In 2002, THN chronicled the rise of the Vancouver Canucks. The Canucks needed – and got – big performances from stars Markus Naslund, Dan Cloutier and Trevor Linden as they rose through the standings.
The Vancouver Canucks have experienced a surge in their production of wins this season, but it wasn’t all that long ago when they were a legitimate Stanley Cup threat. Indeed, in this cover story from THN’s Dec. 20, 2002 edition – Vol. 56, Issue 16 – then-contributing editor Mark Brender examined Vancouver’s 2002-03 campaign and broke down their strong points. One of them was giving chances to their young core at the time.
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“What any player will tell you,” Canucks forward Brendan Morrison told Brender, “is they want an opportunity. And I think Vancouver has given that to every one of their guys. Right away I was put into key situations and given every opportunity to excel. Once you’re put in those situations, you get more confidence, you don’t want to let your teammates down, you don’t want to let the coaching staff or your fans down and you don’t want to let yourself down. So every night you’ve got something to prove.”
As for the Canucks’ on-ice strategy, Brender spoke to rival hockey minds and discovered Vancouver coach Marc Crawford’s approach to defense.
“Most teams have their third forward locked in the middle,” Phoenix Coyotes coach Bobby Francis said in the cover story. “(The Canucks) like to put their ‘D’ up. They do a good job of clogging up the neutral zone and as a result you have to do a lot of chip-and-support stuff and it’s tough to generate offense. They get into their quick transition when you turn the puck over…It’s an effective system.”
Canucks GM Brian Burke also spoke to the leadership provided by team cornerstones Trevor Linden, Markus Naslund and Morrison, and the importance of depth.
“There’s no question Markus and Trevor and Brendan are our offensive leaders,” Burke said. “But the other thing that makes our team go is that we do have lines two, three and four that can contribute and do contribute.”
Vancouver has had more than its share of hard times since it thrived more than 20 years ago, but Canucks fans can take some solace in the memories Canucks icons provided them many moons ago. Naslund remains a hero in his homeland of Sweden – he gave a Rolex watch to countryman Anton Forsberg in Ottawa’s win over Detroit in the 2023 Global Series on Saturday – and as Crawford noted, just about everything was going right for Vancouver that season.
“What has happened,” Crawford said, “is we’ve had a lot of things come together. There’s a lot of times when your neutral-zone play can be terrible and your offense can be great and your defensive-zone play can be terrible. You don’t get anything for it. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve had a lot of elements of our game going well.”
PACIFIC HEIGHTS
By Mark Brender
Vol. 56, Issue 16, Dec. 20, 2002
We can only assume Vancouver GM Brian Burke has his feet up as he rides Amtrak from Boston to Long Island, where he will hook up with his team before a inter-conference tilt versus the Islanders. It will be the fifth game of a season-high six-game road trip near the end of a calendar year so fine that the Canucks could boast a new pin-up boy for every month. The Sedin brothers could even double up as Mr. Octobers.
As Burke talks on his cell phone, a train whistle blasts in the background-heralding the arrival of the Canucks’ barnstorming road show, perhaps?
“Winning 10 in a row is tough for any team,” says Burke between whistles. “I don’t think it’s a fluke that we’re near the top of our conference. If we can keep our focus and our work ethic, I think we can sustain that. There haven’t been many passengers on this trip.” Burke repeats his mantra over and over – focus and work ethic, work ethic and focus. That he has the horses to keep the Canuck engine running, apparently, he takes as a given. So do the Canuck players. After they fell 2-1 to the Islanders Dec. 3 to snap their franchise record 10-game win streak, they bounced back the next night in New Jersey with a well-deserved 3-2 overtime win. Said Todd Bertuzzi, who scored the tying and winning goals, his 12th and 13th of the year: “We were pretty devastated after that loss on the Island. We wanted to make sure we got right back on the horse again.”
As much as the streak and the ascension into the NHL’s elite, the winning feeling and the team’s assumption that all the Canuck horses are already in place is the real story here. Because in someone’s eyes, not so long ago, most of these Canuck horses were donkeys, or if not donkeys then at least frisky, undisciplined colts a long, long way from the Preakness.
But look at them now, showing a champion’s discipline while collectively champing at the bit, waiting for the right moment to run wild.
This may be the only team in the league without a single player on the roster who has accomplished better things somewhere else at some other time than what he’s accomplishing in Vancouver right now. A collection of cast-offs never looked so good.
It begins with Mr. November, NHL player of the month Dan Cloutier. The goalie and his temper arrived in Vancouver in February, 2001, with 22 wins in 110 career NHL games. Burke saw him destined to be his No. 1 goalie on a winning team. Neither Tampa nor the Rangers saw the same thing. (Want to know the quickest way to get a Canuck mad? Ask him if he felt uneasy having Cloutier in goal after the Nicklas Lidstrom long bomb in last year’s playoffs. If the story isn’t dead, the next reporter who brings it up will be.)
Move on to captain Markus Naslund, tied for second in the NHL with 15 goals and fifth in points with 30. He was acquired by Vancouver back in 1996 for one Alek Stojanov. Pittsburgh GM Craig Patrick stabs himself with a pencil every time it’s mentioned. It may yet go down as the most lopsided trade in NHL history.
At around the time of the Naslund trade, the Islanders were trying to get winger Todd Bertuzzi to be Clark Gillies. With all due respect to Gillies, a recent Hall of Famer, maybe the Isles’ problem was aiming too low. Canuck fans were furious at then-GM Mike Keenan for making the deal, but Bertuzzi and Bryan McCabe for Trevor Linden turned out to be a steal; now Linden is back at home and Bertuzzi is the hardest-to-handle power forward in the game.
Then there’s center Brendan Morrison, who scored 46 points in 76 games for the Devils in 1998-99, playing less than 14 minutes a game and wasn’t important enough to keep around when the Canucks dangled Alexander Mogilny. The Panthers felt the same way about Ed Jovanovski when Pavel Bure was the bait. Can’t say their old teams gave up on these players, but they didn’t exactly see fit to build their teams around them, either.
And then there are Todd Warriner and Trevor Letowski and backup goalie Peter Skudra and…do we need to keep going?
“What any player will tell you,” Morrison says, “is they want an opportunity. And I think Vancouver has given that to every one of their guys. Right away I was put into key situations and given every opportunity to excel. Once you’re put in those situations, you get more confidence, you don’t want to let your teammates down, you don’t want to let the coaching staff or your fans down and you don’t want to let yourself down. So every night you’ve got something to prove.”
They already proved it to Burke, who was taking heat in the off-season for losing center Andrew Cassels and Jovanovski’s defense partner, Scott Lachance, to free agency without any obvious replacements. But Morrison effectively usurped Cassels’ No. 1 center role last season. As for depth on defense, Burke took care of that with two trades early this season.
“Basically at the blueline you take out Jason Strudwick and Scott Lachance and you put back in Sami Salo and Marek Malik,” Burke says. “We’d make that trade any time.”
They aren’t the most mobile defenders, but that’s where coach Marc Crawford comes in. While the Canucks are an exciting attacking team, they are as disciplined and well-coached in the neutral zone as anyone. They can also be unorthodox.
“Most teams have their third forward locked in the middle,” says Phoenix coach Bobby Francis. “(The Canucks) like to put their ‘D’ up. They do a good job of clogging up the neutral zone and as a result you have to do a lot of chip-and-support stuff and it’s tough to generate offense. They get into their quick transition when you turn the puck over…It’s an effective system.”
By putting a defenseman in the middle of the neutral zone, Crawford minimizes the chances they’ll get beaten to the outside. To counter, teams have to try to get the puck by the defense and force them to turn and chase it into the corner. Easier said than done.
Crawford says the Canucks have a number of different forechecking and neutral-zone systems they use at various times. “What has happened,” he says, “is we’ve had a lot of things come together. There’s a lot of times when your neutral-zone play can be terrible and your offense can be great and your defensive-zone play can be terrible. You don’t get anything for it. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve had a lot of elements of our game going well.”
Just to reiterate it’s not a fluke, consider that of Vancouver’s 13 wins in a recent 15-game stretch, 11 came against opponents playing .500 or better. Only one of the wins came in overtime. Diming its 10-game streak, Vancouver outscored opponents 41-20 and was ahead or tied 95 per cent of the time.
The top line of Naslund, Morrison and Bertuzzi, who together scored seven of the 10 game-winners, has been going guns blazing whenever they play together. Often, though, Morrison drops down a line to skate with Warriner and Letowski while Henrik Sedin moves up to spread out the attack.
“There’s no question Markus and Trevor and Brendan are our offensive leaders,” Burke says. “But the other thing that makes our team go is that we do have lines two, three and four that can contribute and do contribute.”
The power play, in the bottom third of the league for the first month, caught fire when Crawford put Sedin down low and moved Morrison back to the point with Jovanovski in early November. During the 10-game streak the Canucks went 15-for-48 (31.3 per cent) with the man advantage.
And as good as the power play has been, Cloutier has been better.
What’s most gratifying for Burke and Crawford is Cloutier has been able to refine his positioning and his mental outlook, just as they always hoped, while maintaining the competitive edge that drives his success. The litmus test this season came in a Nov. 12 game against St. Louis. Cloutier blew a fuse in a nasty second period exchange with Blues winger Scott Mellanby. He took a slashing penalty and a 10-minute misconduct, but stayed on the ice to stone the Blues right afterward in a flurry of shots.
In the boardroom and on the bench, there were knowing looks. The kid was keeping it together.
“His maturity is allowing him to focus much more,” Crawford says. “He knows what to focus back on (after an altercation) where in the past maybe he had the ability to calm himself back down, but didn’t know what to focus in on.”
Four months from now, the cast-off Canucks will focus in on the playoffs. This year the question isn’t if they'll get there, but how ready and rested they’ll be when the time comes.
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