The Vancouver Canucks have been one of the league’s most frustrating teams in recent years, possessing top tier talent in Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson, but failing to translate that talent into post-season appearances.
Former general manager Jim Benning made a plethora of questionable contract decisions, including the acquisition of the now-bought out defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and overall failed to set a clear direction of rebuilding, retooling, or trying to compete.
The Canucks are also on their third coach in two years, another sign of the gap between expectations versus reality.
But that mess is (mostly) behind the Canucks now. The keys to the Canuck car belong to general manager Patrick Allvin and President Jim Rutherford.
They hired their new head coach, Rick Tocchet, last January, and are poised to play tonight’s home opener against Edmonton with a stability around the franchise that has been distinctly absent in recent memory.
That stability was symbolized in the perfect way this past September, when the Canucks named Quinn Hughes the 15th captain in team history.
He is the perfect person to handle the challenges of this market, and is poised to make wearing the captain’s ‘C’ look as effortless as his brilliant skating stride.
A brief vibe check on last year’s Canucks
Before getting to Hughes and his captaincy, we’ll briefly touch on last year’s October from a number of lenses.
It was not good.
The Canucks went winless in their first seven games, and finished October with a 2-7-2 record. Then Jim Rutherford openly questioned the team’s level of preparedness from training camp (on national television nonetheless), and all media hell broke out around the team.
Oh yeah, and captain Bo Horvat was a pending unrestricted free agent, offering further chatter and distraction. Especially given that J.T. Miller had just signed a lucrative, 8 year deal to stay in town.
Did we mention that former head coach Bruce Boudreau was a “lame duck”, having been hired by the team owner, Francesco Aquilini, and not by the current front office?
Ah, yes. The vibes. They were decidedly not good, and media had a heyday with the Canucks all throughout the fall.
But the Canucks are not in that position right now. And that’s because the team has definitively embarked on the next Vancouver Canucks era.
Allvin and Rutherford are the management team. They’ve had 22 months to analyze, shape, and construct the squad. They’ve now got the guy they wanted as head coach, Rick Tocchet.
And now they have their captain, Quinn Hughes.
The perfect player and person for the job
Quinn Hughes has a vibe and persona around him that is magnetic, yet impossible to quantify. He carries himself as if destined to be a top player in the league, and that confidence is critical in handling the media circus that is Vancouver.
Media around here lives and breathes with every Canuck moment. A five game losing streak can feel like a five year losing streak, and every Vancouver captain will have to deal with blunt questioning and scrutiny. It takes a certain person to be a captain in a Canadian market, and, frankly, Hughes is cut from a different cloth than former captains.
Markus Naslund and Henrik Sedin were confident but quiet star players, ones who said more with their play and professional habits than their voices.
Bo Horvat was similarly cliche, and did so while being less impactful on the ice than Henrik and Naslund. He did a good job with the responsibility, and was also tasked with being the man to lead Vancouver through the post-Sedin era, both a challenging task as a captain and a difficult one based on the team’s predictable decline in the standings.
They were all excellent.
This isn’t to take anything away from them, but Hughes might handle things a little bit differently.
He’s among the new generation of stars the league has coming up, and hasn’t been afraid to speak candidly, such as when former Canuck Tanner Pearson ended up missing nearly the entire season due to complications with wrist surgery.
“I feel bad for him,” he said last winter. “I mean, it wasn’t handled properly and you know, it’s not really a good situation he’s got there and hopefully he’s going to be alright.”
Hughes will don the ‘C’ for his first game tonight. With his two brothers, Jack and Luke, being elite athletes their entire lives, and now both playing in the NHL with the New Jersey Devils, there’s support available from family that few players get to experience.
In the same way that someone like Sidney Crosby handles the elevated spotlight with the mentality of “when you’re this good people have crazy expectations of you and you have to handle it”, Hughes too, seems comfortable with the responsibility.
He wants to be a great player. He wants to win the Stanley Cup. And, if being the guy responsible for wearing the “C” is part of that process, then that’s just the next step in the journey.
“It means a great deal to me to be named captain of the Canucks,” Hughes said when he was named captain. “When I came here 5 years ago, I knew what I was walking in to having grown up in Toronto; just a crazy hockey market and a passionate fan base. It has been a pleasure and treat to play for this franchise and to be the captain is something that is incredibly special and something that I couldn’t ever imagine would happen.”
He is also pretty good at ice hockey
Quinn Hughes is also one of the best defensemen in the entire NHL.
Since playing his first full season in 2019-20, Hughes is 39th in the entire NHL in points, with 238 in 278 games. That would be impressive for a 23 year old forward, let alone defenseman.
But apply that same timeline to defensemen only, and Hughes is 3rd in that span trailing only Roman Josi and Cale Makar, with Adam Fox and Victor Hedman rounding out the top five.
He’s an elite offensive contributor, and, when he was in Victoria for training camp this September, he was amazing to watch up close in person.
He has the silky hands of a forward, but the dynamic, incredible skating package that makes him so unique. His ability to throw defenders off with a stutter step while bursting laterally across the blue line is a talent most of us will never get sick of watching.
The edgework, the vision, the creativity, and the puck skills make for one heck of a defenseman. One almost perfectly tailored for today’s NHL.
He’s a unique player, a total stud, he’s the captain, and he’s under contract until the 2026-27 season.
And our bet is he’s up to the task of bringing Vancouver back to the promised land of the playoffs.
Canucks enter their most important October in years
Put bluntly, the Canucks have failed to handle the pressure of transitioning from rebuild to playoff contender. The last two seasons have been particularly disappointing, after promising finishes to the years previous.
Stun the hockey world and go on a playoff run in the COVID bubble?
Fall flat on your face in October 2021.
Have Bruce Boudreau jolt the entire 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, and though the script for October 2023 has yet to be written, Hughes and co-star Elias Pettersson, along with the entire team, need to prove that they can handle the pressure of being a team that needs to start winning hockey games.
The playoffs are the goal, and they should be.
It all gets started tonight with their home opener against the Edmonton Oilers.
The game starts at 7 p.m.
