Countdown on Green starts now
Canucks new head coach probably has three years to turn around struggling franchise
A terrific question was posed by a radio colleague as Travis Green was introduced as the new head coach of the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday: will the 46-year-old Castlegar native coach a playoff game in his tenure behind the bench here?
It’s a fascinating query because it wraps a whole host of other questions into one.
How quickly can the new coach turn this team around? How rapidly can he develop the players he’ll lean on to get this team back to the post-season? What if Green gets to the end of the third year of his fouryear contract and the Canucks still reside below the playoff bar? And, ultimately, how much patience will management and ownership have, should this rebuild hit a few potholes along the way?
Surely Green, like all proud coaches, would bet on himself and hope to be at the helm, not just for a token playoff appearance, but to guide this group on its next deep post-season run. You wouldn’t expect — or want — it any other way.
But simply wishing for a playoff spot won’t get it done.
There is so much work to do with the Canucks as currently assembled, and it’s hard to see a path that would put the Green machine anywhere close to the post-season before the end of his third year of coaching.
By then, Bo Horvat will be 25, have six years of National Hockey League experience under his belt, and surely will be itching to return to the playoffs after getting a taste of highstakes hockey as a rookie in 2015.
You’d like to believe the next two seasons would allow the Canucks to climb out of the abyss, so that by that third season under Green, he has a roster capable of finally making some noise.
The third year is key, though, because no matter how hard he works with his young players and how much progress individuals make over the next two seasons, what happens in Year 3 likely determines Green’s future (just ask Willie Desjardins) and probably holds the answer to the question that sparked this column.
By hiring a second straight head coach without NHL experience, the organization seems to finally realize and accept where it is in its evolution. Then again, one check of the standings over the past two seasons should have provided a pretty clear indication of that, too.
The promotion from Utica seems to signal the Canucks feel Green is a coach who can grow with his players. For his sake, hopefully the era of mixed messages and moving targets is behind the team.
The Canucks have made their choice, and now it’s incumbent upon the many departments of the organization to support the new coach in the long march on the path back to respectability. And the next two seasons should be all about development and nothing else, no matter how much fun it looks like teams around the Canucks are having competing for the Stanley Cup.
While Green touched on many of the right notes of player advancement and his approach to handling the young players now occupying spots on the Canucks depth chart, it’s impossible to know if he truly grasps the growing pains he’s likely to encounter next season.
The lineup he inherits — with a change here and a tweak there, but likely no substantial personnel differences — won 10 of its final 41 games this season. It was painful to sit through as it unfolded from mid-January through mid-April, and it hurts again now just to type those numbers.
If Green can coach five extra wins and 10 extra points in the standings out of the Canucks in his first year on the job (and there is no guarantee he can), he’ll have done a remarkable job.
But it would only bring the team’s point total to 79, still nowhere close to a post-season berth. And a second straight 10-point bump the following year, should he manage that, would still leave the Canucks on the outside looking in when the quest for the Cup begins.
Essentially, Travis Green has three years to gain 25 points in the standings. That’s what it’s likely to take to get the Canucks back to the playoffs. It’s a big ask of anyone, bigger still for a coach getting his feet wet at this level.
No one can be sure how things will play out, but the guess here is, yes, he’ll get the chance to coach a playoff game for the Canucks.
He may have to wait a season or two more, though, to win a playoff series.