Canucks are in a ‘building’ phase. How does that suit Rick Tocchet?

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For years, no matter who has been in charge of the Vancouver Canucks has avoided saying “rebuild.”

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First there was Trevor Linden’s “re-tool,” which, in fairness, was actually about building up the prospect pool: “we feel we can be competitive and retool our prospect pool,” he said in a post-season press conference 10 years ago. A full-on tear it down to the studs, accept a couple season of ugly losing while marinating a crop of youngsters in junior or the minors just wasn’t in the cards, he insisted.

Two years later, Linden actually said the word “rebuild.” A year later, he was gone.

In 2019, a year after Linden was tossed over the side, GM Jim Benning claimed he’d been rebuilding the team since 2015, a statement that ran against his previous comments, like before the 2015-16 season when he said he thought his team would hit 100 points again, or in 2016, when he signed Loui Eriksson to play with the Sedins and traded Jared McCann to bring a big veteran defenceman in Erik Gudbranson.

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His actions were not those of someone rebuilding.

Early on in his tenure as GM of the Canucks Patrik Allvin described rebuild as an “interesting” word, then went on to explain how when he first joined the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2006 as a scout, the Penguins were at the end of a rebuilding phase, but then went on to win three Stanley Cups.

“We’re building every day,” he said in October 2022, when asked if he needed to just blow everything up and rebuild.

Fast forward to Tuesday. Allvin uttered “building” again, in conversation with The Athletic’s Pierre Lebrun. “I still think we’re in a building phase,” he told the NHL insider in Florida, where the NHL’s general managers are meeting this week.

So where does this leave Rick Tocchet? He won the Jack Adams award as the league’s best coach last year, having led the Canucks to the franchise’s best season in a decade. He’s now in the midst of an immensely difficult season, as his team has underwhelmed, struggled with injury and essentially re-set its self-conception following the trade of J.T. Miller.

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With the addition of Marcus Pettersson and the emergence of Junior Pettersson and Victor Mancini and the likely arrival of Tom Willander, is this a new era of defence?

This is no longer a team that is leaning on veteran savvy. As of this writing, this is the eighth-youngest roster in the NHL. Tocchet is a passionate coach, a guy who loves teaching the game. A hockey evangelist, if you will.

“He’s well-liked by the players,” Allvin told Lebrun. “He’s a great communicator and also (has the) ability to hold guys accountable. We have a club option … But I sure hope that he’s going to be part of this organization moving forward. That’s a conversation that I hope we’ll get to the finish line here sooner rather than later.”

That contract question is now an elephant in the room. Tocchet, for his part, is hoping to avoid talking about it publicly. He told Sportsnet 650 on Tuesday morning that all his focus is on getting his team into the playoffs, that his contract is something for later. But leave no doubt, Allvin would like to move beyond simply holding an option year on Tocchet’s future — he’d like the coach around for longer, through the end of this building phase and beyond.

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Tocchet, for his part, doesn’t seem shy about the idea of building this team up. The process began last year, he thinks, even if shipping out Miller was not Plan A coming out of last season.

“A lot of new guys, we got some young guys in the lineup. To me, the a big thing is, what is it to be a Canuck? How you train, how you do it all,” Tocchet replied. “When you come the rink, this is how we’re supposed to do things. And we’re trying to build on that, and that’s a big part of it. Playing these important games is huge for the development of these guys: you know, pressure and all that sort of stuff. So we’ll see how we handle this next month.”

That, there, you know is Tocchet’s main question he will be looking to answer as he considers his future here: how do the new guys respond to this effort to build a team identity … and how do his veterans, like Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser, respond as well.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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