“Your fan base [is] shall we say, restless; concerned the season could be slipping away, and that’s when in this market, the word ‘rebuild’ comes up. We might have got, I don’t know, 400 questions for you tonight via Twitter, and I think about 75% of them mentioned the word rebuild. We could spend the rest of the time we have with you here tonight trying to get you to say that word, and we probably would not succeed. What is the plan?”

“Well, if you go back three years ago, when we got here, we won the division two years ago, and we felt very strong that our team was good. Obviously, what happened last year wasn’t in the plan with J.T. Miller, and we had to reverse our plan and get into a more of a transition mood here. That being said, we wanted to draft well, we wanted to have young players in the pipeline and develop them down in Abbotsford. We see the young players coming up here right now with Pettersson, Willander, Lekkerimäki — there is a couple other guys, Mynio, Kudryavtsev, Ty Mueller down in Abbotsford here — that are getting a lot of extra minutes down there too. So that being said, we’re transitioning our team here as we started the season, I believe as the fifth youngest team when they had the opening night roster and I believe we’re still very young here, and they get the experience. Absolutely. And I think the plan, obviously, as I said, it absolutely changed a year ago when we parted ways with J.T. Miller for different reasons.

“Surely though, Patrik, you are aware of the sentiment around town that says you should tear it down and start again, are you not?”

“Well I don’t think you can do that when you have good players in Quinn Hughes, Demko, Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, and then the next wave of young players in Willander Pettersson, Mancini, Lekkerimäki. Very excited to have Braeden Cootes playing well in Seattle. I think he had a six point game tonight against the Giants. And we have Medvedev the goalie [with the] London Knights. So I think we’re prepared well for it. Obviously you don’t want to put young players in a position to fail in the National Hockey League, but I do see a lot of growth. And another guy Aatu Räty here getting big minutes and took a key faceoff in the end [of the game] here. He’s another guy who’s just going to grow again.”

“I will ask you this. What do you think when you see teams like Anaheim, Chicago, and San Jose who tore it down and rebuilt ahead of you in the standings?”

“Yeah, I mean, they were probably in a different process than the Canucks were. But I think again, when you have players like Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson, and Demko, there is no guarantee you’re going to find them in the draft again. Our scouts have done a really good job finding guys outside the first round. And I think that’s [what’s] going to set you up to be be successful as you move forward. Same thing finding college free agent players in Max Sasson and Arshdeep Baines was a free agent signing out of Red Deer. I think those are credit to our scouting staff and they will continue to find those players.”