Canucks hand Green the rebuild
It was the R-word everyone who follows the Vancouver Canucks has longed to hear, unless you were hoping for a refund on last season.
“We are rebuilding this team,” Canucks president Trevor Linden said Wednesday, ending at least two years of semantic gymnastics.
“I think we have our focus on our young players and we’re excited about that. The journey with these young players will be interesting, not always perfect, so if rebuild is a word that everyone is happy with, then we’re fine with that.”
Happy with it or not, it is reality, and has been for a while for the National Hockey League team.
The Canucks, whose messaging has been as mixed up at times as their power play, have finally given up trying to disguise what has been apparent almost since John Tortorella, who is suddenly two head coaches ago for the Canucks, declared on his way out the door in 2014: The team is stale and needs to be made younger and fresher.
They have to rebuild after more than a decade of superior play in which draft picks were sacrificed for temporary playoff help, leaving the talent pipeline empty by the time Willie Desjardins replaced Tortorella three years ago.
And now Desjardins, fired two weeks ago after the Canucks’ 29th-place finish in the regular season, has been replaced by Travis Green.
Green, 46, has known only instruction and development as a coach, first with junior players and the Portland Winterhawks, the last four years with the Canucks’ Utica Comets AHL farm team.
“Travis fits where we are as an organization,” Linden said at the news conference introducing the Canucks’ 19th head coach.
Green’s team includes only five survivors from Tortorella’s roster, and the franchise has a pile of players who are 24 or younger. The prospect pool, though still not deep and lacking elite players, has been significantly improved the last couple of years.
Into Green’s hands all these young players have been placed, and it is the new coach’s mandate to make them better. Winning is a bonus. They’ll worry about the standings in 2019-20, when the franchise turns 50.