Fans are bored by the product, more than anything. Can some shrew trades liven up the Canucks’ playing style?
The Canucks and the NHL are a week from the trade deadline.
The team is hardly a lock to make the playoffs. They are a long way from being the Stanley Cup contender they had ambitions to be at the end of the 2023-24 season.
Instead, they are a team with a very uncertain future, both in the short term and in the long term.
And so we revive the mailbag, curious to hear what fans are thinking about the state of their team.
I think they have a step on other teams, but also that they’re going to ride Kevin Lankinen hard, and that hasn’t worked with him. I think the management has to not try to force it. Consider this season a write-off and plan for next year. If they make it, great. If they don’t, they didn’t lose a trade. — Erin Butler via BlueSky
This is a pretty good view of reality. This team needs some big games from Lankinen. Demko remains a huge question mark. Will he be back a week from now? Or will the Canucks have to hand Artūrs Šilōvs another start? He was great in Utah, but mediocre in Anaheim. Or might Demko be recovered by the end of next week. We’ve no idea right now.
If trades are going to happen at this point, you have to imagine they will be with an eye to the future, not trying to cram together some lineup for the short term. The rental options aren’t that enticing anyway.
Some forwards are playing like they want to be traded, and frankly I hope they are — DuckingTheChamp via BlueSky
It’s hard to fathom how badly the Canucks played with the lead in both Los Angeles and in Anaheim. They just had no energy.
I watched it on mute and genuinely didn’t realize it was muted because it has been so boring. — CVII via BlueSky
This, if you haven’t guessed, was about Thursday’s game in Anaheim. Generally, it could be about almost any game this season.
This is not a team in the entertainment business, unlike what Pat Quinn, Brian Burke and Mike Gillis all openly believed — Canucks games should be about wins AND about fun, exciting hockey.
As has been proven time and again, across multiple eras of hockey: it can be done.
Maybe the Canucks should refresh the photos around the building to show all the glorious, offensively gifted players Vancouver has watched over the years to serve as inspiration to everyone who enters the arena?
Our winters are cold, chilling to the bone, but still not punishing. We have mountains and beaches. We are generally pretty pleasant to each other. Our systems generally still work.
And yet … the hockey is misery. The owner is forever jacking ticket prices far beyond inflation, far beyond what the salary cap demands, in ignorance of the supposed mountain of TV money that is set to start flowing next year. (Maybe that last point is in fact, the point: There isn’t a mountain of TV money coming and the growing cap will have to be fed by other means.)
It’s unanswerable. It will always be thus, and I have no real explanation for why.
At least it was sunny on Friday and the crocuses are blooming and the daffodils are starting to push up.