Five takeaways from Canucks training camp: What matters most going into preseason?
Covering an NHL training camp usually isn't about focusing on one big story.
There's time for that as the season rolls along. The reality of life, hockey and wins and losses at the NHL level tends to focus the attention of a hockey market more narrowly over time.
The reality of camp, however, is different and more general. There are as many as 60 players on the ice at an NHL training camp, and a dizzying number of roster battles, drills and small details to pick up on.
Some of those small details, noticeable only to attentive observers, will come to shape a team's fortunes over the ensuing year, while others will turn out to be inconsequential going forward.
Having ruminated on what we saw up in Penticton over the past week, here are five takeaways we think our readers should know from Vancouver Canucks training camp going into the preseason.
It's clear that the Canucks, in analyzing their performance last season, have identified attacking off the rush as an essential way to improve going forward.
This is the correct diagnosis. Vancouver ran extraordinarily pure from a scoring chance conversion perspective throughout last season, especially before the All-Star break, but generated five-on-five shots and rush chances like a clear non-playoff team. As talented as Vancouver's core group is, once this club's preposterous scoring efficiency came back to Earth last season, their team-level inability to consistently generate scoring chances at even strength became a genuine weakness, one that ultimately proved fatal to their ambitions in the second round of the playoffs.
It's evident that the Canucks have thoughtfully approached making sure this year's team is more consistently dangerous off of the rush. And there's evidence of a holistic approach in diagnosing the issue, targeting the personnel who can help in this specific area — adding Jake DeBrusk , Danton Heinen , Kiefer Sherwood and Daniel Sprong in free agency — and then making systematic adjustments in how the Canucks play to take advantage of what their new wingers can add to the club's north-south attacking threat.
Training camp was unusually focused on breakout drills and transition work. One drill especially caught our eye, given the breakout "landmarks" Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet referenced throughout camp, in which the weak side winger slashes off of the wall and into the middle of the ice along the offensive blue line while the defender starts the breakout. Meanwhile, the centre moves to the weak side wall, and the strong side winger skates at full tilt into the zone.
This breakout creates the option for a deflection into the zone or a skilled play from the weak-side winger who can attempt to send in one of their slashing teammates behind the defence out wide with a deft touch.
This breakout we saw on Day 2 of camp accomplishes a couple of really interesting things for Vancouver. First off, it's a look that allows the team to attack at a remarkable pace through the neutral zone, which is key. Second, however, even if the Canucks can't regularly pull off the home run play on this breakout, the median outcome from it still takes advantage of the team's strengths.
Vancouver has been an exceptional forechecking team over the past few years, and a variety of their key personnel — from J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson through to Dakota Joshua, Pius Suter , Nils Höglander and Conor Garland — excel at being disruptive forces as the first forward into the zone (the F1 ). If the weak-side winger can make a skilled play or weight a deflection so that their linemates get the puck at full pace and can challenge a defender out wide one-on-one, great. If the weak-side winger is simply able to deflect the puck into the zone, then the structure of the breakout serves to put Vancouver's disruptive centremen into position to be the F1, as opposed to the F3, which takes advantage of what Pettersson, Suter and Miller can accomplish as forecheckers — while moving at incredible pace as the opposition defender attempts a retrieval.
"It's a weird drill because you're (cutting in), you're looking back, the puck could bounce weird," said DeBrusk. "But it's about the thought process, not really about the reps being super clean. ... As forwards, we're going and we're going to certain spots. Anytime you know where you should be going on the ice, it gives you a better chance. Even if there's a breakdown, it's organized."
That's the point, structurally. Theoretically, either way, it should work.
We saw from the Tocchet, Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford troika last season how the club was able to thoughtfully approach taking a quantum leap forward as a defensive team: Get big defenders, get forwards with pace who can backcheck, manage the puck conservatively in the offensive zone and get cult-like buy-in, and one of the league's most permissive units became one of its stingiest year over year. It was a remarkable turnaround.
We're not necessarily predicting the Canucks will have the same level of worst-to-first success upgrading as a rush-attacking team this season, but watching the team work on rush drills during camp, it certainly had the explicit look and feel of a plan coming together.
"Wanting to play faster, wanting to use my speed, that's something they said they liked about me," DeBrusk said, recalling the conversations he had with management during the summer. "They wanted to play a transition game and they thought I could fit into that."
We spend a lot of time during camp and the preseason talking about roster battles, but in truth, in the NHL's hard cap era, most rosters are 90-95 percent set before the puck drops at training camp.
Opportunity is scant, and when it arrives, it's more likely to arrive in-season or as a result of injury, as opposed to because a certain player won a roster spot outright at camp — although that does happen.
There are definitely jobs available in this Canucks lineup, but the competition is more about minutes and roles, as opposed to being about roster spots. That competition will largely play out between a variety of players — guys like Heinen, Sherwood and Höglander — who are clearly bound for the NHL roster.
Let's illustrate this directly. Here's how we're projecting Vancouver's forward lines, for now, with what we feel very confident about filled out directly and the jobs that are still a matter of internal competition marked with an "X" as unknown.
So that's five jobs for wingers available until Joshua returns to the lineup. And here are those contenders, which we've tiered below.
The tiers reflect the following criteria: In the top tier are the obvious NHL players on contracts who can't be fully buried in the American League. At the very least they'll fill out the fourth-line wing spots. We put Jonathan Lekkerimäki in his own tier given he's never played an NHL game and is on an entry-level contract. We also put Daniel Sprong in his own tier because the club values the right-handed shooting and power-play utility enough that they chased him in free agency, but at his annual average value, nothing is guaranteed. The next group consists of depth wingers the Canucks utilized when the chips were down in the playoffs last season. And the next tier includes Sammy Blais , who is on a PTO, and Arshdeep Bains , who the club didn't turn to in the playoffs last season.
When you really diagram it, there's minimal opportunity available for the Lekkerimäki, Linus Karlsson , Bains and even Phillip Di Giuseppe tier of winger this preseason. Maybe there's one open job available on the NHL roster, and even that opportunity may only exist short term as a result of Joshua's indefinite absence.
3. That said, Lekkerimäki enters the preseason with a shot
Right off the bat, Lekkerimäki can attack off the rush at a professional level. We know the club has prioritized improving in that area more than any other this offseason. That would seem to create some favourable headwinds for the 20-year-old rookie, especially given his play off the puck looked more advanced than we expected throughout camp.
Certainly, Lekkerimäki turned the heads of his teammates and linemates in Penticton.
"He's ahead of where I was when I broke into the league, in terms of making plays," DeBrusk said of Lekkerimäki. "I was more simple at his age, I was scared to make a play. I'd just get downhill and get to the net. I was playing with David Krejci, I was more so trying to drive it. Give it to Krejci at all costs, kick out and go to the net and fly. He sees the game really well, and you learn as you play, but he's ahead of where I was at that age."
Lekkerimäki will still have work to do in preseason action to earn a look when the regular season begins, but we should elevate how realistically we're viewing the possibility of him being a Game 1 option for Tocchet. It's still early, but it seems like it's trending toward being a serious consideration.
As impressed as we were by the upgraded speed and rush attacking focus at Canucks training camp, we were equally worried about the state of Vancouver goaltending.
Those concerns were allayed somewhat as the weekend rolled along, especially after Artūrs Šilovs stole the show at the scrimmage and the Canucks signed Kevin Lankinen. Still, when you consider the full picture, it does feel like the other side of the coin in comparison with how the Canucks thoughtfully approached levelling up as an attacking team this offseason.
Where the upgraded rush personnel feels like a thoughtful part of a whole, the vibes in net for the Canucks couldn't be worse. The club has cast goalie coach Ian Clark's departure as a surprise, which hangs over this somewhat, especially given how Clark's star pupils have historically fared in their first seasons away from his tutelage. Then there's the uncertainty about Thatcher Demko , as he attempts to recover from an unprecedented muscular injury, which will linger even after he returns.
Šilovs has a lot of talent, but he's battled inconsistency in his professional career. Jiří Patera didn't look the part of a credible NHL option at camp. Nikita Tolopilo is obviously talented but hasn't had a game of NHL experience yet.
When you consider the whole picture, adding a veteran like Lankinen, with a real NHL body of work as an average goalie, feels like a huge relief. Even if we buy Tocchet's argument that the Canucks will be able to fall back on their sturdy defensive form to insulate whoever is in net, and we should, adding Lankinen is a key steadying move. It should help the Canucks avoid any worst-case scenarios.
Vancouver's 2022 seventh-round pick Kirill Kudryavtsev turned heads at Young Stars and during training camp.
The young Russian-born defender even earned a promotion during camp, the only significant lineup change the Canucks made to either of their NHL-level groups, and was elevated to play alongside Tyler Myers .
Though Kudryavtsev didn't shine in the scrimmage necessarily, there's a lot about his game — the puck-moving ability, the versatility to fill in on the right side, the lack of panic, the weight on his passes — that looks NHL level, or thereabouts, right now.
Now, obviously that's an exciting prospect for the Canucks. Teams are always in need of credible options on the back end, and Kudryavtsev might be one in the short term. It's important to distinguish, however, between a player who's ready early and a player with significant NHL upside.
Sometimes players, especially somewhat undersized left-handed defenders like Michael Del Zotto or Victor Mete in the past, are capable of making an instantaneous NHL impact upon leaving the major junior ranks. And ultimately those players are still more likely to top out as NHL-level depth options throughout their career, as opposed to top-four horses NHL teams can count on to log major minutes on a winning team.
If Kudryavtsev plays NHL games for the Canucks this season, or even pushes to make the team out of camp (although that seems far less likely), that would be an incredible development for Vancouver. It would give the club a ton of options, and also a valuable out-of-nowhere trade asset to consider spending on higher-leverage upgrades.
As I considered Kudryavtsev's progress and readiness this week, the crucial distinction between a prospect's arrival date and their probable upside stuck in my mind. It's something to keep in mind if Kudryavtsev can stick around as the roster reductions accelerate once we get into the NHL preseason.
