Coach Green likes team’s potential
With Sedins and Vanek gone, plenty of forward spots are up for grabs
It’s nearing midsummer in Vancouver and Travis Green’s office looks like he hasn’t missed a day of the off-season.
The coach’s office remains a hub of activity and on his desk sits a two-inch pile of neatly stacked paperwork, filled with internally tabulated underlying data.
If the Canucks’ head coach has rested since the end of the NHL season, it sure hasn’t been for long. Good thing, because his job isn’t getting any easier.
For much of the past decade Vancouver has fretted about what the Canucks would look like after the Sedin twins retired. Well, here we are.
And on this front, the local market was not comforted by a series a free-agent moves that didn’t address the massive hole left behind by the organization’s top two alltime points leaders.
“How do you get more goal scoring?” Green asks. “You can go out and sign some free agents or ... hope some of your guys can come back better — either the players you’ve had on your team, or young guys you haven’t.”
The Canucks will be counting on major contributions from both of those categories.
There are some obvious rookies who could make a splash including Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes.
Pettersson is the team’s so-called “next one,” a slick, smart offensive dynamo who is capable of great things. But he hasn’t played a professional game in North America and there’s uncertainty where he’s going to play and how long it’s going to take him to transition from Sweden’s top league to the NHL.
Maybe the most encouraging part of the Canucks’ free agency moves is that there is an opening for an offensive centre to replace Henrik and Green is open to allowing Pettersson to compete for it.
“I’m excited about the young guys we have,” Green said. “I think they have upside. It’s not just Pettersson. Let’s see what (Adam) Gaudette did over the summer. There’s (Nikolay) Goldobin. There’s Brendan Leipsic.
“There is going to be great competition at training camp. I told everyone at the end of the year, I told everyone again a few weeks after the season, our team has to get better.”
Both Leipsic and Goldobin will be battling for a top-six winger spot. They each require waivers, so it would be a big upset if they ’re in the organization at the end of training camp but don’t make the Canucks.
There’s an interesting idea being floated that Sven Baertschi, one of the Canucks’ better possession players, could drop to the so-called second line to help Pettersson. That would free up a left-wing hole for another player to jump into.
That particular spot will be coveted because it means playing with Bo Horvat and Brock Boeser, the Canucks’ two best offensive players.
But is there enough to create two lines that can score enough to not only make up for the losses of the Sedins but to improve this hockey club?
“Do I worry about that? Yes I do,” Green admitted. “You need to score goals. You hope from within guys are going to come back and be better players.
“Not all of the players people call our ‘young guys’ are really, really young anymore. This is their time. You’d better be ready to go.”
That includes Goldobin, 22, Leipsic, 24, Markus Granlund, 25, and even Jake Virtanen, who turns 22 next month. There have been enough studies on this by now that everyone should be realizing NHL players are entering their peak years at 22 and 23 years of age.
The collection of younger players will be competing with a group of more experienced veterans, a mix that got more complicated on July 1 when the Canucks added Jay Beagle, Antoine Roussel and Tim Schaller.
Barring injuries, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where all three of them are not in the openingnight lineup.
Their arrival immediately applies more pressure to the group of returning forwards who disappointed last year, including Sam Gagner, Loui Eriksson and Brandon Sutter. Gagner is the youngest of those three and he turns 29 next month.
Eriksson scored just 10 goals last season and he had a $6-million cap hit. Gagner scored the same number and he was acquired last offseason to help bridge the offence after the Sedins retired.
Less offence is expected from Sutter, but he had just 26 points and eight of those came in the final 10 games.
“I told our older guys, however you train in the summer, you really need to re-think it. If you need to make changes in your training, make it. The game is faster.
“In our group every guy got a message that was a little different. But in the end, we need improvement. It’s no secret, we lost the twins and we lost (Thomas) Vanek at the deadline. But with those guys being gone, new opportunities have risen in those spots.
“The guys who are ready to go are going to get that opportunity.”
Some have suggested the Canucks’ free agency moves were made because it was what Green wanted and he was calling the shots. It was a theory that made him laugh instantly.
He was involved, but it was a collaborative effort that included, among others, the pro scouts, GM Jim Benning and team president Trevor Linden.
“I like our mix now,” Green said. “I think we got some good character guys who we signed who are going to help the players we have here.
“Their work ethic and the way they play is going to be contagious. I think that helps young guys with compete level. There’s going to be tough times but what I do like about the guys we signed is they compete. And you need that. We will need to scratch and claw.”