After a remarkable and unexpected season ended with a Game 7 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Monday, Vancouver Canucks personnel met at Rogers Arena on Thursday morning.
The club would’ve much rather been in the heart of Texas, preparing for Game 1 of the Conference Final. Instead Canucks coaches held exit meetings, while players cleaned out their lockers, signed jerseys and other memorabilia, and met with the media to close out the 2023-24 season.
Over the course of several hours, 20 Canucks players, head coach Rick Tocchet and general manager Patrik Allvin fielded questions from the media.
GO DEEPERWhat we're hearing about the Canucks' offseason prioritiesKey injuries were disclosed, while others were not. The entire province of Alberta was roundly skewered for no apparent reason by Nikita Zadorov. Filip Hronek got into it briefly with an experienced reporter, over his unwillingness to answer fair questions in full. Players discussed the lessons learned in the postseason, and reflected on a memorable campaign.
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And at the end of it, Allvin expressed his disappointment at how this dream campaign ultimately concluded. He also raised the bar well beyond where any Canucks organizational leader has placed it in a decade — at least since the organization fired Mike Gillis in the spring of 2014.
The Athletic was there watching, asking questions and chronicling the formal end of Vancouver’s season. Here are the five most telling quotes that caused our ears to perk up from Canucks garbage bag day.
1. “My message to the players is that this is something you’re going to bear with you the whole summer — that we lost our last game and it was only in round two.” — Patrik Allvin
Allvin’s tone in his year-end address on Thursday made it clear that he wasn’t mad, he was just disappointed.
As anyone who ever misbehaved as a child can you tell you, of course, that sense of disappointment is far, far worse than anger.
Over much of the past decade, Canucks organizational leadership has been content to place the bar on the ground and then expect congratulations for stepping over it.
It’s a new day in Vancouver, it seems. On Thursday, both Allvin and Tocchet’s commentary stood out for its frankness and accountability. Both Vancouver’s general manager and head coach struck an open minded tone, responded to criticism with a notable lack of defensiveness and set an extraordinarily high standard for the club.
Allvin, in particular, kept hitting home that the Canucks hadn’t ultimately reached the level they’d hoped for. This may have been a club that president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford suggested was a playoff team if everything goes their way prior to the campaign, but by the end of the year, having dealt nearly an entire draft class worth of futures to add Casey DeSmith, Sam Lafferty, Nikita Zadorov and Elias Lindholm to the lineup, Allvin expected more.
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Vancouver’s general manager didn’t want to lose the last game of the year. He definitely wanted to get beyond the second round. And as much as those of us on the outside saw an overachieving team that hit their absolute ceiling this season, Allvin wanted to leave no doubt that the internal expectations were higher than the level the Canucks got to in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
This overall tone of high standards and personal accountability extended beyond Allvin’s insistence that he’s “not satisfied” despite the team rising in the NHL standings from 22nd last season to sixth this year.
Asked about Ilya Mikheyev’s significant struggles to score, for example, Allvin suggested that fell on him as well.
“It wasn’t his fault that he was put in a top-six position,” Allvin summarized, noting that it’s on the general manager to put players in a position where they can succeed. “It was my fault.”
And it was mirrored by Tocchet, who was named the NHL’s coach of the year on Wednesday evening, and yet answered reflectively when Vancouver media tossed him a variety of pointed questions.
Tocchet, for example, was asked about whether the Canucks’ lack of offensive pop in the postseason was connected to his systems. He could’ve easily noted that the team was seventh in the NHL in goals per game this past season, or defended his approach. Instead, Tocchet suggested that he wanted to get to the bottom of it, “do a deep dive” into how the club looks to generate offence and consider different approaches at training camp next year.
He struck a similar tone in addressing the team’s power play struggles (and whether a portfolio that he personally managed this season might by outsourced to an assistant coach next year), and some of the lineup decisions he made in Game 7.
On Thursday, Canucks leadership made it clear that they aren’t going to rest on their laurels and expressed a nuanced understanding of the responsibility of managing a team in this hockey-mad marketplace. They sounded like a pair of organizational leaders with a clear understanding of the importance of setting an example for the rest of the team, in terms of raising internal standards and being accountable, if they’re going to demand the same of their staff, Canucks players and other team personnel.
From the same organization that gave us such classics as “Meaningful games in March,” what the fans heard from Tocchet and Allvin on Thursday was nothing short of refreshing.
Nikita Zadorov has become a fan favourite in Vancouver. (Bob Frid / USA Today)
2. “Why? How much do you think I should make?” — Nikita Zadorov
Zadorov is a massive human being. Somehow he’s got an even bigger personality.
The question was put to him on Thursday: Have you priced yourself out of Vancouver with your excellent performance in the postseason? And his response to the query was spectacular.
Rather than answer the question in a straightforward manner, Zadorov — in an amusing sort of mock defiance — asked the media what he should be paid. He then got in a totally unprovoked shot at “Edmonton reporters” and suggested that we should ignore any reporting out of Alberta’s capital city on his bargaining position entering the offseason.
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I have no idea what Edmonton-based reporting Zadorov was referring to, but it doesn’t really matter. It was just a great line and a funny way to parry the customary questions about his considerations this summer as a pending unrestricted free agent.
Later on in his availability, because Zadorov apparently always has verbal missiles aimed at the province of Alberta, Zadorov turned a question about his time in Vancouver into a shot at his former club, the Calgary Flames, and the mile wide and inch deep support for the Flames in the Province:
"I can compare it to Calgary, but Vancouver has a bigger fanbase. I mean, Calgary isn't even the No. 1 team in Alberta." – Zadorov, asked about his experience with the #Canucks and continuing to cook.
"It was unbelievable. My family loves it here and I enjoyed every second."
— Thomas Drance (@ThomasDrance) May 23, 2024
Between Zadorov’s timely playoff goals, big hits and constant barrage of trash talk targeting the other Western Canadian franchises, he’s made himself into a significant fan favourite. And the reception to his commentary on Thursday stood in stark contrast with the evasiveness of fellow Canucks defender Filip Hronek. Hronek is notoriously media averse and ducked a handful of questions in a row. He was then called out for it by veteran Vancouver hockey reporter Jeff Paterson:
Filip Hronek at the Canucks end of season media availability👀 pic.twitter.com/Npp3yPbBAE
— BarDown (@BarDown) May 23, 2024
The disparity between Zadorov’s comfort holding court and leaning into the giddy absurdity of the Vancouver hockey market, and Hronek’s unwillingness to play ball is stark. Doubly so because where Zadorov elevated his game in the postseason, Hronek’s production faded significantly down the stretch.
Throw in the fact that the organization is facing some tough decisions on which of these players to commit to this summer, and there’s a sense that Zadorov’s stock is rising in the marketplace at the same time that Hronek’s is falling.
While I understand that framing, it’s important not to overfit some soundbites to fit a narrative.
Hronek doesn’t like talking to the press, but all indications are that he’s a popular teammate in the room. Canucks captain Quinn Hughes loves playing with him. He’s a right-handed defender who was second among all Canucks skaters in five-on-five ice time, produced 50 points and was a huge part of this team’s exceptional year-over-year improvement.
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Obviously you’d love to see the Canucks find a way to keep both Zadorov and Hronek this summer, but given the team’s greater needs on the right side of their blue line and the exceptional partnership Hronek formed at the top of Vancouver’s lineup with Hughes, the quieter, less quotable player remains the Canucks’ bigger offseason priority.
3. “We have to have that killer instinct.” — Conor Garland
One of the main themes coming out of Canucks garbage bag day was the idea of learning as a group from the experience of this postseason.
Hughes cited the travel as an adjustment, especially given that the Canucks’ most recent playoff appearance prior to this season came in the bubble, where players not only didn’t travel, but weren’t really permitted to leave the compound.
Zadorov noted that the experience and the sacrifices entailed in playoff competition would serve to amplify “the obsession” with winning, making Canucks players hungrier going forward.
Conor Garland, however, hit the nail on the head in diagnosing the one actual performance blemish that this team bumped into on their month-long run to Game 7 of the second round.
“Not playing well in Game 6 (against the Oilers) is probably why we’re sitting here today,” Garland said.
The hard-working Canucks forward noted that Game 7s are something of a coin flip. By no-showing in Game 6 in Edmonton, the team had left the door open for their Game 7 defeat and the end of their campaign.
“(We) didn’t have the killer instinct we needed to close a team out,” Garland said. “Going forward, if we’re given that opportunity again in the playoffs … we’ll have that lesson. Hard learned lesson, but we have to have that killer instinct.”
Over the course of the playoffs, Vancouver played exceptional defence. They showed significant resilience with a series of miraculous comeback wins. They overcame significant injuries, especially in goal, and took a preseason Stanley Cup favourite right to the brink in the second round.
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One of the only areas they struggled in was in games with an opportunity to advance. Vancouver played four games with an opportunity to advance, going just 1-3 in those contests across their 13 playoff games.
What Garland is hinting at is a hockey truism worth bearing in mind. While very good teams win big games, the great teams take care of business early enough to avoid them.
4. “Yeah, it will be nice to get a break from everything. Obviously it’s been a very noisy season in terms of contract and how s— I’ve been the last three months.” — Elias Pettersson
Some Canucks players were reluctant to disclose their injuries, but Elias Pettersson was more forthcoming.
Vancouver’s star forward, who is poised to have the fifth-highest cap hit in hockey next season, dealt with a knee injury from January on, the Canucks star revealed on Thursday. The pain Pettersson was playing through increased as time went on, Pettersson noted. Tocchet would go on to suggest that the injury was tendinitis.
That Pettersson dealt with a knee injury makes sense. After producing 72 points in the first 55 games of this season, Vancouver’s star — who has been over a point per game player across his 400-game NHL career — managed just 23 points in the Canucks’ final 40 games, including the playoffs. Splits like that for a player of Pettersson’s calibre generally point to something physically limiting.
This is a major mystery that’s now partially solved, and should at least spare the Vancouver market from months of absurd Pettersson concern discourse.
It is, of course, somewhat more complicated than that. Just about every NHL player is playing through some ailment or another by the time you get to the second round of the playoffs.
If this team can deliver on the promise of this season and become a perennial playoff team, this isn’t the last time Pettersson may be playing hobbled in key games. A precision instrument when he’s at his best, it’s fair to wonder if there’s an adjustment or two that Pettersson can make to his game to ensure that he can still contribute at a higher baseline level when he’s at less than 100 percent.
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5. “I’m crushed. I wish I could’ve been out there with the guys.” —Brock Boeser
The emotional toll on missing out on a career-defining opportunity hung over the commentary from two of Vancouver’s longest tenured and most important players.
Brock Boeser, for example, walked the media through the entire scenario of his Game 7 absence as a result of a blood clot issue. The 28-year-old right-winger noted too that he’s on blood thinners at the moment, which precluded his participation, although he admitted that he asked if he could play.
For Boeser, the issue first surfaced when he was struck by a puck on the power play in Game 1 of the Oilers series.
“My leg was feeling fine, but about a week later my calf was really hurting,” Boeser relayed. “I got it checked out and I had a clot in one of my small veins, which wasn’t an issue. So I was able to keep playing.
“Then I had another scan after Game 6, the next morning, and it showed that there was more clotting … I think I wasn’t expecting that going into it. I didn’t really understand, so it was an emotional morning for me to get told that news when you’re giving all of your energy for your teammates throughout the playoffs and really pushing and striving for that ultimate goal … to not be out there with these guys in Game 7 that really hurt.”
Later on in his availability, Boeser added, “I would’ve given anything to be out there.”
Boeser’s commentary on his absence echoed that of Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko. Demko worked to rehab from a late-season knee injury, but after a triumphant performance in Game 1 of Vancouver’s first-round series against the Predators, Demko sustained a different injury in the same knee.
“It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve had to go through as a player, not being able to play,” Demko said of the experience. “We’ve been through some tough years here, so to finally get the opportunity … and it’s tough watching.”
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Demko also relayed that he’d have been able to return for the Conference Final “if we’d gotten to that point.”
This Canucks team lost a Game 7 to the Oilers by a single goal. In cruel and abrupt fashion, the opportunity to make a difference was ripped away from two Canucks players who have slogged through some of the leanest years in franchise history while diligently working to improve. And you just never know how many opportunities you’re going to get.
The stakes of that, the emotional difficulty of processing it, the admission from Boeser that “of course I felt like I could’ve made a difference.”
As garbage bag day unfolded, it was impossible not to feel for them both.
(Photo of Elias Pettersson: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
