When you’re the Vancouver Canucks looking for a path back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, every little competitive advantage matters. When you’re a team like the Canucks with a new head coach and three brand new assistants, anything that can make their life easier as they search for cohesion is welcome. When you’re Adam Foote and you’re stepping into the pressure cooker of running your own show for the first time in the National Hockey League, the smallest of things can have significance.
And so when the Canucks announced on Tuesday afternoon that they were headed back to Penticton and the South Okanagan Events Centre for training camp for a second straight year (September 18th to 21st), it all made perfect sense.
This is a venue the hockey club is intimately familiar with having conducted numerous Young Stars showcases there through the years. And last year, the Canucks doubled-up and brought main camp to town as well. As an organization they know every nook and cranny of the building. They know where the locker rooms are, the location of all access points, where the meeting rooms are situated and where they can conduct film sessions. And that’s all before they take to one of two sheets of ice housed in the facility. And last year the Canucks made great use of both sheets under Rick Tocchet. So it stands to reason that will again be the protocol and procedure — only this time with Foote at the helm.
Again, these things may all seem trivial in the grand scheme, but what the club has accomplished by returning to Penticton is removing any and all logistical issues that will allow Foote and his staff to focus solely on their task at hand. They will likely only have three days of on-ice sessions before camp winds up with a Sunday scrimmage. It’s not a lot of time for a new coach to come in and put his stamp on a group of anywhere from 45 to 60 players depending how many campers the Canucks elect to bring with them. Every minute carries weight. Every moment has meaning. And for a team that needs everything to fall its way starting on the first day of training camp, the Canucks are doing their part by eliminating distractions and putting Foote and his staff in a position to succeed on Day 1.
Away from the rink, the veterans will already have the lay of the land. They’re familiar with the team hotel, local restaurants and recreational options. On so many levels, it’s hard to go wrong with the South Okanagan in shoulder season and the Canucks, as an organization, recognize that.
Penticton is centrally located enough that it’s easy to draw from throughout the Okanagan and it’s a straightforward and scenic drive at that time of year from Metro Vancouver, too. Hey, maybe fans in Abbotsford will make the trek to see many of their Calder Cup champs push for jobs at the NHL level. As past years have shown, the Canucks brand is strong in that part of the province and that will certainly be on display again in mid-September.
If training camp is about maximizing what can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time, then the decision to return to Penticton and its terrific hockey facility was the right one for the Vancouver Canucks. It comes with no guarantees of success when camp breaks and the six-game preseason begins. But in terms of removing obstacles and barriers for a rookie head coach and his team that needs to bond in a hurry, running back to Penticton seems like a no brainer. It should provide a user-friendly environment to allow the Canucks to get work right away. And hopefully they can use that as a springboard to a successful season to follow.
READ NEXT: Should the Canucks trade for available Penguins wingers Bryan Rust or Rickard Rakell?
Sponsored by bet365
