your players free for a week and instead of scattering they mostly stick together and go on holiday.
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Half of the Canucks’ spent their All-Star Break and bye week in and around Cabo San Lucas, the town at the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.
Players were clustered around two resorts, single early-twenty-somethings Brock Boeser, Troy Stecher, Jake Virtanen and Ben Hutton in one spot, older Loui Eriksson, Alex Edler, Chris Tanev and Erik Gudbranson at another with their partners. There were also a few Canuck strays in the area.
The whole group got together for a couple of dinners and a cruise.
“I don’t really know how it started,” Stecher said Thursday after the Canucks ended their schedule break with a practice at the University of B.C. “We just wanted to go somewhere warm, out of the cold and out of the rain, and wanted to stay somewhere on the West Coast. People are going to speculate what we did down there. Obviously, we had a good time. But we came back today and had a good practice.
“The four of us are super-tight, going back to my first year. I became good friends with Hutty and Virt and I knew Brock (from college). When I moved home to Vancouver, I thought I’m going to see my friends and family a lot more. But at the end of the day, I still go out for dinner every night with the guys. You create a special relationship with each other and just have fun.”
Boeser said: “You don’t want to be on a team where you have to hang out during the season but then want to get away (from each other) during the break. I think it shows what kind of group we are. It shows how everyone cares for each other. When you get to those crunch times and you need to battle and stick with each other, I think that chemistry helps you.”
Crunch time for the Canucks starts Saturday in Denver against the Avalanche, one of the heaping handful of teams Vancouver is racing for a wildcard playoff spot in the Western Conference.
This being professional sports and all, we know that teams that play together never stay together. We also know it never hurts to like the guys you’re playing with.
“Your buddies are your first line of defence, really, when it comes to being a hockey team,” Gudbranson said. “There’s a lot of different age groups on a team, a lot of people who didn’t know each other at the start of the year. To get rid of that awkwardness in the room is huge. It was fun to get the whole crew together. That was a fun break. Everyone just relaxes and forgets that they’re a hockey player for a few days.”
“There’s definitely (a gap) in the ages,” Eriksson, 33, said. “I’m the oldest guy on the team. But everyone definitely gets along well together. I think that’s been really good this year. And obviously, it’s more fun when we’re really close to making the playoffs. That brings the team together as well.”
The Canucks are 23-22-6, tied with the Avalanche for the final wildcard playoff spot. Vancouver is 12-6-3 over the last eight weeks and probably need to maintain something close to that success rate to make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in four years.
They play 14 games in February, half of them against playoff rivals and nine of them on the road.
Sure, they like each other, but can they win?
“When you go through battles over years – and we’re still trying to get there – you learn a lot from being around each other,” coach Travis Green said. “You hope you have a team that’s close. You want to have good people in your locker room and guys that get along. And I do think we have some really good individuals in that room. Obviously, I’m not inside the room, but I have an idea when guys get along and this group does get along well. That’s what you want.”
It’s a start.
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