VANCOUVER — Long before the Vancouver Canucks talked about winning, they talked about culture. They had the order right.
After a 109-point, Pacific Division-winning campaign that surprised everyone but themselves last year, the Canucks start not only another season Wednesday night against the Calgary Flames but what they hope is a golden era in Vancouver.
The Edmonton Oilers, who rallied to eliminate the Canucks in Game 7 of the second round in May and then went all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, share the division and are as formidable an obstacle as any team in the National Hockey League.
In the Western Conference, the road to the Stanley Cup Final goes through Edmonton.
But the Canucks have everything they need to compete.
From last season’s 50-win team, the Canucks lost defenceman Nikita Zadorov and centre Elias Lindholm in free agency. And still it appears they got better, eventually adding seven value free agents, all with upside. The four new forwards, Jake DeBrusk, Danton Heinen, Daniel Sprong and Kiefer Sherwood, all play with pace and enough skill that this should be the most-talented Canucks group since Daniel and Henrik Sedin were leading the franchise to five straight division titles, two Presidents’ Trophies and the 2011 Cup Final.
And the team is still driven by a talented, youngish core that includes Norris Trophy winner Quinn Hughes and world-class centres Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller. Even the indefinite absence of Vezina Trophy-calibre goalie Thatcher Demko due to a rare and troublesome knee injury isn’t significantly darkening the Canucks’ outlook. Not yet, anyway.
Head coach Rick Tocchet is comfortable with elite prospect Arturs Silovs, a playoff hero last spring while filling in for Demko, and solid veteran Kevin Lankinen in goal. With the super-structured way the team plays, the Canucks shouldn’t need their goalies to perform miracles.
The Canucks have all the talent, speed, size, depth and (after last season) experience they need to be successful.
The biggest stress test of this regular season will not be to their talent but to their culture. Can players deal with success this fall the way they dealt with failure going into last season? Can they elevate their drive — for practices, as well as games — and actually further heighten their standards?
They have the talent to be a championship team. But can they conduct themselves like one?
“We can’t sit around and be like, ‘Oh, we had a great year, and that’s just how it’s going to be from here on out,” Miller, the Canucks’ emotional leader, says. “We’ve got to raise our level, raise our bar, because we failed (last season). Our goal is to win the Cup. We want to win the Cup. And if you look at it like that, we did fail. We did a lot of good things, but we still did not win. So we have to just keep raising the bar.”
“We haven’t really accomplished anything yet,” defenceman Carson Soucy says. “Like, we made the playoffs’ second round, that’s great. But that’s not anyone’s goal to make the second round of playoffs. I don’t think there should be any complacency (because) we didn’t get anything done. We won one playoff round… and we were out two weeks after that. I think it’s just that we really haven’t accomplished anything yet. That’s the biggest thing going forward for our mindset.”
The Canucks certainly look like a hungry team.
The pace and intensity in most of their training camp and pre-season practices were noticeably higher than they were a year ago.
Returning players had the advantage of already understanding Tocchet’s complex system, and new players had the advantage of, well, being new to a 109-point team and eager to fit in and prove themselves worthy teammates.
Culture and practice habits were immediate talking points for general manager Patrik Allvin when he took over the Canucks two-and-a-half seasons ago.
So it was revealing during his roster-setting press conference on Monday that Allvin told reporters: “Internally, I think the players have raised the standard. They have done that. My expectation is always higher on the individuals, but when they respond (and) raise the standard of practice habits and details and how they prepare themselves, it’s something that thrives for the whole organization.
“Nothing’s going to change for us. We have a lot of things to prove here every day, and the mindset we kind of created last year — that next-game mentality — that’s how we want to continue to build here. We just need to find a way to get better every game. We know it’s going to be harder. It’s never going to be any easier so we’re going to learn, and we’re going to continue to push forward.”
They have to. In professional sports, as often in life, if you’re not pushing forward, you’re falling back.
“We’ve still got to get better every day, and you’ve got to be the best version of yourself towards the end of the season,” winger Conor Garland says. “So, we’ve got a long ways to go as a group. But we are a different team. I think the guys that were here (last year) are mentally tougher and more understanding of what playoffs is like, what getting to the playoffs is like. That’s a huge benefit to us. I think we know a lot more. That might make us a better team.”
Forty-goal scorer Brock Boeser says: “I’ve talked to a lot of guys, and I think we’re ready to go. I think we’re definitely hungrier. A couple of years ago when we’d come into a building… it’s way different now. We’ve got to be prepared each and every game. I think our systems are so great, as long as we’re competing hard and staying within our structure, we’ll be OK.”
The Canucks set their course for last season by starting 10-2-1. They lost more than two straight games only once all season, and it didn’t happen until February. They never let up.
They start this season with home games against the Flames and Philadelphia Flyers, then embark on a four-game road test: Tampa, Florida, Philadelphia and Chicago.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that our group is going to go through adversity at different times this year,” senior defenceman Tyler Myers says. “We just have to be ready for that and know how to handle it. And I think some of the things we went through last year will help us with that. It feels like we’ve grown up a lot as a group. The guys that we’re bringing in have experience, and I think that only helps us. It’s just part of building that winning culture. You need to go through some adversity, need to feel some failure, to get to the top.”
