Canucks' Garland tuning out the noise as play trends upwards: ‘Right now I feel good’

VANCOUVER — This week’s one-year anniversary since Jim Rutherford took over the Vancouver Canucks is also an anniversary for winger Conor Garland.

It has been about a year since he started hearing rumours that the Canucks would like to trade him — or at least the five-year, $24.75-million contract he signed with former general manager Jim Benning in the summer of 2021, shortly after the blockbuster trade that brought Garland and defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson from the Arizona Coyotes. 

Those rumours have persisted.

Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin have been pragmatic and honest since they arrived about the need to create salary-cap flexibility in Vancouver, so shopping players like Garland, Brock Boeser, Tyler Myers and Tanner Pearson should surprise no one.

One of the reasons management has been unwilling to meet captain Bo Horvat’s contract demands is because the Canucks, like every other National Hockey League team, have found it extremely difficult to move salaries without taking somebody else’s burdensome contract in return.

Garland said Friday he has learned not to let the conjecture bother him. He said it would ruin him as a player if he read posts on social media or paid attention to podcasters and reporters.

“If you think about that stuff all day, yeah, for sure, it would,” he said after practising with the Canucks ahead of Saturday’s game against the Winnipeg Jets. “I try to pay attention as little as possible. I still see stuff. Like I saw something recently and it's just like, I can't believe people listen or read that because it's just so insane. But that's why I don't pay attention to it. It would kill you. . . because there's a lot of nonsense out there.

“It did affect me the first time hearing it (last season). I was like, ‘What the. . .  I just signed here and I’m having a good year.’ But now I just don't even pay attention. If I get traded, I'd be pretty upset. I mean, I really like the guys here and that would suck. But that's the business; I don't have trade protection.”

Garland was good last season. He had 19 goals and 52 points while averaging 16:24 of ice time over 77 games, and was one of the Canucks’ possession-drivers.

In Wednesday’s 4-3 shootout win against the Calgary Flames, Garland scored his fifth goal this season in 28 games. He missed one in October as a healthy scratch.

But in Garland’s last four games, the bulk of each one played with a different set of linemates, he has been one of the best Canucks. He has two goals and an assist, but has been driving play with a shot-share of 61.3 per cent and 58.9 per cent of scoring chances. 

The 26-year-old from Boston has looked like a different player the last two weeks than the previous two months, when he bounced around (and briefly out) of coach Bruce Boudreau’s lineup, logging anywhere from 10 to 19 minutes and spending too much of his time on the perimeter.

The main difference now may simply be that Garland is healthy.

“I couldn't really put much on my shot for a while — until recently,” he said. “So I mean, that's probably another thing, I feel more confident shooting the puck. Sometimes when you can't really get much on it, you aim. And when you aim, you don't really hit your spot. I'm shooting it and it looks bad, but it's like, that's all I've got right now. But I've got to get closer to the net, too; I'm not going to score from the top of circles anyways.

“Just my game wasn't there for a bit, but right now I feel good. I feel like I've been good the last five and it's trending upward.”

Clearly wary of discussing an injury, Garland declined to explain why he couldn’t get much on his shot except to say the limitation has passed.

Dominant in Calgary with third-line partners Sheldon Dries and Nils Hoglander — the trio scored twice and posted an expected-goals rate of 88 per cent — Garland has registered 13 shots on target in the last three games. That’s as many shots as the winger had the previous eight games, and is one more shot on goal than he amassed in October.

Even with the recent surge, Garland’s average of 2.04 shots per game is still well below last season’s 2.64. 

“He's competing harder, and he's harder on the puck all the time,” Boudreau said. “I think a lot of it has to do with confidence. (He is) feeling a lot better about himself, and when you do that. . . you have the puck on a string a little bit more because you believe that you're going to make good plays. I think earlier, sometimes he didn't have the confidence in his game and. . . if you don't have the confidence in your game, then you start slipping a little bit.”

But Garland insisted self-confidence hasn’t been an issue.

“Just moving my feet more,” he said. “Just playing above the puck and getting pucks back, and just making plays. There are more and more plays that are being made, so it's all going in the right direction.

“I play every practice like it's a game, and I try to play every game like it's my last. I prepare pretty hard so my confidence doesn't really get shook. (Even) if I didn't have a point last game, I still played well. If you just put consistently good efforts back to back to back for a long time, usually you produce. And usually you don't get killed in the media.”

Usually.

• Boeser and Elias Pettersson skipped Friday’s practice due to illness, Boudreau said. The coach said defenceman Travis Dermott, who has been practising with the team for two weeks but still hasn’t played since suffering a concussion early in the pre-season, has another examination this weekend and could be available to play sometime after that.