Avs show Canucks the way to do it
Colorado’s brass reacted to a dreadful season by making the team younger and faster
Following a superior Super Bowl, here are the generally inferior Monday-morning musings and meditations on the world of sports:
■ When the Colorado Avalanche finished last in the NHL last season with an embarrassing 48 points, general manager Joe Sakic didn’t offer any miracle solutions, but did promise the Avs would get younger and faster.
True to his word, Sakic remade his roster. Last year’s team was clogged with veteran slowpokes Jarome Iginla, Rene Bourque, Francois Beauchemin, Fedor Tyutin and Joe Colborne. This season the Avs feature young flyers Alex Kerfoot, J.T. Compher, Tyson Jost and Samuel Girard. They’re also on pace for 94 points and are in the thick of the Western Conference playoff race.
OK, the larger story in Colorado has been the play of Hart Trophy-candidate Nathan MacKinnon, who’s currently out two to four weeks with an apparent shoulder injury. We’ll learn more about this team in MacKinnon’s absence, but, for Canucks fans, the salient point is Sakic’s approach to this off-season.
The Avs didn’t try to finesse their problems. They didn’t try to integrate younger players into their lineup while they slowly phased out veterans. Beginning at last year’s trade deadline, when they moved Iginla, they were all in with the rebuild, giving regular roles to Kerfoot, Compher and Jost, who are all rookies. The 19-year-old Girard was then acquired from Nashville in the Matt Duchene trade and immediately plugged into the lineup.
The net effect? The Avs have been transformed from train wreck into a team with a future in the space of four months. Maybe Sakic didn’t have a lot of choice when he imploded his lineup. Or maybe, he was at the forefront of a new orthodoxy in the NHL, one that the Canucks have to fully embrace.
We’re not going to spend a lot of time going over old territory, but, for the last four seasons, the Canucks have tried to slow-play the rebuild. Yes, they’ve gotten younger and, yes, there is promise ahead. But look at this year’s lineup. The average age of their forwards is 27.25, the average age of their blue-line is 26.1 and their two goalies average out at 28 years.
The Canucks are also talking about extending the contracts of Thomas Vanek and Erik Gudbranson, and the presumption is they’ll bring back the Sedins for another year. How does that square with a young, rebuilding team?
This goes way beyond messaging. The Canucks are finally at a point where their younger players look ready. Thatcher Demko, 22, might be the best goaltending prospect in the game. Adam Gaudette, 21, leads the NCAA in scoring and will likely be signed when Northeastern finishes their season. Elias Pettersson, 19, is third in the Swedish Elite League in scoring. Kole Lind, 19, is on pace for a 100-point season in Kelowna. Olli Juolevi, 19, is having a solid season in the Finnish Elite League.
Add it all up and the time for patience is over. The game has changed. It’s young and fast. Experience, one supposes, is still a factor, but the more important consideration is playing the game at NHL speed with NHL skill and the Canucks have too many players who can do neither.
The Sedins, I’m aware, are a complex argument and maybe you bring them back for one more year in a third-line/mentor role. But the Canucks have to find out what they have with their young players and they don’t have a lot of time to dither.
Besides, doing it their way has led to 28th- and 29th-place finishes the last two seasons, and 28th again this season.
How much worse can it get?
■ On a related note, it’s reasonable to look at the Canucks’ track record with young players and wonder what they’ll do when the next wave arrives. This is a team supposedly in a rebuild that continues to play Jake Virtanen 10 minutes a night and scratches Ben Hutton for Michael Del Zotto. How are they going to handle Gaudette, Demko, Pettersson and Lind?
■ For all the individual matchups in Super Bowl LII, easily the most compelling had little to do with the players and everything to do with the Philadelphia Eagles’ battle against the mystique of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.
That was also the Eagles’ greatest triumph in the best Bowl since, well, last year’s. There were at least three times in the game when the Pats rose from the crypt to plant that fear in the heart of Doug Pederson’s team and, each time, the Eagles either responded or one-upped the great champions.
In the end, it came down to the one play that their defence made the entire game, the strip-sack on Brady, but think of the Eagles’ touchdown drive that preceded the big turnover. Think of their TD drive after Brady took the ball to open the second half and marched it down their throats.
Mostly, think of the Eagles’ fourthdown call at the end of the first half and the cojones that took. It was one thing to go for it. It was another to run a gadget play that carried a huge element of risk, but made an indelible statement.
I mean, the Eagles even got the benefit of the doubt on a couple of those incomprehensible catch, no-catch deals. That should have told you everything you need to know about this night.
So many other teams have wilted when confronted by the Pats’ black magic, but Pederson, the kid from Bellingham, Wash., and his team stared a hole right through it. They weren’t afraid to win this game, weren’t afraid of the beast.
That’s what we’ll always remember about this one.
■ Surprised to see Jerry Kramer, the old Packers’ guard, inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame because I just assumed he was already there. Five-time NFL champion. Five-time All Pro. A core member of the best offensive line of all time, although you’d get an argument from the Cowboys of the early 1990s.
He’s 82 now and had been nominated 10 times, but he’s finally in. Nice moment.
■ There’s no question Odell Willis has been an elite pass-rusher throughout his CFL career. The question for the B.C. Lions is Willis, who was acquired via trade over the weekend, still that guy?
The former Eskimo is 33, carries a big ticket by CFL standards and his play dropped off considerably over the second half of last season. Still, he’s a leader and a personality, and the Lions can use both.
New GM Ed Hervey, who signed Willis as a free agent in Edmonton five years ago, knows the player and knows he can fill a crying need for the Leos. This also sets up as the signature move of his young administration. It bears watching.