Vancouver Canucks: Willie Desjardins’ Decision Making Is Not the Issue
Vancouver Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins has been highly criticised for the team’s lack of success. But it’s not his fault.
When Jayson Megna plays on your top line, you are probably not a good NHL team. At least that’s what most clubs would follow as a simple rule of thumb — but not Vancouver Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins.
To be fair, Megna is a quick skater who works hard every shift. He is a real grinder who pays the price to score — kind of like Jannik Hansen, who worked well on a line with Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin. The only problem here is that Megna, albeit paying the price to score, rarely scores.
And he hasn’t helped too much in other areas either.
Playing the Youngsters
So, now that GM Jim Benning has officially asked head coach Willie Desjardins to play the team’s young players more, fans are excited. Finally, no more Megna in the top six.
But what’s going to change?
The current lineup has Markus Granlund on the top line, Bo Horvat, Sven Baertschi and Reid Boucher on the second line. Nikolay Goldobin is still sick, and the rest of the younger players, like Joseph LaBate or Joseph Cramarossa do not project as top-six players anyway.
Plus, Megna has been out of the top six for a while now.
And, honestly, decisions like playing Megna in the top six were never the reason for Vancouver’s lack of success.
The Veterans
Megna has been getting a lot of the blame — poor guy — but he really shouldn’t be.
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The Sedin twins in their prime would have made just about any player look good, which is what they did for several years. This season, they got Loui Eriksson to work with, but they didn’t deliver.
Henrik currently sits at 13 goals and 42 points in 69 games, brother Daniel has just 13 goals and 38 points in the same amount of games. Daniel’s 40-goal times are over, and the 36-year-old is sporting a shooting percentage of 7.2 percent — only 2013-14 was worse — which is well below his career average of 11.3 percent.
Now, you can blame Megna for that again, but he really didn’t spend that much time with the twins. Plus, the Canucks were lacking alternatives.
As to Eriksson, the major free-agent signing of the summer sits at a disappointing 11 goals and 24 points. Some fans, and probably Jim Benning, expected at least 30 from him.
Going Forward
Say what you will, but Megna — or any other decisions Desjardins made — were never the issue. Had the Sedins and Eriksson scored like they used to, they would have played 27 minutes per night. But they didn’t.
Desjardins had to shuffle his lines regularly because of injuries and illnesses, and because nothing seemed to work. But had the veterans led the team like they were expected to, Desjardins’ work would have been much easier.
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Don’t get this wrong, this is not meant to be bashing the twins or Eriksson. We just need to accept that the veterans are not the players they used to be. The Canucks need to transition from a Sedin-centric team to one that is built around current young stars and prospects.
Megna shouldn’t be in the top six going forward, and he probably should not have spent so much time there in the past. But that is not the reason why the Canucks stand where they stand.