VANCOUVER – Sports commentary and reporting are laced with hyperbole and Tyler Myers has been in the National Hockey League long enough to know this.
But the next time anyone describes defensive-zone play as a “fire drill” the Vancouver Canucks defenceman will fully appreciate the absurdity of the reference.
Myers, his wife, Michela and their three children under age seven were forced to evacuate their lakefront house in British Columbia in August when embers from the West Kelowna wildfires jumped Okanagan Lake.
“I’m on the east side but it jumped pretty close to us,” Myers explained Tuesday after skating with teammates at the University of B.C. “I didn’t know anything about fires. It was Schenner (fellow Okanagan Lake resident and former teammate Luke Schenn) who texted me and said: ‘You’ve got to be careful, it could jump the lake.’ I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ Sure enough, 20 minutes later, it jumped the lake.”
Myers, 33, said he and his wife “grabbed the kids and got out of there.” They spent a week in Vancouver before getting the all-clear to return home.
“House is all good,” he said. “We got back and, you know, a lot of debris and ash everywhere as I’m sure there was around the whole city. But it was scary for sure.”
The McDougall Creek wildfire, which has torched nearly 14,000 hectares in the Okanagan Valley, is moving away from West Kelowna but remains out of control and is expected to burn for months. As of Sunday, 405 properties remained under evacuation in the arid region where many current and former NHL players have homes.
“It was pretty crazy,” Myers told Sportsnet reporters. “We had a view of it the night it hit. I didn’t have any knowledge about how fast it can spread, and it was sad. It’s still going on. A lot of people still affected. The firefighters and emergency responders are pretty amazing; they’re still doing a lot of work. But it was pretty wild.
“You feel for all the other people that were really affected, losing their homes. But you see a lot of the community support from everyone around, so it was great to see that and, you know, hopefully it can recover as fast as possible.”
The Myers’ have returned to Vancouver to prepare for hockey season. So have most Canuck players.
Head coach Rick Tocchet, who replaced Bruce Boudreau in January, said after the Canucks missed the Stanley Cup playoffs last spring for the seventh time in eight seasons that he wanted his players to return to Vancouver early and begin skating together ahead of training camp.
Despite the organization’s lack of its own practice facility, Myers and other players on the Canucks leadership committee organized the pre-camp conditioning that began Tuesday. So many players, including those from Vancouver’s minor-league team in nearby Abbotsford, answered the call to report early for this season that the training group has been split into two sides to work under Canucks skills coach Yogi Svejkovsky at UBC.
“We all thought it was important that we had certain things in place (for training) if we’re going to ask guys if they wanted to come back early,” Myers explained. “So we were able to get things coordinated and guys were willing to come back, so it all worked out. We definitely had some conversations to see what was possible and if it could work.
“It’s more about trying to change the way we’ve come out of the gate (to start the NHL season). Like we mentioned, our last two starts, it’s tough playing catch up the rest of the year. It’s essentially what hurt us the last two years. We had a lot of moments the last two years after we got through that tough start where we showed that we can be a really good team. We just need to find that consistency and that start that will allow us to be in the mix, not out of the mix so quickly.”
With preparation undermined by injuries, absences and uncertainty about Boudreau’s future, the Canucks began last season 0-5-2 and were 4-9-3 one month into the schedule. The year before, when contract disputes and injuries affected the cohesiveness of previous coach Travis Green’s final training camp, the team lost three of its first four games and was 6-14-2 after the first quarter.
Tocchet told Sportsnet last week: “Everybody is tired of losing. You hear everybody say that. That’s OK to say that, but what are you doing to change that narrative? These are things I challenge the players on. You’re tired of losing, but what are you doing about it?”
“I think it’s showing already here with skates before camp, with so many guys willing to come in. . . earlier than they would have probably in other years,” Myers said. “That’s just one of the things. I think when he talks about things like that, you just have to find things along the way where it might be just doing a little bit more than you’re used to doing, working a little bit harder than you’re used to working.”
The Canucks open their annual prospects tournament in Penticton on Sept. 15, then start training camp in Victoria on Sept. 21. Their regular season begins at home against the Edmonton Oilers on Oct. 11.
But like the last two years, the Canucks face a difficult road trip early on – a five-game odyssey that starts in Edmonton on Oct. 14 and takes the team to the East Coast for games against Tampa and Florida.
