Last week, Canucks head coach Travis Green stopped a practice, yelling “Stop lollygagging,” then adding, “Details: they ****ing matter!”
“Details” is one of Green’s favourite words. It’s a convenient catch-all term for all the small things that a hockey player needs to do right. Like a pointillist painting, the details all come together to form the big picture: when you see a play transition from faceoff to breakout to zone entry to scoring chance, you don’t often see all the small details that led to that play coming together.
On Wednesday night, the details were all wrong. The Canucks suffered two of their worst losses of the season, losing 7-1 to the Nashville Predators and losing Chris Tanev for 2-3 weeks with a groin strain.
That injury adds to a growing list for the Canucks: Bo Horvat, Sven Baertschi, Brandon Sutter, Erik Gudbranson, and, of course, Derek Dorsett. The team has lost four straight since Horvat fractured his foot and appear to be in deep trouble, with some of the best teams in the Western Conference coming up in the schedule
With all that in mind, the team took Thursday off to regroup and came back on Friday morning with entirely new lines during the morning skate.
“We had a day off yesterday, kinda told the players I wanted them to refocus, re-energize,” said head coach Travis Green. “When you lose, you look for answers.”
Green wasn’t eager to discuss the new-look lines at practice, however, and didn’t want to dwell on who would play with whom. He noted that they frequently practice with different lines just to get a look at them and those lines don’t always make it into a game.
“We sit and throw different line combinations at the board probably like you guys do,” Green said. “[Boeser] might stay with the twins tonight, he might not.”
Ask him about details, however, and he gets positively loquacious.
“There’s details in faceoffs. There’s details in o-zone structure. The whole structure of your game, there’s details within it,” said Green. “And each part helps another. If you miss an assignment on a faceoff in your own zone when you win a draw, instead of getting a nice offensive chance in the other zone because you break the puck out clean, you spend the whole shift in your own zone. That affects your offence, that detail.”
“Our details have to be good right now,” he continued. “When you have guys that are out and injuries, then that part of your game is something you have to lean on.”
That phrase stands out, because of what the opposite suggests: when you have certain players in the lineup, the details might get overlooked, as skill and talent overcomes the occasional lapse.
Daniel Sedin suggested that details trump personnel, saying “We all know how to play this system and if you do that, I don’t think it should matter who’s in the lineup. If we play it the way we can, we’re going to be in games and have a chance to win.”
Who is in the lineup has to matter, of course. A good player executing the details of a system will be more effective than a bad or even mediocre player. If Michael Chaput executes every detail of his game perfectly, that doesn’t make him a good linemate for the Sedins, for instance.
With that in mind, the Canucks potential lines for their game against the San Jose Sharks do matter, and Green made the bold move of splitting up the Canucks’ most effective line over the last few games: Brock Boeser and the Sedins.
Instead, Thomas Vanek joined the twins, while Boeser practiced on a line with Sam Gagner and Loui Eriksson. The morning line rushes also included a Russian connection with Nikolay Goldobin and Alexander Burmistrov together with Jake Virtanen, with a potential checking line of Markus Granlund, Nic Dowd, and Brendan Gaunce rounding out the lineup.
Daniel welcomed the new lines: “I think after a game like last game, it’s good to have different lines going and get guys excited, so we’ll get it going tonight.”
Green was cagey about whether fans would see those same lines against the San Jose Sharks, but agreed that splitting Boeser and the Sedins might help spread the offence over two lines.
You might hope that the Canucks’ leading scorer would provide a spark to help ignite Sam Gagner’s offensive game. Gagner had 18 goals and 50 points for the Columbus Blue Jackets last season, but has just 11 points in 32 games with the Canucks. The same might be said for Loui Eriksson, who has produced alongside the Sedins, but has struggled to provide offence on any other line.
Putting Vanek with the Sedins, meanwhile, gives Travis Green an all-veteran line that might help calm things down on the ice after such a brutal loss.
“It’s up to the older guys to lead in these situations,” said Daniel. “We have a few that have been around for awhile and we’ve all been through these tough times before. I think we need to respond tonight and get back on track.”
One key will be getting off to a better start than in previous games. The Canucks gave up the opening goal a minute-and-a-half into their last two games and have an unfortunate tendency to give up an early goal. Green shrugged off the idea of needing a good start, however.
“Every team in the league wants to start with the lead,” said Green. “I know it’s a good story and we talk about having a good start, but you can’t dwell on it because it might not happen. The other team might score first. You might have a great start and the other team scores first. That’s just part of hockey.”
“It’s just a 60-minute process that you have to stick with and there’s momentum swings throughout the game that happen,” he continued. “Again, if your overall game is strong and you’re committed as a group, you can weather storms and if you’re not, you’ll have holes in your game and you can’t weather storms.”
