Photo Credit: Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY Sports

Brandon Sutter had no idea how things would unfold in his
first season with the Vancouver Canucks. 

It’s safe to assume that in his
wildest dreams – or his nightmares – he could never have imagined being limited
to just 20 games due to two serious injuries. As he cleaned out his locker
earlier in the week and prepared for summer that will include a late June
wedding in Kelowna, Sutter reflected on a season he was forced, for the most
part, to watch from the sidelines.

The 27-year-old
centre dressed for the Canucks’ first 16 games before undergoing surgery in
mid-November to repair a sports hernia. After close to 10 weeks on the shelf,
Sutter was given the green light to play and scored in his return to the
line-up on January 26th against Nashville. He didn’t know it then,
but that was his final goal of the season. 

Just three games later on
February 9th in Denver, Sutter suffered a broken jaw when hit in the
mouth by a deflected puck.

“I could feel it under my tongue that
something was probably fractured or broken,” he told CanucksArmy outside the
Canucks locker room at Rogers Arena. “You put in so much work to get back from
injury and then to go through something like that, it was annoying. I still
felt I was going to play here at the end of the season and if we’d been going
to the playoffs, I think I would have played the last few games. But at that
point, we figured it wasn’t worth it to come back for just two games.”

On the advice of team doctors,
Sutter abandoned his comeback plans and instead started his off-season workouts
early with an eye toward putting the many disappointments of his first season in Vancouver
behind him. He finished the year with four goals, eight points and broke even
in possession (50% CF) in the 20 games he played, but could only watch as the
season spiralled out of control down the stretch.

Dealing with the club’s medical staff and
following the rehab plan set out for him was the easy part of the injury for
Sutter. Answering to his mother Connie who was in attendance at the Pepsi
Centre that night as part of the Canucks moms road trip may have been the most
difficult part of the ordeal.

“For any parent, seeing your son
or daughter get injured, it’s never fun,” he said.” She’s always worried about
that stuff so it was kind of tough. But she’s been through it all before and it
was just a puck to the face. There are much worse things that can happen.”

When it comes to serious injuries, Sutter had
no personal experience to draw on to help him through a forgettable season like
this one. He’d been durable in earlier NHL stops in Carolina and Pittsburgh and
had missed just three games due to injuries in his previous five NHL seasons. He
knows there was nothing he could have done to prevent either of the injuries
that kept him out of action this year and only hopes that the worst is behind
him and he can do his part to help the Canucks next season.

One area Sutter may be able to
make an impact is in the face-off circle. In limited action he managed to win
52.5% of the draws he took (tops among all Canucks who took more than 20
face-offs) and will provide a right-handed option which can only help a team
that finished 30th overall in that department. Still the victories
in the circle were a small consolation for an otherwise forgettable season.

 “On a
personal level, it wasn’t what I was hoping for,” he said. “You want to help
the team and you want to get out there and play. You go through one injury, it
happens. But to you don’t see that second one coming. I guess that’s just the
way it goes. I had some tough luck, but I don’t think there’s ever a lost
season for a team. There are still some positives to take out of it. Having a
chance to watch these guys play a bit and getting to know their personalities
on and off the ice, maybe there’s more things you can help them with by
watching them.”

Sutter
will spend the bulk of his summer in his hometown of Sylvan Lake, Alberta. What
he returns to next season remains a work in progress. Depending on what the Canucks
do at the draft and in free agency, their forward ranks could have a new look
come training camp. Sutter, who started this past season on the wing on the
team’s top line, looks to slot in as the second line centre likely bumping Bo
Horvat to handle third line duties. However with just one 40-point season on
his NHL resume (he had 40 on the number in 72 games as a rookie in Carolina in
2009-10), Sutter still has questiosn to answer about his ability as a top-six
playmaker and puck distributor. 

Similarly, there are question marks about who
will fill the spots on the wings throughout the line-up.

The roster
and the way the players are utilized will be sorted out in due time. Sutter,
whose 5-year/$21.875 million dollar extension kicks in next season, wants to
stay healthy and be able to contribute far more than he was in his first year
on the West Coast. Despite the struggles of a team in transition, Sutter has no
interest in hanging labels on his hockey club. He just wants to get out there
and compete and do whatever he can to get the Canucks moving in the right
direction.

“I’m
not a big fan of the word rebuild,” he said. “A lot of teams that are
rebuilding are still rebuilding. We’re a team that has a good core of players.
A lot of the young guys had a chance to play a lot of minutes this year because
of injuries. I think we’re still in a good spot. There’s a lot of positive
energy within our locker room. It was a tough year – you can’t hide from that.
It was a year that nobody planned for or wanted. Come next year, we’ll be
hungry again.”

It’s
evident Sutter is anxious to sink his teeth into a full season of action as a
Canuck. That’s a marked departure from the past few months when he wasn’t able
to eat much of anything at all.