Canucks News & Rumours: Teaching Young Players How to Play

Sometimes the lesson isn’t complicated. Watch Schenn and Oleksiak do the gritty before the pretty. That’s what Vancouver is really buying with those two players. Not just defence. Examples. If the younger Canucks start absorbing that mentality, their value will be much bigger than whatever eventually appears beside their names on the stat sheet.

Malhotra Is Teaching Vancouver How to Manage a Game

The other thing that stood out was the way Malhotra showed his team how to manage the game. Against Edmonton, Vancouver doesn’t have the luxury of deciding who plays against Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Sometimes those two get the matchup they want. That’s life on the road.

So the Canucks were forced to manage what they could control: their shifts. Getting off the ice at the right time can be one of those little things nobody notices. But good teams notice. You don’t need to stay out for another 20 seconds because you think you can create one more scoring chance. You don’t need to turn every shift into an adventure.

Get off. Get rested. Go back out. That’s particularly important when you’re playing against players who can change a game in under five seconds.

And Along Came Cotter

Two goals, including the overtime winner and a shorthanded goal, in his first game as a Canuck. The overtime winner might be a perfect example of what Vancouver is trying to become. Cotter won a battle, beat Ryan Shea off the wall and went to the net. Nothing fancy. Just hard work.

And then Malhotra put Cotter and Max Sasson on the ice in overtime. That tells you something. The coach wasn’t simply putting the biggest names out there. He was rewarding players who did what he asked. In his post-game interview, Cotter talked about the trust he felt from the coaching staff and the calmness Malhotra showed when Edmonton pushed back.

He also talked about Vancouver’s locker room being unusually “egoless,” with veterans helping younger players and everyone fitting together. It’s one game. It’s not time to build a statue. But if Vancouver really wants to change its culture, that’s exactly the sort of thing you want to hear.

What’s Next for the Canucks?

The Canucks aren’t suddenly great because they won in Edmonton. They aren’t a contender because Cotter scored twice. But something interesting happened Tuesday night. The new veterans looked like teachers. The coach looked like a coach with a plan. And a new player looked like someone happy to be trusted with an important job.

That’s a pretty good beginning. The real test will be whether those habits survive the next 20, 40 and 60 games. Anybody can be energetic on opening night. The harder part is doing the little things properly when everybody is tired in February. For now, though, Vancouver has given its young players something more valuable than another speech about culture. It’s giving them examples.