How do the Vancouver Canucks and general manager Patrik Allvin follow up on a 2023-24 campaign that unfolded in dream-like fashion?
Among the many looming questions that surround the club on the eve of training camp, most notably the health status of goaltender Thatcher Demko, the question of raising the bar stands out as a significant one. It’s clearly a preoccupation for Allvin and his head coach Rick Tocchet.
During the Young Stars tournament in Penticton, The Athletic caught up briefly with Allvin for a one-on-one discussion concerning Demko’s status, the future of the Okanagan-based prospect tournament, the Canucks’ elevated expectations and Brock Boeser’s future with the organization.
This interview has been edited for length and readability.
The top line your organization has put together — Arshdeep Bains, Aatu Räty and Jonathan Lekkerimäki — has dominated at this tournament. And yet they’re all wingers, or at least, Räty spent his most successful stretch of last season on the wing. What sort of opportunity is there for those players and how high of a bar will they have to clear given the wing depth that you brought in this summer?
It’s a good question, but I do believe that as we get better — both depth-wise and at the top of the lineup — we still need the competition.
One thing I know is that Rick Tocchet is not afraid to make some bold decisions. Whoever can contribute, whoever earns a spot to be on the roster, those are the guys he’s going to be comfortable giving a chance.
I’m excited to see a lot of our young players, what they’ve done in the summer, what they’ve done at this tournament and what they’re going to do next week at main camp. So I would hope they’re going to fight for a roster spot.
There’s a lot of excitement among Canucks fans about Lekkerimäki with how he’s played, and there probably should be. You like to say, however, that with player development, it’s a marathon and not a sprint. So what’s a realistic, more balanced set of expectations for what a successful first North American professional season would look like for Lekkerimäki?
We all know the difference of playing 82 games, playing every second day, playing back-to-back games, and playing in the American League — it’s tough. The mental side of it is a challenge as well.
My understanding is that Jonathan prepared himself really well in the summer, and my expectation is that he has that next-day mentality. How do I earn the next day during the camp, how do I earn my next game?
That’s why we have camp, to see how he handles bigger players and the intensity that will increase as camp ramps up. His ability to shoot and play with skilled players. I even think he might be one of those guys who fares better with more structure and playing with higher-skilled players.
For Räty, who ended the year on the wing but has played centre here, he’s still young enough that I’m curious as to whether or not your club might give him a longer look at centre — especially given the value of the centre ice position — regardless of how well he ended last season playing along the wall.
Yes. And if I have it right, he was one of our stronger faceoff guys in the American League. So I want to continue to play him at centre. It’s easier to go to the wing than it is to move back to the middle. So if he can continue to play in the middle, we’d prefer to see him develop there.
Cole McWard ends up not playing at this tournament, which moved Kirill Kudryavtsev to his off side up here in Penticton. He looked pretty comfortable, is there a chance you might look at it as a happy accident and that you might look at playing him on his off side as he turns pro here?
Absolutely, guys who have the ability to play both sides, it’s a huge benefit for the player and for the organization.
This is the second year of a two-year agreement to extend the Young Stars tournament in Penticton. What does the future of Young Stars look like from the Vancouver Canucks’ perspective?
Oh, we love to be here.
The fans in Penticton have shown up and shown their support. I think the teams that are here right now, they want to come back. Hopefully, once we’re done here, we’ll get an extension in place.
Pivoting to training camp, the question every Canucks fan is asking concerns Thatcher Demko and Artūrs Šilovs and their status going into the opening of camp.
I think we’ll know more here in the next couple of days regarding Demko with the medicals and if he’s going to be able to start camp or not. We need to have six goalies regardless for three groups, so if he’s not ready, we might just bring in a local guy so that we have six guys.
(Note: This interview was conducted on Sunday afternoon, and later that evening, the Canucks announced the signing of Dylan Ferguson to a professional tryout agreement.)
Brock is the top-line pending unrestricted free agent going into this season for your club. We know he’s made a home here and it’s clear from his ice time how highly the organization thinks of him. When a guy hits 40 goals and had never previously hit 30, how does that sort of explosion interact with how the club has to responsibly approach talks with that player?
Yeah, I think there are two sides to it. A player might be without an extension and might be hungry to prove that they deserve it. And with Brock, I’m happy that it looks like he’s going to be cleared here to attend training camp. He worked really hard this summer and it was a really unfortunate situation last year.
I was pleased, last year, with how he changed up his offseason training and it translated into a better year. Now our expectations are higher. I’m sure Brock’s expectations are higher, too.
So I want to see the consistency. I want to see the hunger — from every single player, including Brock — to come in here and keep raising the bar. And when the time is right, I feel that I have a good relationship with Brock and with his agent Ben Hankinson, so we’ll talk.
For now, his main focus is to come back here and play to the level that he showed last year. And even be more consistent.
I told him that he could’ve scored 50 goals, but I felt he took his foot off the gas when he scored 30 and we want to see him pushing through.
You’ve clearly gone to great length, and that process is going to continue throughout the season, to operate outside of long-term injured reserve (LTIR). How do you view the importance of that and how much of how you’ve handled it to this point was shaped by the money-in, money-out crunch you bumped into at the trade deadline last year?
Yeah, obviously it’s a challenge once you’re in LTIR. And we believe that we have different scenarios to not have to utilize LTI money prior to roster setting.
I wouldn’t say that it would be easier, but it would give us more options as we go along. I would prefer to be totally out of it, but that’s not going to be the case here.
We have some internal discussions about options to make it work the best and hopefully accrue some cap space (throughout the year).
Your club tried to retain Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov prior to free agency this summer but ended up prioritizing wingers and scoring and players who can fill roles and give you more forward depth than you had last year. Does that tell us anything about the areas that you felt your team needed to be better in, including, perhaps, generating scoring chances and offence?
It’s something me and Tocchet discussed after the season: What areas do we need to be better in?
We felt that we needed more options with more speed on the wing, and I think we were able to get them. Lindholm and Zadorov were excellent for us in the playoffs and it’s unfortunate that we couldn’t get further on extensions, but once you know that you’re not going to be able to sign pending free agents, you start looking at how to structure your team and who can you bring in that can play the way you want to play.
Obviously, getting a high-end player like Jake DeBrusk, probably the youngest unrestricted free agent out there, and he really wanted to play out west and play for the Canucks. We all know about his history of performing in big moments in the playoffs in Boston there, and he’ll give us more options with J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson and more skill, more speed.
You entered the season with Jim Rutherford’s assessment that “we’re a playoff team if everything goes right,” and needless to say, your club smashed that goal. In terms of raising the bar this season, how do you, your staff, the coaching staff, players, everyone have to approach raising the bar and that different level you’ve hit as an organization?
From Day 1 of training camp, we have to know there are different expectations.
There’s a different standard now. We have to raise our game right away. We’re not going to waste any time here.
We got the respect back last season, now teams are going to be ready to play us. If we’re just doing the same, we’ll end up with lesser or similar results. So how do we get better?
It starts with the coaches and the message they send to the players. Then it comes down to how we start Day 1, and then we go about building from there.
(Top photo: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
