ANAHEIM, Calif. — The happiest place on earth, Disneyland, is about a 10-minute drive from the Honda Centre, where the Vancouver Canucks lost their focus and game plan and crashed again in Thursday night’s 5-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks.
The most compelling proof that the Canucks are not anywhere close to the team they need to be was not the score nor even their disappointing 1-3 road trip that ends Saturday in Seattle, but what coach Rick Tocchet said after the game.
“We decided to forever abandon the game plan,” Tocchet told reporters. “We need some guys to rise to the occasion, whether that’s a middle drive or go to the net. Like, we had shots on net with nobody going to net, so (I am) a little disappointed in the grit part of our game.
“Just a little disappointed in the team. We just, we kind of gave in.”
The game plan was to get pucks and bodies to the Anaheim net, put the Ducks’ defence under duress, and not let their speedy opponent get their dangerous rush game going. Instead, the Canucks surrendered a handful of rush goals while allowing Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal to see everything coming his way.
Still, the game plan wasn’t as important as the abandoning of it.
We’re 60 games into the regular season, and the Canucks, after a 6-1-1 surge going into the National Hockey League’s February schedule break, are still a coin flip each night. They’re still struggling to play to the identity Tocchet envisions and, apparently, easily dissuaded or distracted from their objectives.
In its current form and configuration, this is clearly not a team that is going to make anyone nervous except their own fans if the Canucks actually appear in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in April.
More major renovations are needed.
The trade a month ago of J.T. Miller was a major step in redefining the team’s leadership and culture, and the players acquired in the blockbuster helped the Canucks achieve an initial bump in performance. But it’s not nearly enough.
With the NHL trade deadline one week away, this would be a logical time to take another significant step in the team’s realignment.
But it’s not that simple. Just as Miller was not a lone gunman whose trade would fix everything, dealing away players for future assets is not a viable deadline strategy for the organization. And neither is spending assets for short-term help.
Apart from the debatable logic of rebuilds, the idea of them driven by dogmatic theory as much as evidence — and the risk in actually executing one successfully — the Canucks under general manager Patrik Allvin and president Jim Rutherford are not in the rebuild business.
They have a player named Quinn Hughes, probably the best in Canucks history, who is eligible for unrestricted free agency in two years and needs a reason to stay. He needs the chance to challenge for a Stanley Cup.
If management decides after six mostly difficult, sometimes torturous, seasons since Hughes’ arrival to retreat for a rebuild, it will guarantee the defenceman leaves soon. Which is why, as Allvin has stated, the Canucks will continue to “re-tool” and try in increments to strengthen both their roster and their leadership.
But until the trade deadline, almost everything is on the table for Vancouver.
Longest-tenured Canuck Brock Boeser is UFA-eligible July 1, so unless there is a breakthrough in contract negotiations next week, last season’s 40-goal scorer could be traded. But the transaction would need to bring in a player or players who could help the team make the playoffs this spring.
Top centre Elias Pettersson, who would be invisible were it not for his $11.6-million cap hit that has another seven seasons to run, could also be moved before Canada Day, although his mammoth contract looks less portable by the game.
Last week’s re-signing of goalie Kevin Lankinen gives the Canucks options on Thatcher Demko, and there are other expendable assets with significant value, like versatile centre Pius Suter.
But it would be helpful for Allvin to know which direction the Canucks are actually going this season before he makes further trades.
Even with all their problems, and far too many nights like Thursday, Vancouver remains in a playoff position. Chased in the wild-card race by the likes of the Ducks, Utah Hockey Club and the Calgary Flames, the Canucks “should” be a playoff team even if they will be prohibitive underdogs to win a round, let alone match last season’s achievement of making the final eight.
They are back, again, in the NHL’s mushy middle. They are not good enough to win a Stanley Cup but, even discounting the Hughes Factor, have come too far and are too young to rebuild.
The Canucks are not nearly as close to where they need to be as the rink in Anaheim is to the theme park for which the Ducks owe their existence. But only the previous night, after Wednesday’s 3-2 win in Los Angeles, the Canucks’ happy place didn’t seem hopelessly distant.
They can’t afford to let it slip beyond the horizon entirely.
