How the Vancouver Canucks can progress from good to great.
It’s been a decade since a Vancouver Canucks manager vowed to turn the organization around, to get it pointed back toward winning a championship.
There’s no need to revisit why the path over the last 10 years didn’t unfold as was hoped.
But there’s also just no ignoring that what the Canucks did achieve in 2023-24 wasn’t a mirage.
General manager Patrik Allvin hit a lot of marks in reinforcing the handful of potential stars he inherited from Jim Benning. He also hit a huge mark in hiring Rick Tocchet, who won the Jack Adams Award on Wednesday as the NHL’s coach of the year.
But he made it clear this week, after his Canucks were knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, he knows his team has to be deeper, better and stronger.
Sure, they exceeded the baseline that president Jim Rutherford nodded at before the season when he said if everything went right, they would make the playoffs.
If you had told anyone around the Canucks they would lost in Game 7 of the second round to the Edmonton Oilers, one of the pre-season Stanley Cup favourites, they’d have said that was a good result.
The Canucks have come a long way. But Allvin viewed elimination this week not as a good story, rather a challenge.
So how can the Canucks progress from the good seen this past season to the great that Allvin knows his team needs to be to have a chance of winning a Stanley Cup?
Here are six things on Allvin and coach Rick Tocchet’s radar:
Improve the power play
Basic question: What were they trying to do?
When you think of the classic Washington Capitals power play, which in reality hasn’t worked for years but when it did it was the definition of wow, you think of Alex Ovechkin hammering away from the left side.
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