Canucks mailbag: How the staff will handle the accidents to come back

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Because the Canucks head to Toronto for a recreation on Saturday on Hockey Night time in Canada after which a recreation Sunday in Montreal, Vancouver followers stay euphoric. The wave their staff is driving is really one thing particular.

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By successful 10 occasions of their first 13 video games, the Canucks have set a brand new staff file. And so they have began November at 4-0, the primary time they’ve performed so for the reason that heady days of the 2010-11 season.

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Listed below are three questions from followers concerning the present state of the Canucks:

Alongside the traces of accidents, I’m excited about the truth that after final season (if I’m remembering accurately), they fired a lot of the medical staff and changed them. Does the staff discover they’re higher conditioned with the brand new med workers? Will they deal with harm restoration otherwise? — CVII by way of BlueSky

One of many massive issues Rick Tocchet highlighted throughout coaching camp was the hiring of Alex Trinca because the staff’s director of sports activities efficiency.

Trinca joined the Canucks from the Pittsburgh Penguins, the place he had been the staff’s energy coach and could be very aware of Tocchet and the Canucks’ high brass — he labored with all of them throughout Pittsburgh’s Stanley Cup successful seasons in 2016 and 2017.

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Simply from his LinkedIn web page, it’s clear he’s a specialist on the slicing fringe of athletic preparation and conditioning.

“In his time there he has been tasked with defining the imaginative and prescient and tradition of the efficiency division overseeing techniques and processes immediately associated to participant efficiency, each on and off the ice. He has oversight and is closely concerned within the choice making of a number of techniques inside the division, together with participant availability, readiness, reconditioning in addition to general sports activities science buildings, dietary help and supplementation,” he wrote on his LinkedIn about his duties with the Canucks, that are just like the function he stuffed with the Penguins.

Load administration is an enormous problem for any NHL staff, nevertheless it’s particularly powerful for any staff that travels as a lot because the Canucks do. Tocchet has spoken typically concerning the want for his squad to dial in on restoration.

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That has meant issues like not all the time flying proper after a recreation — their season-opening highway journey noticed them keep over in Nashville after the ultimate recreation of their five-game tour, flying the subsequent morning in order that they might get a correct night time’s sleep as an alternative of speeding to the airport post-game and spending 5 hours flying residence in the midst of the night time.

Sustaining your health over the course of the NHL season is nearly unattainable, due to what number of energy gamers burn in a recreation. They’re continuously in caloric deficit, scrambling to refuel as typically as they will. The staff’s earlier energy and conditioning staff had been very a lot conscious of the challenges of being a west coast staff and did their finest to set the gamers up for achievement.

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If Trinca’s strategy is healthier, the proof might be within the pudding. To this point, contact wooden, the Canucks haven’t had a critical tissue harm. Teddy Blueger bruised a bone blocking a shot, however in any other case the staff appears in general good well being.

What occurs when one of many core will get injured? Will the staff rise to the event? — Simon L. by way of BlueSky

A superb associated query. This may certainly be the hardest check for the staff.

No staff can actually survive dropping a front-line participant for any prolonged quantity time, but when there’s a short-term harm to the likes of Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek or Thatcher Demko, the Canucks ought to be capable of handle.

A part of the rationale Pius Suter was signed throughout the low season was as a result of his first two seasons within the NHL he performed borderline second-line minutes. It’s clear he’s finest suited to third-line minutes, which he received final 12 months in Detroit and has performed to date this 12 months in Vancouver, however he can play up the lineup in a pinch.

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And you realize that Miller, Boeser, Kuzmenko and Mikheyev would wish to choose up the slack over the quick time period. They couldn’t maintain it going over an extended stretch, however they’d have some leap over 5 video games that would make a distinction if both Miller or Pettersson had been misplaced for every week or two.

Similar goes for Hughes or Hronek — if one had been harm short-term, the opposite may step up their recreation some.

But when there’s a long-term drawback, that’s a distinct story.

The Canucks are extra gifted and higher structured than given credit score. They may recover from 100 factors and end a strong second. In the event that they play the Kings, they would be the residence staff. Win that one in 5. — John M. by way of e mail

The best way the Canucks are capturing the lights out and the best way Thatcher Demko is stopping nearly each shot his approach proper now simply received’t sustain. In some unspecified time in the future, each are going to slide some. However John’s prediction isn’t that outlandish.

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They at present have 21 factors. There are 69 video games left to be performed. Even when they win solely half their remaining video games, they’ll break the 90-point barrier.

And given final 12 months’s Canucks truly received yet another recreation than they misplaced, it appears very doubtless this present staff will handle at the least the identical, and possibly higher.

To get to 100 factors on the 12 months, they may want 79 factors from the remaining 69 video games, or a .572 factors proportion over the remaining video games. That’s very doable.

As for beating the Kings — that might be powerful. They’re deep, they’re on the rise, and you need to assume they’ll add one other participant or two to make them even higher.

Then once more, the Canucks may very nicely do this too. Would the Canucks be keen to half with a first-rounder to make an enormous commerce occur? I’m beginning to surprise that.

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