VANCOUVER – When the first jersey fell from the sky Saturday night, no more halting than if fish or frogs had plummeted from the heavens, Curtis Lazar was quickly off the Vancouver Canucks‘ bench to scoop it from the ice.
Lazar was not only wearing a similar jersey, having signed with the Canucks as a free agent last summer, but the 27-year-old from Vernon has been cheering that sweater most of his life.
“It’s the history of it,” Lazar explained Sunday morning at Rogers Arena. “I’ve grown up a fan. It’s not only about us. It’s the present and the past — the Sedins (Canuck Hall-of-Famers Daniel and Henrik), the Stan Smyls, the Orland Kurtenbachs, the list goes on and on with guys that have worn that jersey and been proud to represent this organization and this city.”
Twice again towards the end of the Canucks’ 5-1 home-opener loss to the Buffalo Sabres, ticket-buying fans, the VIPs of the National Hockey League team’s broad fan base, protested what appears to be another broken promise by discarding their home jerseys on the ice.
“My jersey got thrown on the ice last year and I’ll never forget that for as long as I play,” Canuck captain Bo Horvat recalled. “It’s something that hits home, and when you see it again happening this year, it definitely sucks. But I understand their frustration.
“We haven’t really given them much to cheer about. It’s been a lot of years in the rebuild stage and. . . at this point in the season, it just feels like it’s never going to happen, like we’re never going to win again.”
The Canucks have started 0-4-2 in a season when a return to the Stanley Cup playoffs was officially declared the organization’s firm target.
Vancouver led or was tied in the third period of the first five games, and on Saturday trailed the Sabes only 2-1 before yielding three more goals to the visitors in a dismal third period that ended with raining jerseys and boos.
Through these six games, the Canucks have been outscored 15-1 after 40 minutes.
That makes even less sense than a fan uprising with 76 games, including another 40 at home, remaining.
“I feel like it’s warranted by the way we played, especially near the end of the game,” Lazar said of the fan unrest, fuelled as much by the last seven years as the last seven minutes on Saturday. “Every game this year we’ve had our chance to win (in the third period) and our response hasn’t been there. That’s an area that we need to find that urgency and come together within this dressing room.
“The fans are passionate; that’s the great thing about playing here. They want to see a response, and we want to see a response ourselves. You can talk about those external things, the fans and what everyone’s probably saying about us, but it comes down to what we have in this dressing room. We do believe we have a good team — a lot better than we’ve been showing. But it’s what I said to you before: Words are one thing, actions are another.”
Coach Bruce Boudreau, who questioned the professionalism of his players in his post-game press conference on Saturday, ran his team through a brisk, 30-minute practice at Rogers Arena.
He changed his forward lines again, moving key centre J.T. Miller, who has been a hologram of the 99-point play driver he was last season, back to the wing on a line with Bo Horvat and Ilya Mikheyev. Elias Pettersson and Vasily Podkolzin were joined by Nils Hoglander, while rookie Andrei Kuzmenko was dropped to a new third line centred by fellow freshman Nils Aman.
Lazar moved from wing to centre on the fourth line, which is where veteran Tanner Pearson has landed.
None of this is what Lazar envisioned when he left the perennially-competitive Boston Bruins as a free agent in July to sign in his home province with the Canucks, who had impressed him with their 32-15-10 finish under Boudreau last season.
“Right now, we’re not forcing teams to beat us,” he said. “It’s that mental battle of what we can do on the execution side of things. But it’s in here. This schedule, this league, I mean, there’s no pity parties, no easy games. And that’s the challenge you like as a professional athlete: you’ve got to be at your best each and every game. You take a lot of pride in your job.
“Everyone’s got a little bit more to give. But we do know that there’s that sense of urgency that if things don’t turn around, well, changes happen. We’re all just a piece of the puzzle. And all those pieces are interchangeable.”
Including the coaching piece. Boudreau is working in the final year of a contract that president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford noted on national television Saturday was inherited.
Boudreau said Sunday it has been “a few years” since he was as disappointed in his players as he was after the loss to the Sabres. It has been at least that long since a Canucks coach publicly blasted his players the way Boudreau did.
“I don’t know if they take it the wrong way,” Boudreau said. “I just tell the truth. And I tell the truth to their face. It’s not something I’m saying, ‘Oh, well, this won’t get out if I talk to you guys.’ I know it’s getting out. But, I mean, I’ll tell them the same thing. When they’re good, I tell them they’re really good. When they’re bad, heck, they’re pretty smart guys, too. They see it. And I told them, I said: ‘Hey, I think I’m not doing my job properly right now. And that’s one of the reasons we’re losing.’ There’s a whole combination of all of us . . . we’ve got to get a little bit better.”
The Carolina Hurricanes, one of Rutherford’s old teams and a stronger opponent than any of the six who have beaten the Canucks so far, visit Rogers Arena on Monday.
• Goal-less winger Brock Boeser did not practise Sunday on what Boudreau called a maintenance day, and the coach said top defenceman Quinn Hughes is out day to day with an undisclosed injury.
