Vancouver Canucks Tanking 101: The Right Model of Tanking
By David Joun
Tanking for the Vancouver Canucks might be as difficult to do as making the playoffs. No. Really.
The Vancouver Canucks are going to require a plan if they were to tank. Aside from the ultimate question — whether they should tank or not — this might be the most important thing to do: to map out the trajectory of this disgraceful trip to the bottom of the standings.
Rest assured. The Canucks are not the first team to try this art of #TankNation.
Tanking isn’t about losing. Tanking is simply a potentially painful way of creating a contender. It essentially achieves the same ultimate goal as a successful youth movement achieves — winning Lord Stanley’s hardware.
And as you will see, there are many different ways to build a contender. There are many ways to tank in building a contender, there are many different models of tanking.
Is trying to replicate a particulate model of tanking the right thing for the Canucks, or does Jim Benning need to find some originality and create a Vancouver’s model of tanking?
The unique thing about Vancouver this season is that the youth movement happens to coincide with the potential tank. On that note, could it be the youth movement that is actually causing the 2015-16 struggle? Can’t think so.
What I do think is that the Canucks are not alone this season.
Canada has a 67% chance of landing #NHL's No. 1 pick. All 7 teams mashed 22d to 30th place: https://t.co/3ctpVbqRa3 pic.twitter.com/04BAh9srD5
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) February 16, 2016
67 percent. Yikes. Should we be cringing to that figure or celebrating? It might not be long until every Canadian team has its own version of Connor McDavid.
Anyhow. The Canucks find themselves in a unique situation, potentially tanking with aging stars in Daniel and Henrik Sedin, rising stars in Bo Horvat, Jared McCann, Jake Virtanen, Jacob Markstrom, and Ben Hutton, and potentially more youth making waves in Thatcher Demko and Brock Boeser.
If the Canucks do tank, they can’t mess this up. So the quest to establish the right model of tanking begins… Continuing the Tanking 101 series, let us find the right model of tanking for these Vancouver Canucks.
Next: Model No. 1: Tanking in Edmonton