CANUCKS: ‘It’s not an overnight process,’ says new coach Travis Green
The new coach of the Vancouver Canucks was officially introduced to the world Wednesday, as fans’ hopes are ignited once again
If ever there was a team in need of a fresh voice, it’s the Vancouver Canucks. In finishing 28th and 29th in consecutive seasons, many of the same problems consistently plagued this team.
There was the goal-scoring, which set team records in futility in consecutive seasons. There was the power play, which has been both static and helpless for most of the past five years.
And there have been mixed messages from the front office, which was going for it three years ago, trying to rebuild on the fly two years ago and now apparently is moving all its chips in on a rebuild. We’ll see. All of this has left the local fan base a little battered and a bit broken and with outstretched hands they’re reaching for something, anything, so much so even someone on the Canucks saying the word “rebuild” is reason to rejoice.
In Travis Green, they have another. Green is a good coach and maybe a great one.
In four years as the head man with the American Hockey League’s Utica Comets, his teams more often than not controlled play and it was generally without decent centres or top defencemen. In professional hockey, that’s not easy.
The only decent team he had went to the Calder Cup final. It’s why there was interest in Green from around the NHL and in turn that interest played a significant role in why the Canucks considered no other candidates.
Read into that what you will, but Green is as good a bet as any they could have interviewed.
In his debut news conference, Green hit on a lot of coaching favourites, discussing vague things like creating a culture and making the kids earn it.
“If I could offer one message to the Canucks fans, it’s that we share the same goal (as Canucks fans),” Green said. “To have a winning team that’s exciting to watch and one that you’re proud of and one that you can call your team.
“It’s not an overnight process, though. I know that.”
What the fans know is it’s very difficult for NHL head coaches to deliver on their Day 1 promises. Green is the fourth Canucks coach in six seasons and talked about playing fast and creating offence without depending necessarily on goal-scorers. That would be a welcome trick indeed.
Of course, in 2013, John Tortorella promised he’d push players, they’d give him more and they’d play with more bite. The only thing he gave the city was a team that looked like origami trying to survive a grease fire.
In 2014, Willie Desjardins vowed Vancouver would get uptempo, fast-paced hockey and it nearly happened in Year 1, but then we all watched the two lowest-scoring seasons in Canucks history.
In this same vein, Green said a lot of things you would hope he’d say. He said he’s open to cutting back Bo Horvat’s responsibilities and maybe not ask him to be everything to everyone on this team. Green said he wants someone skilled and offensive to play with the Sedins.
And he said: “I know we need to create more offence. Our special teams have to get better.
“I think there’s a way you can create offence nowadays with the way the game is played. But that’s definitely an area we’re going to have to improve and we’re going to have to find a way to score more goals.
“Finding goal-scorers is different than creating offence for me.”
And that right there was the most interesting item to come out of Green’s opening news conference.
Because not all of the future goal-scorers the Canucks are banking on — Brock Boeser, Adam Gaudette, Jonathan Dahlen and Nikolay Goldobin — will arrive in Vancouver this fall.
In fact there’s a chance only one of them is in the opening-night lineup and that’s not going to be enough to bolster an offence that scored more goals than exactly one other team in the past two seasons.
So Green is going to need to try to create offence without goal-scorers, something that can be done if the team plays aggressively and below the goal-line.
“It is that type of thing. I believe it can be done. It’s in your structure,” Green said. “I’m not going to sit and tell you how we’re going to do it, but there are things in the structure of the game. Every team plays a little different.
“Getting your defence involved is something and that’s what a lot of people talk about. It’s also how you drive the net, how you gain access to the net, how you create traffic.
“You can think a lot of things about offence, but you also need to have the right personnel.”
He acknowledged there are players around the league who could be available this summer who he wouldn’t mind the team acquiring, which would help him in the personnel department.
Desjardins’s influence got the team Linden Vey and Derek Dorsett.
Green will instantly draw some comparisons to Desjardins and many of their views on young players are similar. But they are not the same coach.
Desjardins was brought in after a season in which Tortorella scorched the locker-room, in part to metaphorically hug the roster. Green’s mandate will be different. He will be different. He will be harder on players and more open to different ideas.
It all sounds great the day a new hire is announced.
It always does.