Who will wear the ‘C’ for Canucks?
The Vancouver Canucks will consider going into the season without a captain.
Vancouver GM Jim Benning said the organization hasn’t spent significant time deciding how they will replace the retired Henrik Sedin.
It appears the Canucks may take another month to reach a conclusion.
“We’ve talked about it briefly but we haven’t come up with one,” Benning said. “We’re trying to get through the draft, get through free agency and we have development camp.
“Then, we’ll have some time to talk about it some more.”
The favourite to be the next captain of the Canucks is Bo Horvat. Brandon Sutter will also get some consideration, as will another option which teams have used in recent years when they didn’t think they have an obvious choice.
“We could have three assistants,” Benning said “We might not ... We haven’t fully decided what we’re going to do with that.”
The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t had a captain since 2015-16 and it’s partly to keep from putting added pressure on Auston Matthews. The Canucks could make the same case with Horvat. Generally teams steer away from having young captains. But the Edmonton Oilers named Connor McDavid captain when he was 19.
Horvat is 23. Canucks head coach Travis Green didn’t name Horvat as one of his alternate captains to start last season and he later explained that Horvat’s new, big contract played a role.
Green was looking for ways to ease the pressure off a player who had the weight of a new six-year, US$33 million deal to lug around the ice. You could see similar logic this season, because the pressure on Horvat will be immense without Henrik Sedin in the lineup.