The Canucks play host to the Winnipeg Jets on Monday night, and it's a big one: a win would mark the first time all season they'd strung together three victories in a row, which would go a long way towards their continued pursuit of a playoff spot.
Yes, I said that. A playoff spot. See, you may think the Canucks are out of it. Willie hears ya. Willie don't care.
"We're fighting for sure. We're still looking to make the playoff even with the young guys in the line-up. They make us better" - Desjardins
— Vancouver Canucks (@VanCanucks) March 14, 2016
Playoffs? You kiddin' me? Playoffs?! Yikes. One can expect this to elicit the typical chorus of snark from fans. Are the Canucks delusional?
No. They're professional. And furthermore, they recognize the value of the carrot, however conceptual it may be at this point: as the season winds down, there's more at stake than just a high draft pick.
I've said all year that I don't want the Canucks tanking. It's cheap, for one thing, and tickets aren't. People are still paying to attend these games. We want the Canucks ripping off their fans with a lesser effort? We undermine the product on the ice with the mere suggestion that the team might ever mail one in. (We also ruin our own enjoyment of the game. People were complaining after the last Canucks' win. You're a Canucks fan, dude. If you find yourself muttering after they win, you're doing it wrong.)
And, while I'm not entirely convinced by GM Jim Benning's recent assertion that "you lose your culture if you're bad for three or four years," I'm definitely willing to entertain an argument that you threaten your culture by expecting anything less than a complete effort from your roster, especially the young players. The Canucks are rebuilding, after all. They're trying to put together a new core, and if they want the future Canucks to be as focused and successful as the past Canucks, preserving their winning culture during the transition is an imperative.
"We need them to teach our young kids what it means to play the right way and play winning hockey," Benning told Iain MacIntyre. "If you lose that culture completely, then all you have is a bunch of young players with no direction."
In other words, tanking wouldn't just be a waste of development time. It runs the risk of undermining the development itself.
Furthermore, those young players have too much to play for right now to be coasting. This is a roster chock-full of maybes. Management's got a litany of personnel decisions to make, and their players have a scant 15 games remaining to present a case for themselves.
Young guys like Markus Granlund, Linden Vey and Emerson Etem know they need to play convincingly. Same goes for veterans like Radim Vrbata, Dan Hamhuis, Ryan Miller and Alex Burrows, who are either playing for a new contract, tradeability, or a veteran role in the new core.
I get that fans would like to see the Canucks draft Auston Matthews, or Jakob Chychrun. The Canucks would too. But they're going to have to come by it honestly, because there's too much else at stake to play any games beyond the 15 remaining on the schedule.
