The Canucks have the players to win – now they need a winning culture

“We guys who’ve been here a while are tired of showing up and not being a playoff team. We know it’s time.” — Canucks winger Brock Boeser

VANCOUVER – This is Brock Boeser’s sixth season with the Vancouver Canucks. Only captain Bo Horvat is longer in the team.

Elias Pettersson starts his fifth season in the National Hockey League on Wednesday when the Canucks visit the Edmonton Oilers. It’s defender Quinn Hughes’ fourth year and Thatcher Demko’s third season as first-choice goalkeeper.

Over a three-year period, Pettersson won the Calder Trophy, while Boeser and Hughes finished second in the Rookie of the Year contest.

But since Horvat’s 2014-15 rookie season, the Canucks have only made the playoffs once — a wild run in 2020 in the fanless Edmonton bubble after a regular season shortened to 69 games by the arrival of the coronavirus.

“For us to raise the bar here with the standard and the culture, it’s about the players — the leadership group and what they show the other players,” said Patrik Allvin, Canucks general manager. “What it takes every day and how you have to push yourself and what kind of sacrifice and commitment you have to make here.”

“There are a lot of good players here,” said President Jim Rutherford. “But now we want to be a good team.”

When the Canucks celebrated their 52nd^nd Still in the hunt for their first Stanley Cup of the season, everyone in the organization has set their sights on a playoff return as the end result. Either they’re going to be in the Stanley Cup next spring or they’re not.

Coach Bruce Boudreau has said it will be a “disaster” if the team fails to win playoff hockey again.

The Canucks are good enough. Alongside their excellent core of young players, crowned by an emotional and impactful leader in 29-year-old forward JT Miller, Allvin has upgraded the forwards by adding free agents Andrei Kuzmenko and Ilya Mikheyev for skill and speed, and Curtis Lazar as fourth-liner and Dakota Joshua for experience and physicality.

But by far the most significant change that Allvin and Rutherford are trying to bring about is the mindset – the culture. Rutherford replaced Jim Benning as head of hockey last December and hired Allvin as general manager in January. And since then, her constant theme has been improving standards.

It’s not that easy just wanting to win. Nobody makes it into the NHL without being hard fought; Everyone likes to win. But it’s about the details required to make it happen, the sacrifices required, the unique, daily focus on doing your best, and the tremendous mental and physical commitment that winning requires.

Rutherford and Allvin came from a Stanley Cup-winning organization in Pittsburgh, and upon arrival in Vancouver they found that the culture – accountability – was not the same.

“Sid is the prime example,” says Rutherford, referring to Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby. “I mean, if he really wanted to play the game differently, he could get a lot more points. He’s all about playing the game right, winning a 200-foot game and championships.

“I know players want to get their points because it depends on how much money they make and all that stuff. But if you want to be a competitive team, it’s not about individual achievements, it’s about what the team achieves.”

It would be spectacularly unfair to blame the Canucks’ young core players for the team’s recent failures.

After a disastrous start, Pettersson ended last season with a career-best 32 goals and 68 points. Hughes greatly improved his defensive play while still managing a 68-point season that broke decades-old franchise records for a fullback.

Boeser was in emotional anguish for most of the season, distraught over the demise of his critically ill father, Duke, who died in May. But even as a specter some nights, Boeser still managed to score 23 goals. Horvat posted a career-high 31 and Demko had a breakthrough starter in the season and became a top-10 goaltender in the NHL.

With the exception of Demko, all of these players came to the Canucks when there was little chance of team success. Their individual achievements have been celebrated by fans and the media. But the win was a bonus and not really to be expected until the summer of 2020.

Those players aren’t the reason the Canucks failed the last two seasons. But they are paramount to the team’s success. They understand that. Generally, they uphold the ideals of accountability and sacrifice, and make winning the only metric that matters.

“Every man always has to do better; that’s all,” says Hughes. “I don’t have to be anyone other than myself. But I want to win and whatever I have to do to achieve that, I’ll try.”

“Us guys who were here when we weren’t doing too well. . . We’ve learned a lot over the past few years, especially in the last year when we started to develop this culture of success,” says Boeser. “We got a taste of what it feels like to win. I think that’s why we all want to try more of it.”

After the regime change in December, the Canucks finished 32-15-10 under Boudreau and missed the playoffs by six points when it looked like they might miss it by 26 in late fall.

Boudreau says his young stars are already changing culture.

“I think they’ve been bought into this situation for a while,” he says. “I think last year we went into that and it was all about winning. During the summer, every time I spoke to them, it was all about winning. No one spoke individually about specific goals. So I think they are all in tune.”

To help, Allvin signed Lazar as a free agent from the Boston Bruins. He joins an experienced leadership group that includes defenders Luke Schenn, Tyler Myers and Oliver Ekman-Larsson and, of course, forwards Miller and Horvat.

“That’s the most important thing I took away from Boston — just seeing the culture there,” says Lazar. “Following Patrice Bergeron was the easiest thing ever because it was easy to see how he sacrifices himself every day for the good of the team. I’m not going to fill the net, I’m not going to put up these dots. But I can make these winning habits. I think that’s what we can get into.”

Lazar says that a successful culture is achieved when players take ownership and hold each other accountable. He says he felt it the first time he entered the Bruins dressing room. Everyone strove to meet Bergeron’s standards.

“Because if you didn’t do it, you would be yelled at – and not by the coaches or anything,” explains Lazar. “It was that responsibility in the dressing room. And I think we can convey that here. When you are young you are stubborn. You’ll make mistakes and you’ll think you can do more when ultimately just fulfilling your role will help the team win. It takes time to learn that.”

Schenn says: “Coach and management. . . You can’t babysit (players) and preach the same thing about culture every day. It has to come from space. It’s like no one can let the other off the hook. It’s nothing personal. They try to do what is best for the team. The only way to succeed is to uphold that accountability from head to toe.”

Boudreau says Pettersson, 23, and Hughes, 22, have already become leaders on the Canucks. And nobody seems more determined to win than Demko, 26.

Canucks winger Tanner Pearson, another Stanley Cup winner who is leading by example, says: “I think our young guys are competitive enough that there comes a point when you get tired of losing and You will probably do everything you can to turn it around. The last couple of years have been difficult so I think and hope we’ve gotten to that point.”

“Players in the league don’t realize how quickly a career flies by,” says Allvin. “Speaking of JT Miller, who is now 29, he has seven more years to build his legacy here. If someone talks about JT Miller or Bo Horvat or Elias Pettersson, nobody will remember how many points they had. They will remember how many cups they won. If you look at the rafters of Rogers Arena, there are a lot of fine hockey players who retired their jerseys here and I bet every one would trade it for a trophy.

“I think this is where this group needs to understand that we haven’t really done anything. As a team and as an organization we have a lot of things to prove. Every day that we step onto the ice, we have something to prove.”