The Vancouver Canucks have come under fire for a while now regarding their lack of a dedicated practice facility for the players. For the longest time, it was the Canucks and the Calgary Flames who were the only two teams in the NHL to not have plans for a practice facility. However, back in April of 2023, the city of Calgary announced their plans to build a new event space that will include a new rink and practice facility for their NHL team. Because of this, Vancouver has been the lone NHL team without a practice facility for the past two years. But could this change in the near future?
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Vancouver’s lack of a practice facility has been a hot discussion topic recently. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman had mentioned that this was one of the things that former Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet had an issue with when deciding whether to stay with the organization or not. Even back in September of 2023, Tocchet had brought up this issue, explaining that it could have been a reason as to why some players chose not to come back to Vancouver early for regular season preparation.
“I can’t be disappointed players were not here in mid-August because they probably had a facility or something where they were,” he had said to Sportsnet at the time.
Clearly, many inside and outside of the organization have wanted the Canucks to have a practice facility for awhile. This question also arose during the end-of-season media availability for Canucks President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford and General Manager Patrik Allvin.
Canucks Patrik Allvin And Jim Rutherford Speak On Rick Tocchet’s Contract, Practice Facilities, And Ticket Prices
On Monday, the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/vancouver-canucks">Vancouver Canucks</a> held their end of season media for Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford. Here are three notable topics they discussed.
“We’ve tried hard to form a partnership with some of the local rinks. And, you know, we need 20,000 square feet that we can build a dressing room on to the rink somewhere, and then just you use the ice. And we’ve tried three or four different facilities, and for different reasons. It didn’t work out. I do feel we have more people working on this now,” Rutherford had claimed just over a month ago. “We have more people working on this, and it looks like a new facility is going to have to be built to get this done, and there’s a couple of parcels of land that have been targeted, and that’s what we’re trying to work on now, but it’s going to take a while, and we’re all disappointed in that.”
However, this practice facility saga could have a possible conclusion in the near future. Both Rutherford and Allvin, as well as other members of the Canucks organization Michael Doyle (President of Business Operations) and Dax Aquilini were seen checking out Rosemary Brown Rec Centre in Burnaby earlier today. CHEK TV’s Rick Dhaliwal confirmed this report as well, while Irfaan Gaffar of Down to Irf also claimed that the team visited Britannia Community Centre beforehand.
While the team has yet to reach a conclusion to this issue as of now, it looks as though they are taking the necessary steps to give the team a dedicated practice facility. Whether this happens sooner or later is still up in the air.
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