Gaunce savours taste of success
Canucks’ hot start has shown second-year forward how fun life can be in the NHL
This is a little more what Brendan Gaunce had in mind when he dreamed of playing in the NHL. Like so many in the organization, the second-year Vancouver Canucks forward is enjoying life these days as a result of the team’s surprising start to the season.
For Gaunce, it’s particularly sweet since his rookie season was so sour.
Due to a rash of injuries above him on the depth chart, the 22-year-old Markham, Ont., native was thrust into a Canucks lineup that was brutally overmatched almost every time out. Gaunce tasted victory in just three of his first 15 NHL games — a stretch that included a dismal ninegame losing streak last March.
During that tailspin, Gaunce and the Canucks were shut out in three straight games and failed to score in four of five outings.
Certainly, it wasn’t Gaunce’s fault. He was a young player trying to make the most of the opportunity of a lifetime, but was sucked into the vortex of a season spinning wildly out of control. While those were some of the darkest days in recent Canucks memory, they were all Gaunce knew in the NHL. Until now. That brutal introduction to the big leagues has provided Gaunce with a unique perspective.
It’s why he’s savouring the early success as the Canucks roared from the starting block and won more in the first week this season than they did at any point during Gaunce’s time with the club a year ago.
“I’ve been lucky enough in my two years in pro that we had successful teams in Utica, so I’ve been around that winning environment. Last year, coming here was a bit different,” he admits. “(It) was a bit of a culture shock. But this year, we’ve had a good attitude and I think that shows in our wins.”
While the team dynamic was difficult last season, the 6-foot-2, 210-pound centre tried to make the most of his first look at the NHL. He got into 20 games in two separate recalls from the minors.
His first was a brief two-game stay in which he scored his first NHL goal in Arizona in October 2015. Then in March, he was recalled again and stayed for the duration of the season as the Canucks played out the string.
It was exactly where Gaunce wanted to be as a player, but those were hardly the circumstances he wanted to be in.
“Any person that plays professional sports is very competitive, so that’s something that’s going to eat at them whether it shows at the rink or not,” he says of living with the losing.
“It’s tough to go home and have a losing team because you know you are a part of that and you’re obviously not helping the team enough to win. It was definitely tough on that level.”
It was difficult for Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins to stomach, too.
With key players out of his lineup, he was forced to use players like Gaunce in situations they simply weren’t ready for.
But Desjardins really had no other options.
His hope is the team’s early success fuels a hunger in his players to do whatever is necessary to avoid a repeat of anything resembling those final months of last season.
“The best part is just to get out of what happened last year and get a fresh start,” Desjardins says. “And that’s what everybody needed, was to get refocused and get rid of the tension and some of the negative stuff that was going on. I just think it’s a better environment and guys are excited. And it makes you recognize you’d rather play in that environment than the other one, so keep working hard and keep trying to find ways to win.”
Gaunce is trying to do his part to help the Canucks stay on this early season roll they’re on. Although early in his career, he has had a glimpse of both ends of the NHL’s success spectrum and the knocks he took last season have helped him realize how much better it is to be on the winning side.