Canucks have makings of playoff team, president says

VANCOUVER -- Jim Rutherford believes the Vancouver Canucks can get back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season, but that doesn’t mean the president of hockey operations is completely satisfied with where his team is at as they prepare to start training camp Thursday.

Rutherford added an important caveat to his playoff prediction for a team that has missed the playoffs the past three seasons and seven of the past eight.

“To be very to the point, the changes that we made, we have a playoff team if everything goes right,” Rutherford said. “Your goalie has to be good. Your specialty teams have to be good. You can't get into a lot of injuries. Now I'm not saying if one of those things goes wrong we can't still make it, because we have some impact players that can win games by themselves.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday for the first time since coach Bruce Boudreau was fired Jan. 22 and replaced by Rick Tocchet, Rutherford said removing that caveat is an important step.

“We want to get to a point that we have enough in our lineup that you can have a few things go wrong on a regular basis and overcome that,” Rutherford said.

General manager Patrik Allvin believes the Canucks can pick up where they left off after Tocchet took over last season, going 20-12-4 in 36 games after the coaching change. Vancouver, which was 18-25-3 in 46 games under Boudreau last season, finished the season 38-37-7, sixth in the Pacific Division and 12 points behind the Winnipeg Jets for the second wild card from the Western Conference.

“We saw a lot of good things last year,” Allvin said, “so my hope is definitely that we're going to carry on the momentum from last year where we finished and be ready for tomorrow.”

Vancouver has also made significant changes at defenseman since the coaching change.

The Canucks acquired Filip Hronek in a trade with the Detroit Red Wings on March 1, bought out the final four seasons of Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s eight-year contract June 16, and on July 1 signed Carson Soucy to a three-year, $9.75 million contract ($3.25 million average annual value) and Ian Cole to a one-year, $1.9 million contract.

“We changed our defense, and the defense will be harder to play against,” Rutherford said.

The Canucks also signed center Teddy Blueger to a one-year, $3 million contract July 1 and center Pius Suter to a two-year, $3.2 million contract ($1.6 million AAV) on Aug. 11. The hope is that their experience killing penalties, combined with Soucy and Cole’s ability to do the same, will improve a penalty kill that ranked last in the NHL over the past two seasons (73.2 percent).

“We have a lot of bodies now that can penalty kill and they have the attributes that I think you have to have on the PK,” said Tocchet, adding he plans to focus on special teams on the third day of training camp, which is earlier than usual. "PK is attitude and it is bravery."

Getting all those new players on same page is up to Tocchet and his coaching staff as the Canucks try to avoid a third straight slow start. Vancouver started the 2021-22 season 9-15-2, with Boudreau replacing Travis Green at that point, then started last season 0-5-2.

“The start is the big thing around here, and I just I told the players, ‘Don't worry about the start, just worry about the first day of camp,’” Tocchet said. “The start, the start, the start. You start thinking about the start or 'We have to have a good start,' then you're going to start squeezing your stick, so my job is to ease these guys into it in the sense of just do the right things [and] we'll be fine.”