Vancouver Canucks: “Winning Streak” a Silver Lining
The Vancouver Canucks might be hurting their draft lottery odds, but the two-game “winning streak” is a silver lining.
No competitive NHL team would seriously call two straight wins a winning streak, but for the Vancouver Canucks, it is one of the longest they have experienced all season. A silver lining in a terrible season.
Beating the San Jose Sharks 4-2 and the Anaheim Ducks 3-2 in back-to-back games put Vancouver into 25th in the league — or sixth in the draft lottery standings. Many Canucks fans are actively cheering for their team to lose, others just don’t get all that sad about losses. Landing one of Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine and Jesse Puljujarvi at the 2016 NHL Draft would be great, so what can be good about winning those totally meaningless games late in the season?
Winning Builds Confidence
Winning makes happy, it’s that simple. Nobody likes to lose, especially not as a professional athlete.
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You lose one, you say “oh well, we know what we can do and will get the ‘W’ next time.” You lose another one, you go “maybe we need to try harder next time.”
Once you lose three straight games, you start thinking “what are we doing wrong? What do we need to change?” Next thing you know, you lost five straight games — something the Canucks had to experience more than once this season. At that point, your confidence gets close to zero and you start to worry about every step you take.
Confidence is one of the most important things in all of sports. Athletes are at their best when they simply play without worrying about everything they do.
Once you lose your confidence, it is extremely hard to build it back up. Getting those two straight wins will certainly help the team believe in what they can do and help them remain confident.
Fighting for a Roster Spot
There is hardly a player on the Vancouver Canucks who has a spot guaranteed. Goaltenders Ryan Miller and Jacob Markstrom, defencemen Christopher Tanev and Alexander Edler, and forwards Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Jannik Hansen, Brandon Sutter and Bo Horvat don’t need to worry about their roster spot for next season.
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Everyone else, including stand-out rookie Ben Hutton, needs to fight for their spot every single game, as well as in the off-season.
Since I mentioned Hutton, he is waiver-exempt and is on a cheap entry-level contract. Therefore, he could easily be sent to the American Hockey League if he stopped performing as well as he did all season.
The same goes for rookies Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann, as well as everyone else who is waiver-exempt.
Last but not least, the Canucks showed how little they care about contracts or the past when they sent Chris Higgins and Brandon Prust down to the Utica Comets. The same could happen to Alexandre Burrows, Luca Sbisa or anyone else.
Bottom line: almost every player needs to fight for his spot and it is great to see that most of them do their best.
Losing Is Okay
Losing is okay. But, losing games when you are trying to win is better than trying to lose.
Tanking is an interesting concept. You lose, you get rewarded. It’s great, really. Except it’s totally terrible.
As mentioned above, every player on the Canucks should fight for his spot. Everyone should try their very best to win, keep the confidence high and the team culture intact.
If they still lose because they simply aren’t good enough to win regularly, it obviously sucks, but it is okay. As sad as it is, trying is all they can do, and as long as they do that, everything is fine.
Once they start giving up and lose game on purpose, everything starts going downhill. Not downhill as in finishing at the bottom of the standings this year, but rather becoming a terrible team in the long term.
The Edmonton Oilers 2.0 if you will.
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Is that a bit dramatic? Maybe. But there is also a lot of truth to it.
The Vancouver Canucks are on an active two-game winning streak they will hopefully keep going when they face the Los Angeles Kings on Monday. Go Nucks!