Well… here goes nothing!
As I said in my tweet asking for questions, this should be an interesting one.
If you frequent this website, you can see how bad of a vibe there is around this team.
The Vancouver Canucks are the only team left in the league without a win and though the players continue to talk about getting back on track, it doesn’t feel like there’s a light at end of the tunnel for this year’s team. Many of our questions this week are asking about selling the team, making a coaching change, or if this team will ever not crush fans’ souls.
There’s a dark cloud hanging over this team right now and even a Neil Diamond singalong couldn’t help how bad of a night it was on Saturday at Rogers Arena.
Simply put, everything sucks for the Canucks and their fans right now. I keep thinking that things can’t get worse and then we see Quinn Hughes miss games with a lower-body injury or bickering between J.T. Miller and Luke Schenn at the end of a period.
We are getting a sour taste from this organization and we are seeing fans begin to cheer for chaos instead of victories because the consistent failures are beginning to wear on an informed and intelligent group of fans.
We’ve got questions to get to, so let’s just dive into the mailbag. The Canucks are going to win at some point and then maybe we can begin to get a little bit of excitement back into this team.
Let’s open up the mailbag and see what the wonderful people of Canucks Twitter and the comments section had to ask this week.
From all indications of this current season, as well as the two previous years — this is a flawed team.
There are absolutely some talented players on this roster and they are tasked with doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to this team being competitive. We are all seeing the same thing from Elias Pettersson. He is working his ass off on every shift and makes you wish that the rest of the roster wanted it as bad as he does.
“I don’t know what the right answer is to our problems but us guys in the locker are going to figure it out,” Pettersson said Saturday night when asked if this team is simply in a slump or needs changes to have success.
The players have to play, the coaches need to coach, and the management needs to manage.
Right now, you can’t look at this team and see a legitimate path in which they can turn things around in a hurry.
Jim Rutherford was on After Hours with Scott Oake on Saturday night and said that this team might be in a rebuild if this team continues to play this poorly.
“Well, I think people have to realize how long rebuilds are, and you look at some of the teams that went through it, and we look at them now how good they are,” said Rutherford. “But there were a lot of tough years. I mean, we may very well be in a rebuild in the direction we’re going.”
Many people believed this team needed a rebuild years ago. As the Sedins retired and thus left a stamp on the end of an era, it felt like the right time to reload the prospect pool and rebuild this franchise. Since the retirement of the Sedins, the Canucks have traded away two first-round picks, two second-round picks, and have not acquired many draft picks to recoup their lost draft selections.
This organization may need a full rebuild and you hate to say that with very talented young players like Thatcher Demko, Elias Pettersson, and Thatcher Demko.
We may need to see those tough years like Rutherford said because whatever the past few years have been for the Canucks haven’t been great in their own right.
It seems like Cam Allen is the defenceman who is leading the class, and if he continues to have a good season in the OHL, he might be able to push for a top-five ranking in this upcoming draft.
I personally really like Zach Benson out of the WHL as well. But I think many already have him around the top-five rank. Benson is a BC-born prospect who is ridiculously skilled and comes in at 5’10”.
Leo Carlsson is a 6’3″ Swede who is looking like a lock to be a top-seven pick right now. He’s got 10 points in 12 SHL games and is just a fun player to watch. Knowing Vancouver’s love of Swedish players, he’s one to watch.
I don’t think Monday is the day to do it but we aren’t that far away from a message being sent to the Canucks’ top point producer from last season.
The best way would be a long-term fix of drafting and developing defencemen.
As for a fix right now, the best bet is likely to move Bo Horvat for help on the back end.
There just isn’t a snap of the fingers move that this team can do aside from moving Horvat or hoping that J.T. Miller hasn’t sunk his value too much with his poor start to this season.
Well, Rusty, I agree that Dakota Joshua had a few quiet games to start the season but since you asked this question, he has been pretty productive and had that great game on the fourth line in the final game of the road trip.
We’d still like to see Joshua be a bit more of a tough guy and be sticking up for his teammates at a high level. He seems to have a lot of speed and throws a lot of hits but the Canucks’ forward group lacks that guy that puts a bit of fear into opponents. If Joshua can get to that level, he will be a good piece on the fourth line. He just needs to give a little bit more. It feels like he’s the type of player who could have given Rogers Arena some life on Saturday night when the team was beginning to fall apart in the third period but there just wasn’t that big hit or fight to energize the group. If Joshua can be an energizer, he will have a locked spot on this roster.
As for your second question, about Brock Boeser, we are all seeing the same thing here, I think…
Boeser doesn’t look healthy and it appears he may have rushed back to get into the opening night lineup. The sniper is missing his shot and hasn’t been able to beat a goaltender yet this season.
He missed practice on Sunday with a maintenance day and I don’t think that a few extra maintenance days are going to hurt him but instead will help him. That hand surgery was less than 30 days ago. This guy needs to be back at 100% because we don’t want to see Boeser at 75% all season long.
Let him heal up and then use him as a top-six forward.
Last week.
The whole Sweet Caroline debacle at Rogers Arena was the cherry on top of a crap sundae at Saturday night’s home opener.
I’ve never liked the song as a sing-along and honestly, it’s up there as one of the most annoying songs of all time. It’s overused and belongs with Boston Red Sox fans.
If I got to pick a sing-a-long song for the Canucks games, it would be ‘Kissed by a Rose’ by Seal or ‘I don’t wanna miss a thing’ by Aerosmith.
‘Under the bridge’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers or ‘When you were young’ by The Killers get a shoutout too.
That’s it for this week’s mailbag. Be sure to keep an eye out for the call for questions and reply here in the comment using the #MM.
Here’s to hoping for a win this week.
See you all next Monday.