‘It hurts’: Canucks missing playoffs a result of misfortune and mistakes

DENVER — Hello darkness my old friend, the Vancouver Canucks are here again.

The misfortune and mistakes that plagued the Canucks this season, all the adversity and drama, reached a critical mass some time ago. But it took until Wednesday night and the Minnesota Wild’s 7-6 overtime win against the San Jose Sharks to finally eliminate Vancouver from the National Hockey League playoff race.

“It hurts,” winger Brock Boeser, the longest-serving Canuck, said. “We wanted to be in the playoffs again so bad. If you get in, you never know what can happen. We were playing some good hockey when we had everyone in the lineup, and then we ran into more injury problems. We’ve had the distractions this year and injuries throughout the lineup all year. Yeah, it’s been a rough year. But there’s no excuses; we didn’t win hockey games when we were supposed to.”

One year after playing 95 games — and getting within one win of reaching the Stanley Cup semifinals — in their most successful season in a decade, the Canucks were eliminated after Game 78 despite an extraordinary 6-5 win Tuesday against the Dallas Stars that saw Vancouver become the first team in NHL history to win by rallying from a three-goal deficit in the final minute.

At 36-29-13 going into their final road game Thursday against the Colorado Avalanche, the Canucks will still finish above .500 despite a tsunami of challenges this season. But with four games to go, they can not make up the eight-point difference between themselves and wild-card teams Minnesota and the St. Louis Blues, who hold tie-breakers over the Canucks.

The Canucks are following one of their best seasons with one of their most disappointing after leaving training camp in September with legitimate aspirations of challenging for the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

It wasn’t one thing that cost them. It was everything.

Goalie Thatcher Demko’s knee injury, the Canucks’ inability to win at home early on, Elias Pettersson’s conditioning and performance, Boeser’s concussion, the Pettersson-J.T. Miller drama that led to Miller’s January trade — unthinkable when the season began — and finally injuries to defenceman Quinn Hughes and Vancouver’s top two centres.

“I think it’s too early here to do the full review of the season,” general manager Patrik Allvin told Sportsnet on Wednesday. “Talking to other general managers around the league — I don’t know if they’d say they feel for us — but everyone knows we’ve gone through things that you’d never expected. But I think that’s also a way to grow and learn.

“I think everything starts with preparation. I do believe when you’re preparing the right way — and I’m repeating myself here — by practice habits, you’re able to face adversity differently. I think the players have learned and probably understand that we’ve got to continue with that preparation in order to be a good team to play 82 games, plus the post-season. I think that’s our goal. 

“We have some really good building blocks here with the young players in the pipeline. I’m pleased with our goalie situation and I’m pleased with our back end. Our focus here is to see if we can improve our forwards group by either trades or free agents.”

SUMMER SCHOOL

Preparation has been a catchword since Allvin and hockey operations president Jim Rutherford took over the Canucks a little more than three years ago. It became a hot-button topic this season when star centre Elias Pettersson, who told reporters after last year’s playoffs that he had tendinitis in his knee, reported to camp in Penticton and said he had had to train around the problem during the off-season.

The Canucks were unhappy with Pettersson’s conditioning, and the $92.8-million player struggled through most of the season before leaving the lineup on March 22. He has 15 goals and 45 points in 64 games in the first season of an eight-year contract that is by far the largest in franchise history.

Allvin said Pettersson’s summer training program will be a key part of exit-meeting discussions, and indicated it might be best for the Swede to stay in Vancouver to train this off-season.

“That’s something we’re obviously going to talk about here when the season is over and have a plan for it,” the GM said. “We have the right resources here to help him. Listen, he has the ability to dictate the future, and I’m sure he wants to come back to his normal (form) and wants to continue to grow and get better. So we have absolutely the commitment and resources here to help him do that.”

Allvin noted, however, that teams can’t tell players where to spend their summers, so the decision will be Pettersson’s.

AND THE COACH?

Allvin reiterated he wants to negotiate a multi-year contract extension for coach Rick Tocchet, who is delaying a decision on his future until he fully debriefs with players and management after the season.

“I’ve said several times, my hope is to have Rick Tocchet here as the coach next year and beyond that,” Allvin said. “That’s something we will continue to talk about. That’s my hope. I have a great working relationship with Rick, and he’s well-respected. He’s a really good coach, and I do think that he has the ability to continue to build what he has implemented here. With the system and structure that he put together, it works even with the depleted lineup (the Canucks have been icing). I think a lot of players that have come in here have career years, and they can only get better working with Toc and his staff.”

Would the Canucks use their club option on Tocchet to force him to stay next season?

Allvin: “I’ve got a lot of respect for Rick Tocchet, so we’ll cross that path when we get to that point. But my intention is to negotiate term with him and have a coach here that wants to be here. We’ll continue to talk about that.”

THE END FOR BOESER

After 550 games for the Canucks over the last eight seasons, these are likely the final four for Boeser, the free-agent eligible winger who has been with the team since scoring in his debut straight out of college on March 25, 2017.

There has been little traction in contract discussions between agent Ben Hankinson and Allvin, who listened to trade offers on Boeser at the NHL deadline a month ago but said other teams didn’t show much interest in the 28-year-old from Minnesota.

Boeser said before the Dallas game on Tuesday that he does not expect to remain with the Canucks.

“Honestly, it’s unlikely at this point,” he told us. “It sucks, it’s unfortunate. I’m just trying to play good hockey, and then I’ll worry about everything after that. We all know it’s been a roller coaster of a year. There’s been a lot of different things.”

After struggling for long stretches this season amid the distractions, Boeser said he won’t even talk to Hankinson again until after the season.

“Yeah, I’m refusing to talk to Hank right now,” he said. “I feel like I’m playing a lot better hockey recently, and I don’t want to get distracted. That’s one of the things I’ve learned: when there’s distractions, I don’t play my best hockey. The mental aspect of the game is so important. This year, there’s been a lot of distractions.”

After scoring 40 goals last season, Boeser has 25 goals and 49 points in 71 games this year, and is a team-worst minus-24. He started the season on a point-per-game pace, with six goals in 12 games, before he was concussed by Tanner Jeannot’s head shot on Nov. 7. Boeser missed seven games, while Jeannot was suspended for three.

In the last 11 games, when the Canucks were frantically trying to stay in the playoff race, Boeser has seven goals and 11 points. He logged a season-high 23:13 of ice time in Dallas.

“We look back at times this season where we struggled as a team,” Boeser said, “and if we were just a little better, we’d be in the hunt right now. It’s frustrating.”

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