Bieksa still believes in Canucks’ core
VANCOUVER — It’s always been about the room.
There’s the Mind Room, the Star-Trek like locker-room and the room they turned into a posh players’ lounge complete with chef service.
The Vancouver Canucks often reference the room — that place where they take refuge from the coaching staff and media to hold each other accountable — and the veterans who set that performance bar are left alone by Alain Vigneault. It created urgency from within and also a comfort zone.
How the successor to Vigneault sells the buy-in will be more important than finding that third-line centre or improving a bad power play.
Being swept aside in the playoffs should provide all the incentive, but the Canucks said the same thing a year ago when they bowed out of the post-season in five games. They believed in the core. They believed in the coaches. The refrain echoed again after the San Jose Sharks series, and you wonder if the new coach may have to be as visible in the room as behind the bench.
Constricted by salary-cap concerns and forced to fasttrack prospects, the core will have to do more than talk a good game among themselves.
“I don’t think we need somebody to come in and crack the whip,” defenceman Kevin Bieksa said Thursday.
“We can work together toward a common goal. I still believe in this team and that the core can win and that we’re young enough to win. We’re more mature and even-keeled, and maybe (coach’s rants) is appropriate on rare occasions, but every coach has his own strategy and opinions on how they should act.
“We’ve grown up a lot together and we’re accountable. I think we can handle that stuff internally with the players.”
How the Canucks handled prepping for the post-season is open to interpretation.
They won seven of their last 12 — including inspiring wins over Detroit and Chicago — and then forgot to show up against Anaheim and Edmonton.
They played the Sharks tough all season but never beat them, and never had an answer for a depth mismatch down the middle. Their adjustments were odd and it took until Game 4 to realize the chemistry of Ryan Kesler and Alex Burrows and Chris Higgins and Derek Roy should be exploited in an attempt to extend the season, and blowing the zone to score off the rush wasn’t a bad idea.
But flip-flopping goalies and eight goals in four games simply weren’t going to cut it, and the coaching axe was going to finally fall.
“We had a team in the first round that we felt we should have beat,” said Bieksa. “A lot of people can bear the responsibility for that. I don’t want to get into details of the system we played, but we didn’t execute. I’m not going to sit here and blame one thing or the other. Last year, we weren’t sure what was going to happen with a first-round exit, and this year just solidified things.”