2014-15 outlook
On April 14, with the Vancouver Canucks logo splashed across the backdrop behind him, John Tortorella spoke like a man who suspected the end was near. The beleaguered coach seemed to speak with unusual candor, even by his standards, especially when asked if the team’s roster needed “freshening.”
The Canucks had failed to qualify for the playoffs for the first time in six years, just three seasons after the franchise lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final at home. Injuries hit hard, production plummeted and controversy took hold off the ice.
“I felt from Day One that it’s stale,” Tortorella said, during a lengthy season-ending news conference. “That’s not their fault. This is a group that has been together for a long time. It’s stale. It needs youth. It needs a change.”
Canucks general manager Mike Gillis had been fired a week earlier. And two weeks after his media address — “I don’t coach to keep my job, I’m not going to go into any meeting to try to save my job” — Tortorella was also sent away.
New team president Trevor Linden swept through the leadership ranks, but he left the core of the roster, that allegedly stale group of players, largely in place. Henrik and Daniel Sedin turned 34 years old last month, a combined age of 68 for the fraternal forwards who were held to only 97 points last season.
Alex Burrows (33 years old) and Chris Higgins (31) are still among the leading forwards, too. The Canucks signed winger Radim Vrbata to a two-year deal in July with the aim of having him play alongside the Sedins. Vrbata is 33.
The other notable shake-ups: Signing goaltender Ryan Miller to a three-year contract and trading disgruntled centre Ryan Kesler to the Anaheim Ducks. Vancouver acquired centre Nick Bonino, defenceman Luca Sbisa and a pair of draft picks in exchange.
Bonino should slot in on the second line, with Sbisa likely playing third-pairing minutes on defence. Will that be enough to shake an allegedly stale core out of its malaise, or will the Canucks ultimately have to follow the path of the other Western Canadian teams and enter a full rebuild?
“We want to win and we don’t look at this as a rebuild or anything,” Daniel Sedin told The Canadian Press last month. “I think we have deep team and we have a team that can make the playoffs, and anything can happen there.”
Vancouver was one of the lowestscoring teams in the league last year, producing only 140 goals at five-on-five. The teams with fewer goals —E dmonton, New Jersey and Buffalo — also missed the playoffs. Two of them missed the playoffs in the Eastern Conference, which should probably count twice considering the strength of schedule in the West.
“The team is trending, it’s getting older,” Tortorella said during his news conference in April. “It’s the truth of what’s going on. For us … to get back to being competitive for a long time, you may have to slide sideways and find your way as far as a little bit of a rebuild.”
This is the fourth in our series of Canadian NHL team previews.
Yesterday Oilers | Monday Jets
See previous ones at nationalpost.com