New coach won’t solve Canucks’ problems
With roster lacking skill and team lagging at the gate, the Canucks are going to need to sell change
Imagine for a moment, Mattias Ohlund waving warmly to one of the biggest Vancouver crowds of the season.
It’s just after a pre-game ceremony which has some emotion, and length. As he walks off the ice one final time, the home team cuts on for the opening faceoff, and there’s a letdown, which there often seems to be in these post-ceremony games.
Only moments later the Canucks give up a goal, then another, and another against a fast-playing Tampa team that’s due for some wins, and a team that just dropped six on Calgary.
How would the hometown crowd react to this scenario? “Not well,” is a pretty good guess.
Canucks fans are growing increasingly frustrated, and even Vancouver’s biggest supporters are suggesting their season could already be lost, their run to nowhere already complete.
Could the season be dead with 52 games left? If so, yikes. The concept will not warm the hearts of the owners, who have 28 home games still to sell.
Remember, they’re only a few months removed from getting what they said was an 80-per-cent renewal rate on season tickets.
Whether it was 80 per cent, or worse, it wasn’t good. What would the number be next summer if this team continues to be among the worst in hockey and then does nothing?
That right there, the franchise’s long-term financial outlook, could be the biggest reason the Canucks make a coaching change — one, it seems, they didn’t want to consider until the new year.
If the Canucks get a Christmas wish, the return of Chris Tanev stabilizes the defence; Jannik Hansen finds his groove with the Sedins; the team gets an overdue string of good luck; and the front office’s massive free-agent bet, Loui Eriksson, starts scoring goals, and lots of them. The team gets on a bit of a roll, against some tough matchups, and Willie Desjardins is safe for another few weeks.
It would allow the Canucks to put off what will be one of the more fascinating decisions of the Trevor Linden era.
Because if not Desjardins, then who?
There’s almost no chance assumed coach-in-waiting Travis Green takes his first NHL job in Vancouver this season on an interim deal. He’s earned a multiyear contract.
You would think if Green was in the Canucks’ plans he would have got the job already.
Because, as far as coaching changes go, the team already looks past its best-before date.
If you really believed this group had playoff blood, you hit the panic button sometime during the Canucks’ nine-game losing skid.
An interim coach doesn’t leave a lot of options. There’s Doug Jarvis, who has no NHL head coaching experience, and whatever coaching veteran is sitting by his phone just waiting for another chance in the NHL.
Neither sound like great options, and could conceivably be steps down from Desjardins.
Hands up if you think any new coach can save the Canucks. Anyone? A new coach isn’t going to inspire the market. A new coach isn’t going to sell tickets, stabilize the organization or improve the power play.
OK, he may do that last one. And he may never again play Brandon Sutter with the Sedins, which, admittedly, is a compelling point. But there aren’t many.
Most of the options, actually, could have no impact at all, or make things worse.
If that happens, everything will be on the table, including a long, hard look at management.
At some point, and it feels inevitable, the Canucks are going to need to sell change. They’re going to need to sell a different direction, a new hope.
Can they do that with the current front office structure, one which has admittedly lacked experience from the start?
Normally, general managers get a couple of coaches before their job is on the clock.
But the Canucks ownership group has had an itchy trigger finger in the past.
Could it make dramatic changes before these managers even hire their second coach?
Nothing that happens from here on in should be surprising if the Canucks don’t improve.