OTTAWA – When the tireless advocates for a complete rebuild of the Vancouver Canucks talk about blowing up the team, they aren’t envisioning the franchise president doing it on radio.
But the blast from Jim Rutherford’s blunt assessment of the Canucks’ 3-6-3 start was still reverberating around the team, 4,000 kilometres away, as they prepared Tuesday to try to save their season when they open a five-game trip against the Ottawa Senators.
Head coach Bruce Boudreau, who seems halfway down the plank protruding over shark-infested waters from the SS Canucks, spent nearly all of his morning media availability responding to questions about Rutherford’s criticism of “structure” and player performance during a Monday afternoon appearance on Sportsnet 650 radio in Vancouver.
“Listen, I’m not going to get into an argument of whether we do or whether we don’t (have structure),” Boudreau said. “We play as hard as we can, we do as well as we can and we lay it all out on the line, I think, every night. That’s what I can tell you.
“It is what it is, right? I try to keep the noise out and keep the noise out of the room as much as possible and just focus on what we have to do at hand, and that’s win a hockey game. So that’s our focus tonight.”
But Boudreau was unable to keep the “noise” out of his dressing room like a picket fence on the beach is unable to keep out an Atlantic storm surge.
Years ago, you had to look for news; now news finds you. Players who hadn’t seen social media accounts of Rutherford’s remarks by Monday night were informed by teammates on Tuesday morning.
It’s not the noise Boudreau wanted as he tries to motivate his team and keep players believing that all is not lost just 12 games into their season – even if arithmetic and NHL precedent tell you that the Canucks are almost at that point.
To be fair to Rutherford, little of what he told hosts Satiar Shah and Dan Riccio was actually new. Rutherford mostly maintained themes:
• He wants players to be more accountable.
• He thinks the team’s “structure” is faulty and that better systems play would make it easier for everyone.
• His plan continues to be to make the Canucks younger, and a particular focus is remaking the defence.•= His plan continues to be to make the Canucks younger, and a particular focus is remaking the defence.
• And conspicuously, Rutherford still won’t express any clear support for Boudreau, the coach he inherited on a one-year-plus-option contract when the president of hockey operations was hired by owner Francesco Aquilini one week after the coach came aboard last December.
“If we were playing in a real strong structure, it would make it easier for our defence to play,” Rutherford said. “And it wouldn’t matter who was on our defence. But right now, we don’t have that strong structure, and we need to change the makeup of our defence.”
Will there be a point when management’s focus shifts to next season?
Rutherford: “Yes, there will be a point when we do that. There are certain players you can’t trade because, you know, people aren’t interested in them. And so maybe we’re going to get to a point where we’re going to have to take a look at trading one or two players that, in the offseason, we would never consider doing. It’s not necessarily a total teardown and rebuild; we just keep building piece by piece by piece.”
Rutherford is a three-time Stanley Cup winner as a manager. The 73-year-old is already in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He rarely speaks flippantly, and he understands the market and the impact of his words.
Boudreau, 67, has nearly as much experience as Rutherford in professional hockey and probably understands it, too.
“I think every person wants to prove people wrong. . . when they say things,” the coach told reporters. “I guess I’m a pretty competitive guy at heart. So maybe that’s the message, and that’s what you’re trying to do — is prove that that’s not a true statement.
“I’m not in (the players’) mind, so I don’t know how it affects them one way or another. If we take the positive effect, it angers them and (they want) to show that everybody’s wrong. You know, it’s my 47th year in the business. I’ve seen a lot of things, so I mean, it’s just another thing added to the book that I’ll never write.”
Rutherford said he was proud of captain Bo Horvat’s focus and strong start amid stalled contract talks and, although management’s hope is to re-sign the longest-tenured Canuck, the centre’s play should make him more valuable in trade.
“I didn’t hear everything that was said but we’re focused on what’s going on here,” Horvat said after the morning skate. “I mean, I think we have a lot of belief in this group. We have a lot of belief in ourselves. I think we’ve played a lot of good hockey, enough to know that we have a really good hockey team in here.”
He added: “I think it’s good to be challenged. I think it should put more fuel to the fire where we want to prove a lot of people wrong. It holds guys accountable, and we have to be better — we all know that. It starts here tonight.”
It would be great for everyone if it did.
Near the end of his press scrum, Boudreau asked hopefully: “Anything about hockey?”
Then it was quiet for a bit. Which told you everything.
