Casual Canuck

CBC Sports Willy's players skated hard, but his team's structure was poor. And he had trouble teaching the young players how to play hockey at the NHL level. It takes more than just effort. There's a certain level of knowledge needed in regards to the X's and O's that Willy D lacked. The next Canucks coach has a great deal of work ahead of them. They'll need to break down and rebuild the team's structure, entirely. They'll need to instill a better team culture, too. And this isn't a one year job, either. The next coach should be given at least two seasons to see the results. Can they improve on Desjardins record? Can they improve upon their own record?

Crossposted at HFBoards. Some notes on the season: Bottom two finish. Many predicted a bottom five finish, with a few predicting a complete bottoming out, entirely. Canucks probably won't improve much for next season, either. It could well become even worse, long before it ever becomes better. Horvat's becoming the team's most important player, moving forward. The Canucks can definitely build the team around him. Canucks management needs to re-evaluate its work and strategy. If they are incapable of doing this, then ownership needs to re-evaluate management. Coaching also needs re-evaluation. Good coaching won't improve the team much in the standings, but with better structure, and clearer roles for the players, there could be improvement in the players, individually. Some Stats: Edler: 21 Pts, 24:21 ATOI, 1216 CF, 1260 CA, 53.70 CF60, 55.95 CA60, 1.4 CFRelTM. He isn't a franchise defenceman, but he is a solid player, who can play in any situ

Cross-posted at HFBoards Chalk this game up to the hockey gods, I guess. As someone on the Coyotes board said, they're bad at everything, including losing. Canucks probably would've won this game, were it not for weird puck bounces that landed onto Coyote players sticks in scoring positions, all game long. Canucks outshot the Coyotes, outplayed them, outhustled them, and out and out lost to them, in spite of all that. This was a weird, weird game. How many times in his career has Luke Schenn potted a goal from behind the net on his backhand? Pretty odd place for a noted stay-at-home defence-man to be scoring goals from. Edler had the highest Corsi +/- at 14, and yet was on the ice for the most egregious, fluky GA. Miller makes the save on a harmless shot from the point, trying to blocker the puck to the corner, but it bounces off the boards onto the other side of the net right onto Vrbata's stick for an open net goal. And the Canucks then give up two P

Crossposted at HFBoards The Canucks have a long off-season coming up. I don't understand why they thought this team could compete for the playoffs this season, constructed as it was, especially when the previous season's results made it clear this team didn't have the talent level to compete in this league. It was obvious from the get-go there'd be no chemistry aside from the top seven or eight players on the team, and there'd be great difficulty scoring, especially on the back-end. There was simply a talent deficit on the team, which free agency couldn't solve. They weren't, then, only one or two scorers away from competing for the playoffs. They were an entire bottom roster away. It was also obvious signing a big-name free agent would actually create problems for the team, because they didn't have the right sort of construction to allow a big-name player to join the team, and succeed. The Canucks didn't have a playmaking centre as

Crossposted from HFBoards Time to dust this blog off of dust, I suppose. Just in time for the season's end. I post at HFBoards under the alias, The Extrapolater. Rant alert. I can't even with this coach. Not even just a little. I just can't even. Been trying to figure him out, but it's taken a long time. He doesn't understand his players. That's it. He doesn't know what he has in his players. Doesn't know their strengths and weaknesses. Or rather, he has a shallow understanding of them, and instead of reinforcing players' strengths, tries to compensate for their weaknesses, instead. That works for your scrubs, but for your talented players, you want them doing what they do best. And his understanding of player chemistry is weak, also. Sedins with Eriksson equals scoring chances. Sedins and Chaput equal nothing. But he insists on the latter. A great deal of coaching in any sport is simply putting the right players into the rights p