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The Canucks put on their workboots, snap their losing streak vs. the Flames |
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Was Saturday the turning point for the Vancouver Canucks' season?
Showing organizational alignment from top to bottom, owner Francesco Aquilini gave his group a loud vote of confidence in a well-timed thread on Twitter. Then, the Canucks backed up a bold decision to change up their pre-game looks with a hard-working game where they made their own luck and snapped their six-game losing streak.
Quinn Hughes and Tyler Myers beat Jacob Markstrom, and Brandon Sutter sealed the win with an empty-net goal, while Thatcher Demko limited the Calgary Flames to a single tally.
Let's start with the owner, who was thorough and unequivocal in his statement of support.
For me, this thread is masterful.
Aquilini starts by reminding everybody of the lay of the land, and that this is not the time to make changes. He goes on to acknowledge and support the right of his paying customers — the fans — to express their opinions and frustrations. And then he squashes all the crazy rumours that have been floating around this week — like that Roberto Luongo's on his way back to Vancouver and that the search was specifically on for someone with ties to the organization who could come back and assume a senior management role.
I think the dual hirings of Ron Hextall and Brian Burke in Pittsburgh this week got some folks what-iffing a little too hard about the Canucks.
From there, Aquilini goes on to remind fans that the Canucks' young core is still there — and still growing. The namechecked players — Brock, Petey, Huggy, Hoglander and Podkolzin — have all been drafted in the Benning regime, and get a public pat on the back from ownership.
Finally, Aquilini leaves no doubt of his intentions when he supports Jim Benning, Travis Green "and this group," and says "I have no plans to make changes."
Dropping this missive at the beginning of Hockey Night in Canada's Toronto-Montreal game was brilliant, too. That's still the moment when hockey's biggest audience of the week gathers.
After the game, both Tyler Myers and Travis Green suggested that they hadn't read the Tweets, but still seemed pretty well informed about what was said.
"To this point, I've not (seen them), but I heard about it just before I sat down here," said Green. "It's always nice to hear the support that you have from ownership.
"There's always been good communication between myself Jim and Francesco. We know how badly our owners want to win, how much they love the team as much as fans and all of us.
"We're all in this together. That's nice to hear."
Green also said that he had no idea about the players' wardrobe decision.
"To be honest, I didn't know anything about it," Green said. "I found out watching Hockey Night in Canada, some of the pictures of our guys coming in.
"And I liked it. It would have got my blessing on it. I think maybe the coaches will have to get in on it now too."
Before the Canucks went into the bubble in the summer, players like Elias Pettersson had said they were excited for the relaxed playoff dress code, and were hoping to be able to wear their own clothes. But the team elected for a uniform polo-shirt-and-slacks look instead.
So, on Saturday, I wasn't the slightest bit surprised to hear Quinn Hughes sound excited about the switch-up — perhaps as animated as I've ever heard him?
"I hope so," said Hughes, when asked if the tradition would continue. "I think we had a lot of fun with that. I know I did, for sure. I think that's maybe the promising thing coming out of the win. It's pretty cool now to just throw on a jacket and come to the rink."
Initially, I wondered if this was a young-guys-only thing, but Tyler Myers also gave an unequivocal thumbs up, and explained the reasoning behind the decision quite vividly.
"I think the guys are pretty excited to kind of switch up the clothes," he said.
"We made it a thing that we all had to wear work boots, coming into the rink, and I think it showed on the ice — we're ready to work. It's nice to get a win. I'm sure we'll keep that casual thing going and try and keep these wins coming on the ice."
The quickest way to summarize what that work-boot attitude looked like on the ice is to look at the shot counter, which finished at 46-19 for Vancouver and was 20-4 after the first period. And even though they didn't beat Jacob Markstrom till midway through the second — and Sam Bennett re-tied the game just 1:15 after Hughes scored — the Canucks players didn't get frustrated. They stuck with it and stayed patient until Myers got the game-winner with just 5:11 left to play in regulation.
The Canucks were strong physically, too — leading Kevin Bieksa to speak after the game about what a bruising hitter Alex Edler can be.
Now that this four-game series is knotted at 1-1, it'll be interesting to see if emotions start to run higher when the two sides get together again on Monday?
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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