If you're just getting back into your routine after the holiday weekend, I have plenty of material for you to catch up on. Click
here for Sunday's review of the Canucks' entertaining shootout win over the Oilers, and
here for Monday's blog, including more insight into Willie Desjardins and his coaching style, and a quick look at the Utica Comets' first week of action.
The comment section from Monday's blog is also super-informative. Alcatrazhockey and Shutout47 offer up their perspectives on the Canucks' in-arena experience from opening night, while Crying_Wrestler provides an outstanding first-hand summary of the Comets' weekend games in Toronto against the Marlies.
Here's how he sums up the performance of our top prospects:
At this point, trading any of Hansen/Burrows/Higgins/Matthias to get these kids in the line-up would be the most effective way to draft McDavid.
That sounds like good news for Hansen, who's in the spotlight early for all the wrong reasons.
He made a couple of glaring errors that led to goals on opening night against Calgary and has seen his ice time drop to less than 10 minutes a game as a fourth-liner under Willie Desjardins.
But don't think of it as a benching, or as punishment. In
his story for
The Province, Desjardins tells Ben Kuzma that Hansen can bring more to the table:
“I don’t think he’s found his stride yet,” said Desjardins. “He has more to give and it’s just a matter of time. He has everything he needs to be a good player — he plays hard, has skill and is gritty enough, and that’s a good combination. I expect once he gets comfortable that his level will come up.”
In Willie-speak, nearly everybody is a "good player." In his eyes, Hansen has the tools, but isn't there just yet.
Despite the diminished ice time, Hansen positively contrasts Desjardins' coaching style with last year's situation:
To what extent does it help to keep heckling a player or pointing out a mistake? Nobody was more upset about that mistake than me and it’s up to the coach to build the player up instead of tearing down. And that’s one difference between now and then.
“It’s more of a teaching way and that’s the biggest difference. You’re right out there again trying to correct the mistake. It’s still a work in progress, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the difference between the two. Willie’s approach is to completely believe and he wants to play everybody and not overplay guys.
Two games into the season, this sort of buy-in from the players seems heartfelt—and exciting. It's the tool that made Willie Desjardins stand out from the other potential coaching candidates last spring and so far, it seems to be working at the big-league level just as well as it did in junior and in the AHL.
I'd also argue that if the biggest storyline of the moment is sub-par play from a bottom-six forward whose $2.5 million salary is middle-of-the-pack, it means the team has done a pretty good job of satisfying expectations in the early going, even if the competition hasn't been especially strong.
After a fiery game against Edmonton last Saturday, we should see plenty of emotion in Friday's rematch, but the Canucks' first real test of the year will come at Rogers Arena on Saturday, when the Tampa Bay Lightning come to town.
After a 7-1 drubbing of the Montreal Canadiens on Monday, the Lightning now boast the league's leading scorer in defenseman Victor Hedman. I thought I was being pretty bold when I ranked Hedman fifth in
my analysis of potential Norris Trophy Candidates for Bleacher Report a couple of months ago. His early play is making me wonder if that projection was too conservative.
Defense has been the weakest part of the Canucks' game so far, and the Lightning's offense is powerful, which could spell trouble on Saturday.
Willie Desjardins
promised Brad Ziemer of the
Vancouver Sun that he'll be working on it during practice this week:
“A lot of it is finding ways to break out,” Desjardins says. “We didn’t break out with quite as much control as we wanted. We have to work on that aspect of our game.”
With back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday, I'm hopeful that Eddie Lack will get his first start of the season. My guess would be that he'll get the Oilers game on Friday, while Ryan Miller gets the higher-profile home game on Saturday.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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