The continuing soap opera in Vancouver took more twists and turns last week, after Mike Gillis admitted he had led himself astray from his core principles that in turn basically robbed the Canucks of the past two years. The organization had been so soundly embarrassed by everything about the Boston fiasco in 2011 that to most a change of playing style was drastically needed.
Gillis held firm in keeping Alain Vigneault around – other than the inability to adjust tactics in-series, AV had kept the team trending upwards – but Gillis had began to adopt a mantra of “bigger is better”. In doing so, he greatly underestimated the up-tempo, puck possession game that was the driving force behind their run in the first place. That year featured a team that really didn’t have any sideshow tactics outside of Raffi Torres, and they rode the coattails of complete playoff performances from the Sedins, Ryan Kesler and Roberto Luongo, as well as a healthy defensive unit to that Stanley Cup appearance.
Vancouver didn’t lose that series to the Bruins based on any type of skill factor as much as they didn’t need to change their philosophy. Yet, it’s impossible to ignore that it did happen, and that it precluded more odd moves from management; the hiring of John Tortorella wasn’t the worst hire in the world, but it was done so for the wrong reasons and negotiated in a way that confirms ownership was involved. There’s also sufficient evidence that the hiring may not have been Gillis’ choice in the first place, none more indicative than what Ray Ferraro called “as big a distancing from a coach I’ve seen.”
The middle of the season cliff dive from the Canucks has compounded this situation into something much more complicated than it needs to be. It is clear that John Tortorella is not a fit for this team, his style too traditional, too stubborn to “change his ways”. If Gillis truly wants to rebuild his hockey team through his original vision, it cannot be with Tortorella manning the ship. If Tortorella was brought to come in here, kick the asses of a supposedly soft team and milk two or three more good season out of a veteran core, then he’s failed in every single aspect. And you’d be hard pressed to find too many instances where Tortorella was brought in for reasons outside of motivation.
His tenure with the Rangers was characterized by a lack of goal scoring, pathetic special teams and butting heads with a player that had 7 more years left on his deal. It’s a mirror image of the Canucks season, it just took three years less for it to come to fruition.
If the goal of analytics is to better predict the future outcomes of games, than John Tortorella’s proven track record was as predictive as it comes. The prophecy has been fulfilled once again.
Yet, the Canucks are still a decent enough team, possession wise, to hang with the contenders, and the fact that they won’t make the playoffs is more indicative of bad puck luck than it is the talent level. If you take into account the team’s disastrous shooting percentage 5-on-5 (7.3%, 26th in the NHL) while also accounting for the fact that they had 50.8% of the shot share in that situation, it would be pretty obsolete to believe there won’t be any improvement offensively, particularly in a new system. The Canucks began to throw pucks at the net more frequently, but that doesn’t change the fact that shot quality still needs to be present in order to get a true indicator of the team’s offensive capabilities.
Problem is, I’m not sure the Canucks have that guy in the system that could change the variance of their shot totals. A lot of it will regress back to the mean, especially if you take into consideration the team will probably have a new coach that emphasizes offense.
Over their last four games, all against playoff opponents (LA, NYR, Anaheim & Colorado), the Canucks have fared quite well in their possession numbers, out-Corsing their opponents 63.25 – 49.25 per game in that stretch. The team is getting the time of possession to work their way into quality scoring chances, they just don’t have the horse to do it on a consistent basis.
Ryan Kesler can be that guy, but he’s too vulnerable to injury to expect him to do it consistently over an 82 game schedule. The Sedins have proven to be those guys, but we don’t need exactly what Daniel Sedin’s upside is after Duncan Keith elbowed his brain to mush and this season might have taken a lot out of them physically.
Some of it will be covered by Zack Kassian’s continued development as a power forward, and you would hope that the chronic back and groin problems plaguing David Booth have finally subsided and he can revert to the form that previously saw him score 30 goals once upon a time. The Canucks clearly cannot rest their hats on the potential improvement of two middle-6 players, but it will do much more in terms of providing reliable depth through the forward core.
That is something the Canucks haven’t had at all this season. There are no ways to describe the paddle you are using to navigate up piss creek when Mike Santorelli is a significant loss in the line-up. The Blackhawks don’t win the Stanley Cup last year if not for the contributions from players like Andrew Shaw, Bryan Bollig and Marcus Kruger. There are more avenues to go down in terms of line combinations and tailoring an offensive system, but you need to have those players in the first place. For that reason Gillis deserves every bit of blame for a shoddy draft history, but wasn’t given much in the cupboard to work with. Finding prospects in the draft hasn’t been Gillis’ forte, but he differs from traditionalism in favour of working on signing NCAA free agents and various reclamation projects at the NHL level. For the most part, that is generally a pretty risky road to go down, but Gillis has had the most success in that type of situation. He may not have a tremendous feel for trading, but his history as a player agent pays dividends in selling players on Vancouver.
This is a pretty big departure from Dave Nonis’ “throw shit at the wall and let’s see what sticks” philosophy that produced perennial plugs such as Brad Isbister and Byron Ritchie. I think it’s pretty clear Canuck fans have been spoiled with a variety of riches if there is legitimate uproar over a guy like Brad Richardson pivoting the 3rd line center role. Yes, it cannot happen year to year, but with the new CBA and the shrinking cap number, the Canucks had their hands tied.
There are steps to be taken to make sure this team is a lot better than this season, but there is plenty of statistical evidence available that this team was an anomaly. Maybe the marriage between Gillis and Tortorella was never meant to stand up to the tests of time, and maybe no one could have foreseen such a drastic reversal of fortunes.
But this team, given all the talk about a deteriorating core, will be a better team thanks to the adversity of this season. If Gillis is able to add the right pieces to rebuild their puck possession qualities, as he said he will, it’s hard to imagine we’ll be having this discussion the same time next year.
Advanced stats courtesy of Extraskater.com and stats.hockeyanalysis.com
Owen Munro 