As the Vancouver Canucks head into the 2024-25 season, head coach Rick Tocchet wants them to not just be prepared for pain but to welcome it.
Or, as he put it, “embrace the hard.”
That’s the slogan that Tocchet is considering for the Canucks this season, a follow-up from his constant refrain of, “Meet pressure with pressure” from last season. “Embrace hard” was a central message of the Canucks’ coaches summit during the summer and he broke down the reasoning behind it to Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre.
“Embrace the hard,” said Tocchet, before spitballing some variations on the theme. “Embrace hard, I don’t know. Hard is good?
“Whatever it is...like, I don't believe in 'Hey, you work hard today, it'll be easier tomorrow.' It's always going to be hard. That's just the way it is, so why not condition your mind? I talked to the players after a game in the playoffs. You know, you're limping, you've got an ice pack [after winning]. That's the best feeling in the world. But it's not going to get easier tomorrow. It's going to be even harder. That's the way I look at this season.”
In other words, the hard times and the struggle are inevitable, so the best thing to do is treat that adversity as a friend rather than an enemy. The hard times aren’t something to get through but something to accept as part of the process of becoming a champion.
The meaning of the motto makes sense, particularly for a team that had a lot of things go right last season en route to a playoff berth. Having so many things go right again isn’t a guarantee, so resetting expectations is important. This way, when the hard times come, the team is theoretically ready for them.
But, while the meaning makes sense, Canucks fans on social media couldn’t help but notice that “Embrace the hard” also sounds like an innuendo that is barely euphemistic.
Perhaps “Embrace the hard” isn’t quite the right slogan for those with peurile minds, ie. most of us. Maybe there’s a different slogan they could use that would convey the same or similar message without sounding quite so lascivious.
Let’s spitball some ideas:
Embrace the suck
Tocchet’s “Embrace the hard” motto might be inspired by the very similar military motto, used by everyone from the Marines to Navy Seals to the U.S. Army: “Embrace the suck.” It’s the same concept, meaning “to consciously accept or appreciate something that is extremely unpleasant but unavoidable.”
In other words, things are going to suck and they’re not going to stop sucking, so it’s better to not only get used to it but learn to enjoy it.
But, uh, I don’t think we’ve accomplished our goal of sounding less like an innuendo here. I think we’ll have to try something else.
Suck the hard
Hang on, no. Definitely took a wrong turn.
Rearrange your guts
You’ve got to have guts to play hockey, both in the literal sense and the metaphorical sense. It requires courage to throw your body in front of a puck and go into the corner with a bigger player to win a puck battle.
But maybe that courage isn’t always on call throughout a long, hard season. There are times when you just don’t have the guts to do the hard things on the ice. Maybe you’re in a slump and haven’t been getting the results from executing difficult details, so the motivation isn’t there. Maybe you’re nursing an injury and are hesitating to block a shot or battle through traffic in front of the net.
It’s times like that when you need to rearrange your guts and get them back in order. If Tocchet tells the players to rearrange their guts, that’s a sign that they need to step up and show more courage.
Hold on, I’m being told that “rearrange your guts” is also a euphemism. Uh-oh.
Do the nasty
There are all sorts of difficult tasks on the ice: dirty, grimy tasks. Coaches want their players to grind along the boards, go to the dirty areas, and bang in rebounds in the crease. That means getting nasty on the ice: you’ve got to do the nasty.
Wait, hang on, that one’s definitely a euphemism. And maybe a dance?
A bit of the ol’ in-out, in-out
Come on, are you even trying? What does this even have to do with hockey?
Let’s try a different tack.
Give ‘er, give ‘er, Fraser River
It’s local, it’s got a rah-rah quality to it, but maybe doesn’t capture the “hardness” of what Tocchet is going for.
Come on, let’s go
That’s just entirely bland and uninspiring.
Sorry, what’s that? That was the Canucks’ actual marketing slogan at the beginning of last season? Oh no.
Don’t do what Donny Don’t does
This slogan would require an illustrated book to go with it and would still be extremely confusing, so maybe not.
Pass it to Hughes
As strategies go, it’s a good one, but it might fail to inspire the members of the Canucks who are not Quinn Hughes. Even then, what is Quinn Hughes supposed to do with this slogan? Pass it to himself?
This isn’t working. What if we just take “Embrace the hard” and bust out our handy-dandy thesaurus to see if we can find a variation that won’t make the players shout, “That’s what she said” in their best Steve Carell impressions.
Cuddle the painful
That just sounds like a slogan for people who own hedgehogs as pets.
Snuggle the struggle
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, but it’s a little bit too cute. And hockey players, as a whole, don’t do cute.
Bear hug the herculean
I don’t hate it but it does sound like something Zeus would order one of his minions to do to capture his demi-god son.
Own the onerous
I’m not going to lie, I kind of love the alliteration of “Own the onerous.”
Is it something that Rick Tocchet would actually say and that would connect with the players on the Canucks? Probably not.
Embrace the hard
So, after going on this journey, maybe “Embrace the hard” isn’t so bad.
Honestly, “Embrace the hard,” as silly as it might sound, gets across the meaning that Tocchet wants it to, even if it also enfolds a few other meanings along the way.
So, let’s do it. Let’s embrace the hard this season, whatever that means to you.
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