VANCOUVER — If these are the final weeks in Vancouver for the longest-tenured Canuck, Brock Boeser doesn’t want his lasting regret to be that it ended when he was playing badly and the team was struggling.
“All I want to do right now is help our team and be part of the solution, getting our team back on track,” Boeser said Friday. “I mean, really play some good hockey with these guys, and then let (management) make a decision on me. I don’t want to have it be like this.
“These are some of my best buddies, and I know we can win hockey games. I really believe we can right this ship and start winning hockey games, and I really want to do that and help get our team going again. And then when the time comes, they can make their decision.”
Boeser’s uncertain future with the Canucks after eight years and 516 games with the National Hockey League team was supposed to be a massive, ongoing story. But it has been trumped by even bigger ones.
There has been so much volatility, drama and disappointment around the Canucks so far this season that Boeser has fairly quietly moved into what could be the final games for his beloved team.
The 27-year-old Minnesotan, a fixture in Vancouver since Boeser scored in his Canucks debut about two years after the team drafted him 23rd overall in 2015, is unsigned beyond this season and about seven weeks from the NHL trade deadline on March 7.
Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin has said the team must make a decision on Boeser before then, whether to sign or trade him, and contract negotiations do not appear to have gotten far.
Both Allvin and team president Jim Rutherford have been lukewarm in comments about re-signing the right winger, possibly because other Canuck players have presented them with unexpected problems that are far bigger, such as what to do with disengaged stars Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller.
Boeser hasn’t helped himself — or the team — by scoring once (with one assist) in his last eight games. Halfway through his contract season, he has 15 goals and 27 points in 37 games after scoring 40 last year, when Allvin said he thought Boeser could have had 50.
“Any team that’s not doing well, there’s going to be changes,” Boeser said. “I haven’t played to my best this year, and I expect better for myself and, you know, I’m a UFA at the end of the year. So they could look at me and be like, ‘He’s the easy guy (to trade) right now.’
“A lot of individuals have goals and expectations, including myself. I need to be better. I need to be better for the team and help drive the bus and be a leader. You know, things haven’t been easy. There’s been a lot of injuries and distractions and stuff. It’s been a hard year. But right now, I’m just trying to be a part of the solution and come to the rink and keep working. Keep working in games and be a good teammate.”
Boeser has always been a good teammate in Vancouver, except perhaps a distracted one during parts of two seasons when he was hobbled by grief, anger and guilt over the death of his father, Duke.
He is one of those guys in the dressing room who can bridge the gap between Pettersson and Miller, and help pull the team together.
But like so many others, Boeser must play better. His season was actually off to a strong start when he amassed six goals and 11 points in the first 12 games before Tanner Jeannot’s blindside headshot in Los Angeles knocked Boeser out of the lineup with a concussion on Nov. 7.
By the time Boeser returned eight games later, Miller, his linemate, had left the team on a personal leave. Boeser scored twice in his first 13 games back and, except for a four-game scoring binge at the end of December, has struggled to make an impact.
Boeser was terrific in Saturday’s 3-0 win in Toronto playing with Pettersson, who had the best game of his troubled season on Hockey Night in Canada. But when Pettersson disappeared again the next two games, so too did Boeser.
“Listen, you’re going to score or you don’t score,” coach Rick Tocchet said after Monday’s practice, not speaking about Boeser specifically. “I get it. (But) to me. . . you’ve got to make sure that if you’re not scoring, the other parts of your game have to be clean. Like, if you’re not scoring and you’re gambling, it’s a bad recipe. If you’re scoring goals and you’re gambling, you can kind of turn a blind eye (as a coach). But we’re not even scoring and we’re just doing egregious mistakes. You can’t give easy goals.”
Although not as culpable as some teammates in Thursday’s 5-1 home-ice embarrassment against the Los Angeles Kings, Boeser was on the ice for two of the three “easy” goals the Canucks surrendered in the opening 10 minutes. He finished the game minus-three with no shots, only two attempts, and a season-low ice time of 13:38.
“It’s just really frustrating, especially because… I truly believe we all had a good mindset going into the game,” Boeser said. “And then 10 minutes into the game, we’re down 3-0. We have to keep going; we still have a lot of games left. We all know — like, we’ve talked about it — that we’ve kind of lost our identity a bit, and we’ve got to find our identity as a team and as each individual. I think that’s the first step to the solution.”
As the Edmonton Oilers visit Rogers Arena on Saturday, already 13 points ahead of the Canucks in the Pacific Division, Vancouver has three wins in 14 games (3-6-5) and has slipped a point out of the final wildcard playoff spot in the Western Conference.
“I definitely didn’t picture it like this,” Boeser said of this season of turmoil. “After last season, we learned a lot and we have an understanding of how to win. And I feel like we still know that, but we’re just not doing it, and it’s frustrating.
“We’re still a point out of the wild card. That’s a blessing. Like, if we right this ship and start winning some games, we’re right there. That’s one of the positives we need to take away right now: we’re right there. We’ve got to come together as a group. That’s the only way that we’re going to get out of this — if we stick together and have each other’s backs.”
