VANCOUVER — In a place like this, you wouldn’t think it possible to be a fair-weather player.
Given the rain and the hockey team, how could you be?
But it is our most basic human nature to take shelter from the elements, and you’d be surprised how many Vancouver Canuck players over the decades were easy to find after wins, when it was sunny, but impossible to locate when it was raining.
Right now, it is absolutely pouring on the Canucks, who reach the one-quarter mark of their rebuild season on Friday carrying not only the worst 20-game record in franchise history (3-16-1) but one of the worst on record with the National Hockey League.
And, yet, there were Henrik and Daniel Sedin on Thursday, sitting again in front of the bright lights of cameras, without umbrellas, getting pelted and answering questions about the ineptitude of the team they oversee as newly installed co-presidents.
They didn’t have to do this. They felt they needed to. Just like, say, after Game 6 of that doomed Stanley Cup Final in 2011, when the twins stood for nearly a half-hour in socks and wet underwear in the visitors’ locker room in Boston, answering wave after wave of uncomfortable questions amid a sea of media while ignoring pleas from Canuck communications staff to seek shelter from the storm.
Fifteen years later, reporters who were there still talk about it.
That was Hank and Danny then, and this is still who they are now.
“We want to be transparent (about) where we are, but we also want people to understand that we're not sitting back and accepting where things stand,” Henrik said, near the end of an opening statement in which the brothers shared the mic as smoothly as they once shared the puck. “There's a lot of work being done. There's a lot of belief within this group, and we're focused on continuing to move in the right direction. We're a quarter way through the season, we're just taking the first steps of the rebuild, and we're working hard to make a change. Now, questions. Make them tough.”
Yes, the tougher the better. More questions for them, less questions for players.
But nothing anyone could ask the Sedins on Thursday morning at Rogers Arena was as tough as the landscape in which the Canucks are getting battered — the first stage of a rebuild, under new management, new coaches and new systems — in which the team is simply overmatched some nights and probably years away from becoming a reliable Stanley Cup contender.
“I think losing is hard, absolutely,” Danny Sedin said. “But also, as a player, you don't want to go through this again. So, our belief is that our players are going to look at every day as an opportunity to get better because they don't want to be in this situation again. That's how we think every day, too. That's the way our players need to look at it. If they shy away from that, then they shouldn't be here. We need players that can push through adversity, become mentally strong.
“We're learning a lot about our players right now. I think the players are learning a lot about themselves. They need to learn how to deal with adversity and get better every day.”
It made sense for the Sedins to hold a press conference after the worst quarter in Canucks’ history, to remind everyone that rebuilds are hard and that this is still the embryonic stage of theirs. To assure fans that this pain was always expected, that their patience and understanding are appreciated and that eventually — hopefully in the next 20 games — things will start to get a little better.
But what the Hall of Famers were also doing Thursday was modelling, displaying the accountability that will be part of the foundation for whatever the Canucks become, and showing their young players what professionalism looks like when things are really, really difficult.
Given the Sedins’ accomplishments, it is too much to expect that Vancouver will rebuild with players just like them. But if the Canucks can accumulate players with similar character, accountability and that unyielding determination to always get better, this massive reconstruction project will succeed.
“We said we weren't going to look at wins and losses,” Henrik reiterated of the rebuild philosophy of the Sedins and general manager Ryan Johnson. “But we also have to learn how to win games, and that's the toughest part. It is a big difference from being in games and being on the winning side of games. It's the same as when you're missing the playoffs; it's easy to be close to making the playoffs year after year, but ... that's a big difference from making the playoffs year after year. That's what ... you have to learn as a player. It doesn't matter what age you are, you’ve got to be able to make the right plays at the right times.”
But doesn’t it matter that the Canucks have been historically bad, matching the worst 20-game points percentage (.175) of the NHL’s salary-cap era?
“I don't think, in a couple years, you're going to look back and look at this season (and judge) if we put up 40 points or 60 points or 70 points,” Henrik continued. “We want to see progress. In 20 games, when we sit here again and talk to you guys, I hope that we're playing better and we're taking steps, and that's all we care about.
“Could we have had three or four more wins right now? One hundred per cent, there's no question, if you look at the games. But we don’t, and we're disappointed. I think every player wakes up every morning and they feel that they want to do better. And it's the same with us. You don't sleep well after losses. You never do, but you wake up and you try to get better.”
The Sedins reminded reporters and fans that the Canucks’ rebuild philosophy is not to indiscriminately sell off all the inventory, to strip the lineup of everyone over a certain age in the pursuit of draft picks.
“We are in a rebuild, but it’s not a selloff,” Johnson told reporters in June. “It’s not about stripping it down as fast as you can and it’ll automatically grow on its own. That’s not the approach here.”
On Thursday, Henrik Sedin explained: “We can't only rely on our prospects to turn this around. We have to surround them with the right players, too. We can't just get draft picks; we’ve got to make sure we get the right players to support those prospects coming up. And that's the only way to get through this. We have to do a good job of realizing that draft picks alone are not going to get us through this.”
Truth. Just look around the NHL at some of the never-ending rebuilds. It’s easy to sell assets and take a team apart. The far trickier part is building one.
Yes, you need to get lucky with draft order and selections to develop elite core pieces. But sound team construction is much more than lottery luck.
The Chicago Blackhawks had six first-round draft picks in two years after winning the lottery in 2023 to get generational talent Connor Bedard. They were two points ahead of the Canucks on Thursday.
Over the past four years, the San Jose Sharks have had nine first-round selections and twice won the draft lottery, landing them Macklin Celebrini and Ivar Stenberg. But for all of the Sharks’ attacking skill and promise, their defence and goaltending remain suspect and there is no guarantee this is the season the team (currently 8-11-2) will end San Jose’s playoff drought at seven years.
This Canuck rebuild is going to take a while.
“Fans are going through this with us right now, so we need to make sure that we are connected to them,” Daniel Sedin said. “And I think that's what we're trying to do, and that's (why) we're sitting here today — to make sure that they are with us on this journey. And we have to be open and transparent.”
As always.
