Depending on who you ask, the Vancouver Canucks rebuild is finished.
They’ve bottomed out, were cursed by lottery luck, and yet with 3 straight top 7 picks from 2016-18, emerged with Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson, and Olli Juolevi. Two of those players are stars, and the type of players you hope to escape the rubble of a rebuild with after enduring a thousand days where winning hockey games is precisely not the goal.
Yet, most Canucks fans don’t think the rebuild is finished. Heck, they don’t even think it’s ever been fully completed, or was ever properly started.
So here we are, exhausting the letters of the keyboard over another confused set of thoughts from a hockey writer.
On one hand, the Canucks have a good nucleus: Pettersson, Hughes, JT Miller, and Thatcher Demko. An elite center, an offensive dynamo on the blueline, a 99 point winger, and a franchise goaltender. It’s an excellent start toward any hopes of contention.
Further, they are well equipped on the wings with a solid group on reasonable enough contracts. Although their defence – mainly Tyler Myers and Oliver Ekman-Larsson – are overpaid and very clearly not good enough.
And so, with the acquisition of Filip Hronek, a 25 year old top four defenseman on a good contract with team control, Canucks fans should be excited. It’s an excellent piece for any team trying to improve. But they just seem confused. And with the Red Wings as their dance partner, one can find a stark contrast between two teams that have been on similar timelines for 5 years now.
The Red Wings bottomed out at a similar time as the Canucks, and have also lived with a similar curse on their lottery luck. They were terrible for a while, bu never got to pick inside the top 3, just like the Canucks. Their run of top 7 picks happened from 2018-20, where they emerged with Filip Zadina, Moritz Seider, and Lucas Raymond. Seider and Raymond are players you can build around.
And, in similar fashion, both teams had a centerman as their captain drafted in the earlier 2010s in Bo Horvat (9th in 2013) and Dylan Larkin (15th in 2015).
In opposing moves, the Canucks moved Horvat for draft picks and a prospect. Larkin was extended a few weeks ago for what is essentially the balance of his career.
So it looked like the teams were moving in different direction. Detroit doubling down on their core after adding Ville Husso, David Perron, Andrew Copp, and Ben Chiarot this past offseason. And Vancouver finally assessing their team honestly, and moving on from a quality player who didn’t fit with the team’s current timeline.
And then.. Steve Yzerman and the Red Wings did what Canucks fans could only dream of. They turned Filip Hronek into 1st and 2nd round picks. And they flipped Tyler Bertuzzi for a 1st and a 4th.
Hronek is 25, and Bertuzzi is 28. If both were extended, say, 5 more years each, you could argue that they would be excellent complements to the core of players the Red Wings have been nurturing.
But Yzerman seems to have the trust of his owner. He has the apparent autonomy not to “win now”, but to win the ultimate prize. And if that takes another round of drafting and development, if it takes another year of nurturing their 20 year olds, and if it takes another year of teasing fans with talent that can compete but not talent that can win, he does.
Hronek is a valuable piece. Right handed, top four defenseman in their early-to-mid twenties are very difficult to acquire and are rarely available. Just ask Oilers fans how they feel about trading for them.
In theory, Canuck fans should be happy about this trade. They’ve plugged a hole within the organization that has existed for years, one that 6 years and $36 million failed to fill with Tyler Myers. He is only a year older than Pettersson, putting him in perfect position to anchor the right side in beautiful synchronicity with Pettersson’s prime.
Yet… fans continue to be dumbfounded and outraged with the philosophy of management. Teased with a look toward the future from the Horvat trade, they thought “hey, maybe we’re finally going to show some patience”. And less than a month later, the main piece from the Horvat trade is gone to acquire a player for today.
So much for patience and planning. Or even having a plan. The problem is, the Canucks simply aren’t good enough. And, if one can question the Leafs’ core for being unable to win a playoff series – despite all that talent – you can surely question the Canucks’ routine inability to handle the pressure of expectations every October.
Stun everyone with a playoff run in the covid bubble?
Fall flat on your face in October 2021.
Jolt a fanbase with a 32-15-10 finish and the dawn of the “Bruce there it is” age?
Fall flat on your face in October 2022.
It’s a pattern at this point, one that seems to rest squarely on the shoulders of the team’s core players. Or management for being seduced by the hype.
Maybe there’s something going on with the players that numbers,fancy stats and the eye test can’t account for. Perhaps Pettersson and Hughes – or the rest of the core guys with term on their contracts – can’t handle the Vancouver media fishbowl and the expectations that come with having hope-inspiring success in ultimately meaningless games through February and March every season.
And so the Canucks continue to meander with a middling roster, a prospect pool devoid of any talent, and a cap situation that has been awful for years and bad at its best.
The Canucks are a cap team, and a cap team that can’t find 40 wins in a season.
The Red Wings, meanwhile, were 6 points out of the wildcard spot when they made the deal, playing meaningful hockey past February for the first time since 2016 and in the thick of a playoff chase. And yet, gone are a top 4 defenseman and a top line winger. In are more pieces for the future, draft picks to nurture into assets, and cap space to weaponize into talent or further futures.
Yzerman has the trust and autonomy from the owner. If he deems the team isn’t worth bolstering, Wings fans have to deal with it, and trust that the team can create future success by translating draft picks into core players down the line.
The problem for ‘Nucks fans though, is that if Rutherford and Allvin somehow concluded this team needed to build for the future, we’d probably just never know. They don’t have the freedom to that. And it doesn’t seem like the Canucks’ owners will ever see the value in that.
The Canucks are stuck in the mucky middle, and there isn’t any clear plan to dig their way out.
