Jeff Paterson on the Canucks’ coaching staff roles, Daniel & Henrik Sedin; off-season priorities
our next guest brought to you by the Arnold Palmer design Whistler Golf Club reminding you that tea times for anytime during the 2024 season can be booked online right now get those tea time reserved get them reserved well in advance to avoid disappointment and if you have a group of 12 or more enter arie’s Army golf getaway contest where you and 11 friends can play for free to book Tea Time or to enter the contest visit Whistler golf.com here’s Jeff Patterson connect reporter the host of rink wide Vancouver joins us on Mondays and he would be amongst my 11 friends but you made the cut jef there you go yeah all right my day is made my week is made I just don’t have that many friends to play golf so you have catching up with you uh after last week jeff which turned out to be a busy week for the Vancouver connects with the announcement of the coaching staff just um first of all what do you make of all the comings and goings Yogi Manny and uh the way they’re going to divvy up power playing penalty kill yeah I’m delighted for Yogi this is a guy that has worked his way through the ranks from a skills coach to the Vancouver Giants to uh Delta’s academy uh getting a first-time job in the National Hockey League that’s not easy and uh he has earned his stripes here so I’m delighted to see a guy get promoted from within I said this last week on ring wide that the one sort of caveat in all of this and these are two separate thoughts because I am truly happy for Yogi sovi to see a guy get this opportunity that he’s worked for but he was here he was part of this group that watched the power play wither and ultimately die down the stretch and into the playoffs I did wonder if it was an opportunity for the Vancouver Canucks to go outside the organization and find somebody that wasn’t attached to this group that could have brought a fresh set of eyes and maybe some thoughts as well I thought it was interesting on the same day that the Canucks promoted their skills coach to a bench coach the Toronto M police bus hiring a guy with NHL head coaching experience in Lane Lambert to work Craig barui staff so there are lots of ways that you can round out an NHL coaching staff the lease obviously did their way uh and the kxs are giving a guy who’s been knocking on the door here who has been part of this group and look Rick toet spoke at length and I believe it because I’ve been there I’ve seen the practices that uh Rick empowers guys like Yogi sakoski who wasn’t an assistant coach he was the skills coach but he was at the Whiteboard he was drawing up practice plays he was working with guys well after practice and and I use Dakota Joshua as a great example here because I remember when I went down to Seattle in February Dakota Joshua and Carson Susi were both out of the lineup they were getting closer they came out in full gear after the Canucks had had their morning skate and Yogi just he didn’t crack the whip it wasn’t a bag skate he was working on these guys to prepare them for their re-entry to the lineup so when you say a skills coach those are some of the things that he was doing behind the scenes Dakota Joshua gets back in the lineup after the hand injury that took him out for six weeks and he had his goalscoring touch right away it was almost as if he didn’t leave the lineup and he gave credit to stovsky and and I think Rick toet certainly saw the the benefits of what a coach has done to the point that I asked on the zoom call last week Rick are you GNA replace Yogi and he said absolutely like we see real value in having a full-time skills coach in addition to our coaching staff so uh let’s see how it works out but this is a guy that’s universally liked I loved Rick’s line about when would come into the office and he’d say hey are you looking for me and they’d say nope we’re looking for Yogi I thought that kind of sort of spoke volumes about uh the respect that the coach The head coach sees uh in this person now that he has brought on to his staff so are they uh far less experienced with Mike yo who was a two-time head coach at the National Hockey League level he walks out the door Manny a firsttime head coach in professional hockey but a guy that’s respected through and through but yeah I mean there are some elements that they’re going to have to work through and look Rick is the reigning head coach of the year the Jack Adams winner and he said it’s going to be on me now to bring this group together but he talked about how excited he was how much respect he had for Manny molter I said he didn’t know him a ton but had met him a few times was impressed with a presentation that he did at a coaching Symposium here when the draft was in Vancouver back in 2019 and I just think we all remember covering Manny as a player uh he was respected then that same respect has traveled with him uh through the ranks is he’s been an assistant coach and and then worked his way to a bench coach in Toronto and now taking over as a head coach so let’s see what he can do uh obviously and you know tie-ins with Daniel and Henrik right away and of course they’re going to be involved and when that press release came out and said the sadin would take a more active role uh in the coaching side of things like look they’re on the ice at almost every conects practice they still find time to get out to Abbotsford so I wasn’t really sure what that meant but ultimately we found out that one of them at least one of them is going to tr on any lengthy road trip so I think anytime you can have Daniel and Henrik hands on it’s a good day for the Vancouver Canucks and the organization Power Play upgrade there Jeff is when you talk about you know a new voice you know did you ever see them at the Whiteboard before because maybe now you will maybe that’s the new voice on the power play the one thing we saw with the power play and I have not seen this with the other coaches that I’ve covered in my time working around the Vancouver canox was that you Rick and generally Rick and and Mike yo would be at one end of the ice working with the first unit Daniel and Henrik were responsible for the second unit like there really was a division of power uh based on the two groups that the conu were running out there on the power play I you heard Rick in his Zoom last week talk about the fact that he’s going to give a lot of the responsibilities to Yogi sovi but it’s not cart blanch that Rick is a guy that still wants a hand in all of this and ultimately he’s the head coach and the buck stops with him but this is where I come back to this idea that even though Yogi didn’t have the title he was out there on the ice around this team and nobody whether it was Daniel or Henrik or Rick or Yogi Sosi I mean they all watched as this power play really struggled down the stretch after the All-Star break and we know it cost them in the playoffs there were opportunities for this team to get ahead and Rise Above if they could have cashed in on the power play and it just wasn’t there so the Personnel is in place we know the component parts are there to have a successful power play a lot of that’s going to depend on you know which Alias Patterson they get back after this long summer um and we’ll see where things go from there but overall you know there is something to be said about uh internal promotion and and showing others in the organization that if you work hard that there is a path to rise to higher levels and Rick said that he felt Jim Rutherford at least Jim ruford had conveyed that you know he was a big believer in promoting from within so you know at some point is there a cost element to it when you have a guy who’s been a two-time head coach in Miko walk away when you have Jeremy citton who’s been an NHL head coach and he walks away you know we may never know but I do wonder if there were some cost savings as well in all of this for the Vancouver KS do you um do you have any structural issues with the fact that no one is singularly responsible for that power play Jeff that it’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen still yeah yes because again the proof was in the pudding there after the All-Star break that’s said this power play was on fire for the first third of the Season at the very least and uh they’ve got to figure out why what was working for them back then uh you know was it as simple as having a guy like Andre kusenko who you know even though he didn’t have huge goalscoring totals was part of this power play that was working well because it does sort of line up to the fact that when they moved off him uh it just never quite looked and felt the same there but the same coaching staff and those same sets of eyes that’s where I thought like even if you run an exhaustive search and come to the conclusion that Yogi is the guy I I still think there’s something to be said about going outside the organization interviewing others getting some Intel about what the outside world thinks about your operation and so you know I don’t know how many assistant coaches uh or you know candidates would have been willing to come in with a PowerPoint and and tell them what they were you know what they’d be willing to do with the power play or how they change it but I I do think that the interview process allows you to exchange some ideas and information and just get a better sense of what others in the hockey world think about the guys that you got and the way that it’s working now saying all of that we saw that part of the power play struggles were that the Edmonton Oilers have just found an absolute another level with their penalty kill and the Dallas Stars found that out the hard way we’ll see how things go here in the Stanley Cup Final but even against Nashville the Canucks didn’t do an awful lot with the power play they had opportunities uh and struggled to cash in when they were provided with those chances and we saw certainly after the All-Star break even in the regular season the power play was an issue so they know it they’ve spoken about it and that’s a part of the battle is it admitting your flaws and your weaknesses and now they’ve got this offseason hopefully to breathe some fresh ideas uh how to enter the Zone because it wasn’t even so much about what they did setting up so often they couldn’t gain the zone and and get into their formations But ultimately they are going to have to sort this out because uh there were too many chances in that in the playoffs were a power play goal here or there and all these tight games really could have been the difference and ultimately it wasn’t for the Vancouver Canucks our poll question today uh the smoke about resigning Elias linol last week Jeff does that make sense to you given the needs they have on wing and defense uh all along I’ve kind of felt that this idea of throwing so much money down the middle uh is probably a little misguided for the Vancouver Canucks just with those areas of concerns elsewhere that you mentioned and we know that they’ve got to decide how do they want to shape this defense core and they’ve got the two big pieces there that they’ve got to figure out with eronic and and zadorov but also it’s not about running it back with this group because it was a good team 50 wins 109 points Lind Holm obviously acquired at the trade deadline or at the All-Star break uh wasn’t here for the full season but in the playoffs you got a glimpse of what he can do for this group but running it back and just keeping this group intact I mean yeah it was fun for two rounds but ultimately it was seven wins when they needed 16 so the challenge and Patrick Eline alluded to it uh on that exit day when he and Ric toet sat at the podium uh you know he he threw down the gauntlet that he was disappointed that he knows his job now is to try to figure out in a salary cap world and we found out over the weekend that you know now they know the parameters of just how much money they’ve got to spend and they do they’ve got some cap resources here to throw at some of those problems but uh these the difficult decisions the Vancouver Canucks are going to have to make and as we sit here on the 10th of June the beauty is that we’re going to get some answers like they’ve got to get down to business here uh you can’t just leave it you can’t you know the night before the final exam it doesn’t work that way uh didn’t work that way in school it doesn’t work that way in professional sports so we are going to have to see them make some decisions here sooner rather than later I I just think that and good look lyol was good in the playoffs like he was I thought one of their more consistent play ERS and not just producers but the way that they used them on the penalty kill and faceoffs and late games and matchup and all those types of things like there is value there I just don’t know that it’s The Prudent play for the Vancouver Canucks though to go that deep down the middle when they already knew that they needed an elite score on the wings and they probably need two really if if they’re going to make Headway here and improve they Pro like you know look Brock besser had an incredible season 40 goals but does anybody think that when he gets in the Starting Gate in October that he’s now a 40G goal scorer like it goes back to you know ray line about doing it once doesn’t necessarily make you a 40- goal scorer it’s on your hockey card and it’s on your record for like I look at Brock besser a he stayed healthy which is something that he hasn’t done an awful lot over his career and he had never been a 30 goal scorer then he gets to 40 I’d like to think 30 is the true Baseline and you know if he can get above that great but Neils hoglander was a 24 goal scorer on a 20% shooting clip where his career average is 12 and a half like I’m not sitting here thinking that oh Neil hoglander got to 24 he’s coming back and he’s going to build on that you’d love that but this is where it comes back to needing a fair bit of help I think on the wings still and so to me I I’ll be disappointed if the Vancouver KS don’t address that if they don’t make some sort of Splash in that area here either at the draft or or through free agency what’s the better approach here to have a patchy three line team like they had this year with holes in the in the top nine or to have certified two lines like two full lines with Wingers for for both because I see the evedon ERS in the Stanley Cup Final probably just a certified two-line team like I don’t know that they you can call their bottom nine or the bottom six really much at all and I know nude moonlight’s there at times but really you know they are two-line team can you not win with with two good lines rather than do you need those that certified third line Center yeah and I would say you look at both of these teams in the Stanley Cup Final like Zack Heyman and Sam Reinhardt finished second and third in the NHL in goals so they each have like an absolute uh you know lethal finisher obviously the Oilers are a slightly different case just because of McDavid and dry cidal but you know the Panthers like Reinhardt hasn’t been anywhere close to their best or most productive player in the playoffs but You’ got Carter R Veri who just shows up every year it seems and you got Matthew kachu and all that he’s done on you know in his resume and Sasha barov and like they are able to sort of Stack the tops of their lineup as you said and and when you look at the Vancouver cans they thought they had one of those types of players in leas Pon but he got away down the stretch and into the playoffs you want to believe that that player can come back but uh you know they also ran with Ilia mck they started the season with Phil deppi in their top six like even Pia suder was signed as a third line he’s versatile and he gave the conu some nice minutes with Miller and besser but he was never brought in here as a top six guy and ultimately he scored the big goal against Nashville to eliminate the Predators but he had a really quiet second series against the Oilers and you know I just don’t think that over the Long Haul pter is a top six guy on a Stanley Cup Contender and so uh these are all the holes that and I’m sure management recognizes most through all of this and and these are the challenges that they’re going to have to address here over the next three to four weeks and if it means sud has to go back to being third line Center uh especially if it’s just the beginning of the season and and that’s something you’re going to address by the deadline um that’s something I could get behind last question here Jeff we talked about this some last week after your hit Joshua zadorov um um who’s the other free agent oh ronic of course if they’re going to have to overpay for someone who are you overpaying for or are you just steadfastly refusing to overpay any of the free agents on this group yeah I mean I’ve spent a fair bit of time here thinking about uh how you sort of cram all of these in under the cap and even with the space that they’ve got um Philip ronic in a slightly different Silo because of restricted free agent I think he understands that he’s got the con over a barrel here uh if they don’t want a longterm he’s got arbitration rights he’s going to get his money whether people like it or not it’s just the way that the the system is set up that as restricted for agent with ar bright and a guy that came close to 50 points and played a lot the counting stats they’re all going to work in his favor here uh I think he can sit back and I think the Vancouver Canucks have decisions to make and they know that it’s going to cost them if they don’t want to go down that road then they’re going to have to look at other avenues with zadorov uh as much as and trust me like I’m in the same camp as just about everybody I mean the person the player uh at playoff time absolutely like he was huge for the Vancouver KS literally and figuratively but I also wonder is you know on a Tuesday night in November in Columbus do you need Nikita zidor off you know if you go into Carolina in February do you need Nikita zedor off the premium comes at playoff time like this is a guy that stepped up and yes absolutely Ely you want the intimidation you want the fact that he generated offense from the back end uh you know on the depth chart he’s probably the third guy on the left side but in terms of actual usage in the playoffs when we saw this uh they weren’t afraid to elevate him uh to the point that he was out there as an extra attacker with goenda in the net front presence role but right now you got Quinn Hughes and you got Carson Susi can you throw five mill a year a left side third pair guy on your depth chart and what what if he’s second pair Jeff he was effectively second pair in the postseason what if you looked him and said okay now he’s gonna be our top four guy because we’re gonna Shuffle Susi down does that legitimize it for you a little more like theoretically yes but I think sus and Meer showed that they’re a pair that the Canucks like is a a a matchup pair and so I don’t see you splitting those two guys and um you know then it raises this question if Noah Jewels like zor and Jew is a second pair I’m not sure that I’m sold on that as much as I would take Susi and Myers even with some of their limitations and I know that there were a lot of shifts in the playoffs where they got caved but you know their size their length their reach keeps guys to the outside um it can be effective ultimately it may not always look pretty but I I like I could see a world in what the canox say hey we’re gonna we’re gonna take our lumps with ponic he’s 26 years of age uh he’s a nice fit for Quin Hughes uh this is a guy that’s really coming into his Prime now uh you know we’re going to pay whatever it takes to pay we’ll have Hughes honic Susi Meyers there’s your top four and you’ve got no julson who showed that you know he can play and then go and find a a left side guy for the third pair that’s more cost effective so that you can devote money elsewhere so I can see a world in which that’s the case I would Miss Niki sidorov he was fun to cover he was fun to watch so we’ll see where it goes there but I think ultimately uh when you think of what they paid to get honic uh um I think he’s probably the guy that they recognize that he’s going to come at a cost but he’s the right fit for quen Hughes and and they’re going to try to move forward with those two as their top pair the Oilers name checked the kuu guys last week leading into the Stanley Cup saying that defense was the hardest heaviest one we like there’s reason to think for sure maybe we should kind of run those guys back for the most part I you know I think you’re still squeezing a little more out of Tyler Meers I mean eventually I think the two Bruns empty there a little bit as it did with thean Cole I think by the end of the year right but no for the most part I’m I’m absolutely for running those guys back including elevating julson to the third pair right side or do you get the cheap version of of Nikita Brendon Dyan it’s just gonna be so difficult yeah um with sidorov and and what he can command on the open market uh Jeff marvelous stuff all these questions we have to ponder and uh it’s getting here quickly buddy the is on us it’s amazing when you go seven rounds to or seven games second round as Blake and I were talking about last week really does shorten that offseason in that Runway yeah to the draft and free agency look forward to this uh and look forward to the next rank quite thanks Chef all right guys thanks hey everybody if you’re enjoying what you’re seeing here then follow along with Saron price on YouTube I promise more content coming they call it the kids call it subscribe on YouTube well how about liking it do that as well smash it right now
@rinkwidevancouver host Jeff Paterson discusses the assistant coaching changes for the Canucks and how that may affect the power play in particular, and what the Sedins will have to offer in an increased role. Plus, Jeff weighs in on what Canucks management might be thinking in terms of priority: centre, wingers, or defence.
Presented by @theWhistlerGolfClub (https://lnk.to/SPWGC)
Tweets by sekeresandprice
https://www.facebook.com/SekeresandPrice
@sekeresandprice
https://www.youtube.com/sekeresprice
https://www.instagram.com/sekeresandprice
📧 live@sekeresandprice.com
📲 778-402-9680
https://www.sekeresandprice.com/
https://www.rinkwidevancouver.com
#Canucks #VancouverCanucks #NHL #Hockey
1 comment
Got to give it to the guys must be hard to talk about the same thing over and over. FYI tomorrows show, should the Canucks sign big Z and how much is too much…