Canucks Coffee: so what happened on trade deadline day?

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When Brock Boeser was a young player, finding his way in the NHL, he didn’t quite get how important the neutral zone was.

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He’d have the puck, skating through the middle of the ice and then he’d try some move to beat the defender fronting up to him.

And things would go awry. There’d be a turnover. The play would go back the other way.

“I just remember Greener used to get super mad at us for doing that all the time,” Boeser said, grinning, after Friday’s 3-1 win against the Minnesota Wild.

Boeser was answering a question about playing with Elias Pettersson, but using the answer to explain how he felt he’d evolved as a player. Five years ago, he skated on a line with Pettersson and J.T. Miller.

But as time went on, he developed chemistry on ice specifically with Miller. Miller was his centre last year when he scored 40 goals. It was a more direct game, one that didn’t have as much of the making plays through the middle of the ice game that Pettersson’s known to play. The straight ahead game cut down on his own mistakes. It suited him better.

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The implication was he had to learn guys like Pettersson can do that, but not so much himself.

“I evolved my game to playing more of a forechecking role and not turning pucks over (in the neutral zone),” he said. “Being hard to play against.”

He’s worked hard at improving his game, at making himself a two-way player, into a player who deserves to be well-paid. And so it was hard, you know it was hard, to hear the GM try to run down his value in Friday’s press conference. That the offers for Boeser were underwhelming.

But the truth is, having spoken with sources, that there were good teams interested in. Teams like the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes.

Florida’s interest waned once they discovered they could get Brad Marchand for just a conditional first round pick — it becomes a second rounder if the currently injured Marchand plays in less than 50 per cent of Florida’s playoff games. Obviously Vancouver was after a first-round pick in the deal; one assumes they’d have used the first rounder to trade for a different player, perhaps a centre?

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The Carolina talks were surely hampered by the reality that Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky laid out during his post deadline press conference, that the Dallas Stars dragging their feet on the Mikko Rantanen trade ended up limiting Carolina’s ability to make subsequent deals.

Carolina, a source said, had been trying to move Jesperi Kotkaniemi for some time. And obviously adding a centre like Logan Stankoven made Kotkaniemi even more tradable. We know he’s been offered to Vancouver before and Vancouver does need to improve its centre depth after the departure of J.T. Miller. He was involved in this offer, as was a first-round pick.

The hang up it would seem may have come down to a prospect. Carolina was after one of Vancouver’s, even though Canucks have a mountain of their own. And whoever it was, it seems like Vancouver didn’t want to part with him.

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And so now Boeser has to ponder his future here. He loves the city, the people, the fans. He grew into a true man in this town. He’s proud of how hard he worked to make himself a more complete player. He is the first to say he knows he can still be better.

But does he want to stick with this employer? That will be a question he’ll have to answer for himself.

The media thing

Here’s the thing about Patrik Allvin quipping that the media does a good job of upselling his players, do we? First of all the line didn’t land.

It didn’t land because this management group really does everything it can to operate inside a bunker. And that’s fine. They can do all this however they want.

But they certainly don’t do much to push their own narrative. The PR approach they’ve taken is much more formal and structured. That’s also fine, but if you’re resisting conversations around the edges, you’re killing opportunities for nuanced understanding of situations.

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This season has been bizarre to watch. And we still don’t really understand what’s gone on. The more information vacuums you create, the more opportunities you create for damaging chatter.

The youth thing

Management deserves credit for resetting the defence corps as well as the realistic window of this team: it’s now a younger group, something like the seventh-youngest in the league. The defence is more mobile, more dynamic. It should improve as a group.

And Tom Willander is still coming.

They still need to find another centre. But Jonathan Lekkerimäki has clear potential on the wing.

There’s bits of promise, of course they need more, so much more, but there’s reason to be optimistic about what’s here.

They need Pettersson to be the guy they’re paying him to be. And if he gets there, then it all makes sense.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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