Chapter 1: What are the Canucks' recent performance highlights?
Thank you.
What's up? Welcome to Canucks Talk on Sportsnet 650. I'm Jamie Dodd. My co-host is Thomas Drance. Drancer covers the team for the Athletic as well. We're broadcasting live from the Kintec studio. Step strong with orthotics and footwear from Kintec 650 Kintec. 650 is the Dunbar Lumber text line. This hour of the show is presented by Waffle House Diner.
Enjoy chicken and waffles, the Waffle House, special classic full breakfast, and more. Dine in or order on your favorite delivery app. Breakfast done right. What's going on, Dram?
Not much, buddy. Had a beautiful weekend. Lovely time. Enjoyed those two Canucks games, to be honest with you. I actually thought they were pretty fun. So that was nice. I mean, they were also fun because the Canucks were surrendering so many scoring chances. Love that. But yeah, I mean, two wins. First consecutive wins since December? December, since the four-game winning streak.
Since before Christmas.
Yep.
Wow. It's been a while. Those halcyon days where the team was better without Quinn Hughes.
Man, you took the first consecutive win since the hybrid ritual. I do remember that.
Remember how you took that week off and missed by far the worst Canucks conversation has ever been.
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Chapter 2: Why is rebuilding trust important for the Canucks?
You got to learn plate discipline sometime. Landon Ferraro is going to join us at 1230 in studio. I think his first time in with both of us here in this studio for an hour. So that's very exciting. Lots to chat with Landon about. But as you mentioned, there's a lot to talk about with the Canucks as well today. So let's go to the whiteboard. All right, now, fellas, let's focus up.
It is your daily deep dive into what's up with the Canucks for today, April 13th. And the headline is, as we mentioned, the Canucks win back-to-back games for the first time since December. They beat San Jose in a shootout on Saturday. Anaheim. In overtime last night, there are now only, of course, two games remaining in the Canucks season. And I do want to, because we said it's fun, right?
And it was, absolutely. I think it actually, I'm going to go even a little farther than that. Not in terms of its importance or anything going forward, because it doesn't have that. But Curtis Douglas last night scores his first NHL goal. Something he really wanted to do, by the way. Really wanted to do, as you can tell. You see what I mean?
And the collection of players on the ice is pretty incredible, right? It's Kirill Kudryavsev and Ty Mueller, and they pick up their first NHL points as well on the play.
Kudryavsev, by the way. I mean, I'm serious. I thought he was really good. Yep. Like, really good. I think... He's a smart player. I think there's a real argument to be made that among Vancouver's young D, I'm not saying he's the best. In fact, I think he's the lowest upside. Right? But of Mancini, Booyam, Valander, Kudraevsev...
I think Kudryavsev might be the best bet to actually hold up in tough minutes if you need him to. And, I mean, he played like six minutes against the Granlin line. He played a bunch of minutes against the Leo Carlson line. Shots were heavily tilted in the Canucks' favor even when he found himself on the ice against pretty good competition. So...
No, I mean, I was really impressed with his game against Anaheim.
He's a smart player. And so Curtis Douglas, and it's Kudryasov with the shot, and Curtis Douglas, the puck, sneaks behind the goalie, and he's there to bang it in. Mueller picks up his first point as well, and then I believe Aturatu... were the other two guys on the ice. So quite the collection.
And then you see the celebration both from Curtis Douglas as well as the other guys on the ice, the players on the bench, right? How much that goal meant to Douglas and how excited his teammates were for him to get it.
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Chapter 3: How does the new practice facility impact the Canucks' relationship with Vancouver?
But that was great. You know, Kudryavtsev looks good in the game. Like, you get all these just sort of collection of, like, fun moments and... You have to have fun going to the rink. Even when this team in this era was good, they didn't seem like they were having a good time. This group seems like they're able to have a good time. Now, I don't know that they're able to win games.
I don't know that the core pieces of the next great Canucks team are even on this roster. There's some young building blocks who have a chance to get there, but that's it. A chance. We'll see. So, yeah, I mean... Don't buy into this as progress. Don't buy into this as, you know, good process.
I don't think it means anything, but I'm glad to see a group of players that have endured a pretty miserable campaign find a way to enjoy some time at the rink and put some fun things on tape and have some fun together as a team. I thought you could feel that that feeling was palpable. It jumped through your television screen. That's it.
Yeah.
Okay, go ahead. Because I do need to do the quick negative.
Well, I was going to say, it reminds me of the conversation we had after the Colorado game, the 8-6 win. Sure. Where it's like, just enjoy it for what it is and don't try to draw the larger conclusion from it. And that, by the way, I was trying to come up with like, what would be the top five fun moments from this Canucks season?
And the only two that I feel really good about are the Curtis Douglas goal and the 8-6 win against Colorado. And I guess, like, people forget now, but, like, they beat Calgary 5-1 on opening night. I guess that would be up there. I mean, that, you know, their first night of the season, you beat Calgary 5-1.
But if anyone else has suggestions, top five fun moments of the Canucks season, moments that should be in there, let me know. 650, 650. Anyways, you were going to say.
Not winning either of those games in regulation. Yes. So the Canucks have 15 regulation wins on the season, which is less than the NHL by a mile. They have two games remaining on the schedule.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Canucks' recent wins?
I also don't know that I'm learning anything new, right? Because a lot of what we're hearing here is. No plan. Just a lot of chaos. A lot of drama. Unnecessary drama. Not a feeling like they can put players in a position to succeed. And it just feels like a lot of this has been evident for a very long time. For years at this point.
With this front office and going back before this front office as well. Yeah, it's rough.
I mean, like, it's... So... Before we unpack this, I want to get into some reporting from Kenneth Chan in Daily Hive, who noted that at city council meetings, the parks board has been proportioned, you know, or 300 million for the Britannia. I believe they're asking city council. Asking city council. Okay. So asking to a proportion. Yeah. 300 million.
And the proposal itself indicates that there will be additional funding provided by the the provincial government and some unspecified amounts as well by the Vancouver Canucks. So this is sort of official confirmation in some ways from the parks board that at the very least there have been discussions matching some of what's been reported by Irfan Ghaffar and Rick Dollywall among others.
In that council meeting, there was discussions. Now, from what I can gather, having read both the reporting and the original sort of source reporting, it doesn't seem like there's much that we can read into from the plans as they exist. But there was certainly someone who spoke about the idea that if there's only one sheet, that's not going to be good enough.
Well, and also that there's specific... And this was, again, one citizen basically speaking, as you're allowed to, at these things and saying her point, and I believe it was a woman, was that... If you're just redoing the rink and the Canucks are using it for practice, you're actually reducing the availability of ice time available to the rest of the population of the city, right?
Because there's already a rink there that the Canucks don't use. So if they're taking a chunk of it, it's going down rather than adding to it.
Right. And I think that matters a ton, because as it stands right now, we are, what, 22 years into the Aquilini era of Vancouver Canucks hockey, and at no point has the city of Vancouver added additional ice surface capacity for the sport of hockey. In contrast with not just the practice facilities that other teams have constructed, but also their...
support of junior hockey locally, you know, to the point where like the Dallas Stars, the Junior Stars, the Junior Panthers, the Junior Ducks, right, are like junior hockey is like wholly owned and operated by affiliated groups or the teams themselves with massive benefits, massive returns in terms of the development of local talent. You know, Vancouver is a hockey hotbed.
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Chapter 5: How do NHL agents view the Canucks' management?
Like, those that most of our listeners and you and I occupy ourselves. So, there's, first of all, the, like, very human element of, like, when these are the people who are feeling uneasy, right? These are the people for whom... that feeling actually, like, matters and is challenging, right? Like, these are people whose daily decision-making... Real legitimate economic uncertainty.
In terms of their families, yeah, is angsty and impacted. But secondly, when you have four picks in the top 45, right? When you have four picks in the top 45... what matters a lot for you on the draft floor? Like as the draft is snaking, there's a factor that I think you have to be very mindful of being critical, which is, your information edge is critical.
Who you like, what you might be willing to move, do to move up, right? Like all of that stuff. If you want, if like, if you have a situation where you're having amateur scouting meetings in May and everyone's expiring, first of all, that's going to impact morale. Secondly, that creates an environment and I'm not questioning the professionalism of any Canucks amateur scouts.
I'm just talking about the basics of how you organize this from a management theory perspective. It creates a low morale environment where everyone's incentive is at least partially best served, right, by sharing intel, both with rival teams and with media, so as to feather their nest and make sure that they and their families have a soft landing spot in the event that they're not renewed.
That is just a natural human incentive. There's also softer forms of it, by the way. A lot of the amateur scouts that work for NHL teams are also guys who could be a USHL GM if they wanted to be, or a coach in junior hockey, or at the prep level, or what have you. One thing that can help you in that respect is make sure that the guy...
you know, who you're recruiting gets drafted in the seventh round. Like, honestly, there's all sorts of individual incentives that start to come into play and can impact a process if you don't keep everybody on the same page.
So beyond just sort of the way you treat people, which is a critical part of what I'm talking about and that needs to be rebuilt, how this team treats their fans, how they treat their players, how they treat player agents, how they treat local hockey players, how they treat junior hockey players, how they treat season ticket holders. And
day-to-day media all of this stuff which needs to be rebuilt in my mind if the Canucks are going to you know return to being a great franchise it also pertains to their own staff their own people right so in addition to that part running things like this also endangers your process it's also bad process. Like it's also, it's also bad business.
Yeah.
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