Maybe good can come from bad
At least this season to forget should produce some promising draft choices
It wasn’t the greatest Canucks season, but at least we can be happy for fans in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Can’t we? Huh?
While we’re waiting for the sound of crickets to subside, here are the Monday-morning musings and meditations on the world of sports:
The importance of the Canucks’ epic collapse over the final two months of this season won’t be known for a couple of years but, this much is certain. It was the best-possible outcome for a team in, ahem, full rebuild.
With Sunday’s loss to the Oilers, the Canucks finish 29th in the NHL. Not only does this placement give them realistic odds at the two prizes at the top of this summer’s draft — Nolan Patrick and Nico Hischier — it also guarantees them a topfive pick and brings Gabe Vilardi and Casey Mittelstadt, the other toptwo centres, into play.
Patrick and Hischier could accelerate the rebuild by a year. Vilardi and Mittelstadt would address the greatest need. But either scenario represents a significant win for the organization and, looking back, it’s still hard to conceive how the Canucks got to this place.
On Jan. 26, the Orcans were three games over .500 and actually held down the eighth and final playoff spot in the West. That night they were shut out 3-0 by the woeful Arizona Coyotes and since then they’ve gone 7-23 while being passed by 13 other teams in the overall standings.
That kind of death spiral is hard to execute in today’s NHL, but if anyone is capable of it, it’s the Canucks.
The difference is, this time, there should be a reward at the end of it.
Coach Willie Desjardins faced the media after Saturday night’s loss to the Oilers and answered questions about his future as honestly as he could.
“It’s hard not to think about (being fired), but the one thing you do as a coach is coach,” he said. “I coach. I can’t control that. Every day I’ll work to make our team the best it can be and others will decide what we’re going to do. But I like our team and I like how our guys competed.”
It seems Desjardins is going to take the fall for the organizational failure this year because, well, that’s the way these things work.
But I’ll take away two things about Desjardins: 1) Given the lineup he was handed on most nights this season it’s impossible to judge his abilities as a coach, and 2) This is a decent man. Wherever he lands, he’ll be fine.
On Saturday, Desjardins was asked to give his thesis statement about this Canucks season.
“It’s a disappointing year when you look at where we are in the standings,” he said. “It’s a good year when you see the progress of some of the young players.”
Two of those young players are Bo Horvat and Troy Stecher.
In the home-ice finale. Horvat went up a weight class and held his own in a fight with Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse. This is the team’s future captain and, yes, that fight was significant.
Stecher, meanwhile, took a stick in the face from Milan Lucic midway through the third period, got medical attention in the Canucks’ locker-room, and was back on the ice with three minutes left when the Canucks almost tied the game.
You can wonder a lot about this team. You don’t have to wonder about the heart or character of those two kids.
A quick recap of the NHL season with our own awards banquet :
Hart — Sidney Crosby
You can flip a coin between Crosby and Connor McDavid, but, for me, it comes down to this. Crosby is the champion and, to beat the champ, you have to knock him out. El Sid missed six games but still leads the NHL in goals and his points-pergame are almost the equal of McDavid.
Norris — Brent Burns
Burns leads all defenceman in goals with 29. The next closest are Shea Weber and Erik Karlsson with 17. The Sharks’ blue-liner is also top-10 in the NHL in scoring and leads the league in shots-on-goal by a comfortable margin. Think about that one for a minute.
Vezina — Sergei Bobrovsky
This is all you need to know about Bobrovsky’s season. In the goalies’ Triple Crown, the Blue Jackets’ netminder is first in save percentage and goals-against average, and tied for second in wins.
Calder — Auston Matthews
The Leafs’ centre nosed out Patrik Laine over the last month, but here’s the thing: You can easily make the case that Laine’s season would win another year going back to Evgeni Malkin’s 85-point turn in 2006-07.
Adams — John Tortorella
We trust nothing more needs to be said.
Story of the year — the rookies
Before Sunday’s games, Sebastian Aho had quietly put up 23 goals and 48 points in Carolina this year and would merit Calder consideration in another season. This year he’d rank somewhere between ninth and 10th in Calder voting. William Nylander had 22 goals and 61 points for the Leafs and he’s their third-best rookie. Zach Werenski has been a huge difference-maker in Columbus and gets little mention. Same with Pittsburgh goalie Matt Murray. It’s a young man’s game in the NHL.
And finally. From a business point of view it’s understandable that Olympic participation doesn’t work for the NHL. They’re shutting down their league for three weeks. They’re supplying the players and assuming all the risk. Despite that, they’re denied access to marketing and merchandising opportunities.
That, at least, is the way the owners see this issue. But what about the millions of hockey fans all over the world who don’t see the game as a business calculation?
The vast majority of those fans want to see NHL players in the Olympics. True, the IOC is every bit as loathsome as the NHL, but there’s still something the Games represent that fans don’t get anywhere else and, sorry, the World Cup of Hockey doesn’t cut it.
On that basis, Olympic participation should be a relative no-brainer, but if we’ve learned anything about the NHL over the years, we’ve learned the wants and needs of the fans aren’t exactly their first priority.
There’s only way for the fans to make their voices heard and that’s to make their own business decision. Not sure if it will do any good, but it’s the only response the owners and Gary Bettman will understand.