VANCOUVER — On another of those mornings after the night before, Vancouver Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau was asked what his thoughts were when he got up Wednesday.
“Who says I got up?” he said at the start of his media briefing at Rogers Arena. “Who says I went to sleep?”
The Canucks are not the cure for insomnia, but the cause of it.
Tuesday’s 6-2 loss to the New York Islanders, when the Canucks cratered again in the second period, then managed only six third-period shots, was the latest of many disillusioning Vancouver performances this National Hockey League season.
Boudreau, as honest as he is sleepless, said after the game that the Islanders were simply more committed to winning. He said he can’t go out and block shots for his goalie, which Canuck skaters did only three times in front of Spencer Martin, and that are far as the will to win: “You’re talking to the wrong guy; I want to win every night.”
The obvious implication is his players may not.
At least they don’t play like they want to win every night. They have looked broken the last three games in losses against teams from Winnipeg, Calgary and New York that simply outclassed the Canucks, who imploded in the middle of each game and never seriously looked like they could recover.
This is largely the same group of players – and the entire core – that went 32-15-10 under Boudreau last season and were bolstered in the summer by the addition of free agents Andrei Kuzmenko and Ilya Mikheyev, both of whom have been excellent.
Yet, the Canucks are performing at the same first-half pace, 16-18-3, that got coach Travis Green and general manager Jim Benning fired 13 months ago.
This week is not only the nadir for the brief Boudreau-Jim Rutherford era but feels, based on talent and expectations for the Canucks, like one of the lowest points in years for a franchise that has seen a lot of them.
Prior to their playoff aberration in the Edmonton summer of 2020, the Canucks simply weren’t very good. But they consistently punched above their weight class under Green, whose players worked relentlessly, were rarely an easy out and won a lot of games against better teams.
That playoff bubble long ago burst, probably when in free agency that autumn the Canucks let most of their leadership group wander away in free agency. Even with a couple of the most talented players in franchise history in their lineup, the Canucks have shown over the last two-and-a-half years an almost inexhaustible ability to disappoint and under-achieve. And it’s happening again.
“There’s things I thought that I could do better, you know?” Boudreau said, nobly trying to take back some of the blame he fairly placed on players Tuesday night. “And the bottom line is it’s on me if they’re not doing what I want them to do. So, you know, I wanted to make sure that in the meeting (Wednesday morning) and in the video that we showed today that they understand what I want them to do. And then, like I said, it’s on me to implement that and if they don’t, then I’ve got to make them find a way to do it.
“I always used to tell people the coach’s job is to find the Achilles heel of the player. In other words, if it’s a kick in the butt or a pat on the back, or take ice time away, or in the older days taking money away, I mean, it’s my job to find out what makes them tick and what makes them go. And maybe sometimes I’ve let that slide a little bit. So it’s up to me to make these guys more accountable.”
There was a lot of that going on in the Canucks’ compound before Wednesday’s spirited practice that saw defencemen Luke Schenn and Kyle Burroughs establish a theme by crunching teammates with checks.
The latest lost was characterized by astonishing turnovers (Tyler Myers and Ethan Bear), a lack of determination to score or defend and a general failure to compete.
Fans can get behind a 70-point team that battles every night as long as they see improvement over time. There is nothing endearing about a 95-point team that plays like a 70-point one.
“It’s a little bit tougher to. . . centre people out in front of a group,” Boudreau said of his challenge as a coach. “Nobody likes to have that happen. But I mean, every night it’s my job or at least partially my job to get them ready. There’s always self-preparation, but it’s my job to make sure to make them believe that they can win the game. Because if you don’t believe that you can win the game, you can never win the game.”
General manager Patrik Allvin is trying to trade Brock Boeser and taking offers on captain Bo Horvat, and nobody on the roster is considered untouchable beyond Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes. And Boudreau has been working without a safety net all season, undermined as much by his own bosses than his expiring contract.
As Rutherford, the president of hockey operations, said the other day when talking about the J.T. Miller hurricane: “There’s a lot of things going on.”
Burroughs insisted Wednesday that Boudreau’s status – he’s less likely than impending free-agent Horvat to be with the Canucks next season – is not a factor in any of what we’re seeing on the ice.
“Not at all,” Burroughs said. “He hasn’t lost the room. He hasn’t lost. . . individual players. Us in that room, I know that we still care about him, we still want to play for him. He’s brought a lot of energy, good vibes. It’s just disappointing that we’re letting him down right now.
“It’s unacceptable from every man. I don’t know if you can single out one guy who’s risen above the rest for losing those games like that. The message has been that it’s not acceptable, it’s not good enough.
“Everyone knows in that room that it’s not good enough, that we need to be better. We can only talk so much about it in the dressing room; it needs to be relayed on to the ice. I don’t think that that we’re holding ourselves to a higher standard, a high enough standard right now.”
Accountability is coming. We’re not sure about the wins.
Nathan MacKinnon and the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche visit the Canucks on Thursday.