Quote:
Shane O’Brien’s commitment to training, to losing weight, to being in the best shape of his life, has been there for months.
It’s only recently he’s had to change his motivation.
What started out this summer as his pursuit of the big, top-four minutes put up for grabs the second Mattias Ohlund left has turned into a fight to keep the minutes he already had.
Unexpectedly and quickly, the Canucks defence has become one of the NHL’s deepest defensive units.
Certainly, the deepest Vancouver has ever seen.
With an atypical 10 defencemen on one-way contracts, the overcrowded blueline is making Vancouver’s West End seem comfortably spacious. It’s changed everything.
“I wanted to work hard. With Ollie leaving there was some ice time opening up. That’s what I thought about,” O’Brien said.
“But when they brought in a few more D, now I'm thinking I have to have a good camp just to stick around.
“There was a first ‘oh-oh’ because I didn’t see it coming. I heard some rumours about some other stuff, which you hear just living and playing in Canada. But obviously when they pick up 10 defencemen on one-ways, you’re kind of wondering, ‘What’s going on?’ “But if I learned anything last year, it was you can’t worry about the stuff you can’t control and you can’t control who they pick up. You can just make the decision tough on them.”
There will be some tough decisions ahead for the Canucks.
So far, the company line has been the best players will make this team, end of story. The brass has scoffed at the notion the Canucks have salary cap concerns.
But the reality is the Canucks could be millions over, depending on the 23 who make the team. Something has to give.
“I do know what you mean,” coach Alain Vigneault said in the only nod yet from the Canucks that they may have to make decisions based on financial reasons.
The way it’s shaping up now, Kevin Bieksa, Alex Edler, Willie Mitchell, Sami Salo, Christian Ehrhoff, and Mathieu Schneider are the betting favourites for the top six spots.
That would leave O’Brien on $1.6 million and Brad Lukowich at $1.567 million, in the Nos. 7 and 8 slots.
Can any team in the NHL afford the luxury of having that kind of money invested in their seventh and eighth defencemen?
If the Canucks need to get under the cap, it could mean Lukowich, or even O’Brien, get pinched.
All of the defencemen, including Aaron Rome and Lawrence Nycholat (seeded nine and 10 for now), have to clear waivers.
There is a chance the modest pay raise O’Brien earned last year may bite him in the end. “It’s a salary cap era, if you do get a little bit of a pay raise and things happen where they can't slide you under, the next thing you know you're on waivers,” said O’Brien, who would get picked up in a second if he was on waivers.
“If you thought about it every day and let it get to you, you would feel uneasy. But I think I’m a good enough player to play in the NHL every night. Hopefully, it’s here with the Vancouver Canucks. If you don’t believe you can play and you don't believe you belong, then you’re behind the eight ball already.
“They brought guys in because they want to make it competitive and it is competitive.” O’Brien is certainly ready for the competition. He weighed in for training camp at 223 pounds.
That's 20 pounds less than what he weighed last year when he came to Vancouver.
“It wasn’t easy,” O’Brien said. “But I talked to [conditioning coach Roger Takahashi] a lot, I followed the Canucks program, along with my trainer back home. There’s no secret, just a lot of vegetables and a lot of salad, a lot of fish and not so many beers after 18 holes of golf. It was tough but I want to be a part of this team.
“I feel good, right where I am right now. I feel strong, I feel I have that little half step that I didn't have last year. I'm going to work hard to stay at this weight.”
Vigneault “loves the fact” the Canucks have so much internal competition: “It should make our team better. It goes to our ownership. Our ownership wants to win and they’ve given management all the tools necessary for us to be successful.
“If you look at last year, we sent three guys who were on one-way contracts to the minors, because some other guys had come to camp and played better than him. “Anyone who comes here that deserves to play on this team, are going to be here.”
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| http://www.theprovince.com/sports/ho...835/story.html Quote:
Looking for role models, Steve Bernier found a good one in Ryan Kesler.
Trying to get over a frustrating season in which he showed everything but finish, Bernier is ready for a new start. He sees hope in what Kesler did last year, the way he exploded out of the box, blowing away expectations by becoming an offensive impact player in the season's second half.
"I remember seeing Kes at the end of last year and all this confidence he had," Bernier said. "It was unbelievable. He always had the puck on his blade, he was always skating. He was in front of the net, he was battling. The puck would always find him and he was able to put the puck in the net.
"You just have to follow a guy like that, take inspiration from what he did. I take a lot from him, in watching what he's been able to do. Hopefully, I'll be able to do it the same way this year."
The Canucks should be so lucky.
Bernier remains a project. It's hard to argue with his untapped potential. But there's lots of polishing to be done.
He is one of three Canucks -- Kyle Wellwood and Shane O'Brien being the others -- who management urged to lose significant weight this offseason. The theory was that Bernier would get faster without sacrificing too much size.
Down about 15 pounds from last year, Bernier gets his first chance to test drive his new physique against Anaheim tonight.
"The way I feel is way better than it was," Bernier said. "We'll try it and see what happens. I didn't realize before how heavy I was.
"I'm not worried about it taking away from my physical game. I didn't lose 50 pounds."
But, weight aside, the biggest issue dogging Bernier this season will be scoring chances. Burying them once came so easy. That wasn't the case last year. When missed opportunities piled up, so did frustration. He went into the offseason searching for answers. We will soon know if he found any.
"There's a lot of ways to do it," Bernier said. "I don't know if I had the right way to do it, but at least I tried.
"I was doing power skating and, at the same time, I was doing my finishes at a fake goalie where I'd shoot it in a hole. That's not even close to game pace but at least I was trying to practise it."
Power skating and being leaner should make Bernier quicker, allowing him, at least theoretically, even more scoring opportunities.
This we know: Nothing will be handed to Bernier. It won't be like last season, when he was picked to play with the Sedins and given every opportunity to stick there. But there is opportunity.
An injury to Pavol Demitra has cleared a spot among the Canucks' top-six forwards. Count Bernier as one of the players who wants in.
"Hopefully, this is the year I bounce back," Bernier said. "Last year, I didn't score as many goals as I was supposed to. I didn't finish enough of the scoring chances I had. You need to score goals. This is a new season and I'm going to try my best to prove I can be a top forward again."
The other Canucks who will play tonight include Roberto Luongo, who should start, Cory Schneider, Kevin Bieksa, Alex Edler, Darcy Hordichuk, Ryan Johnson, Ryan Kesler, Mason Raymond, Sami Salo and Kyle Wellwood.
- - -
SHARK, SABRE, CANUCK ... STEVIE B'S LAST 3 SEASONS
Regular Season Playoffs
Year Team GP G A Pts PIM GP G A Pts PIM
2007-08 San Jose (NHL) 59 13 10 23 62 -- -- -- -- --
2007-08 Buffalo (NHL) 17 3 6 9 2 -- -- -- -- --
2008-09 Vancouver (NHL) 81 15 17 32 27 10 2 2 4 7
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| http://www.theprovince.com/sports/Be...801/story.html Quote:
Sergei Shirokov sought out a pair of former teammates before leaving a front-line role in his native Russia to start over as a Vancouver Canucks prospect.
The advice he received from Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin, both onetime linemates during a junior career that produced 13 points in 12 games at two world championships, was simple.
"Go. Try. You'll be happy and successful," Shirokov said with translation help from the Canucks' amateur Russian scout, Sergei Chibisov.
Following that advice was more difficult, but Shirokov has already checked the first three items off the to-do list, and the fourth may soon follow.
While the slick winger still relies on assistance dealing with the media, there are already signs the 17 goals and 41 points he recorded as CSKA's leading scorer last year in the Continental Hockey League (KHL) will translate more easily into the NHL.
Just eight days into his first NHL training camp, Shirokov has established himself as a contender for a top-six forward role that opened up after Pavol Demitra announced he'll miss the start of the season recovering from shoulder surgery. He was often dominant while picking up three assists in a pair of exhibition games during prospects camp, and a thunderous payback hit helped ease any lingering doubts the 5-foot-10, 165-pound right winger could adjust to a more physical style of hockey on this side of the Atlantic.
But it's been off the ice - first in a Russian courtroom and now in the Canucks' locker room - where the always smiling Shirokov has made his greatest impression.
"Here's a guy that from what I understand speaks very little English, but he was getting involved with his teammates, was trying to talk to the trainers, and was really outgoing," head coach Alain Vigneault said. "That tells us that the kid really wants to be here."
Considering the path Shirokov took to get here, that shouldn't have been in question.
As if leaving family, friends, a starring role and a tax-free $500,000 (all figures U.S.) salary behind wouldn't be hard enough for any 23-year-old, Shirokov had to take his famed Red Army team to court for the right to do so. And he did it despite a frank face-to-face assessment from Canucks senior adviser Stan Smyl that he'll probably start his North American career in the minors, riding buses for $60,000 a season and living in Winnipeg.
"It wasn't that comfortable but all my dreams were to come here," Shirokov said, never losing the permanent grin as he shrugged off reports of pressure tactics from KHL chair Slava Fetisov, and CSKA coach/general manager Sergei Nemchinov.
"NHL now is the best league in the world and every player likes to come over and play NHL."
Few from the KHL do. But even after an arbitrator ruled in favour of KHL regulations that force all players under 28 to re-sign with their current team, Shirokov refused, leading to a one-year suspension. So while fellow arbitration case loser Denis Parshin returned to CSKA, Shirokov joined Florida Panthers prospect Evgeni Dadonov as the only young Russians to leave this summer, joining a Canucks team that drafted him 163rd in 2006.
Smyl, who spent much of a 10-day visit to Moscow last season answering questions from Shirokov about the NHL and Canucks, believes his willingness to leave so much behind is based on an outgoing nature that his new teammates say is already evident in attempts at locker room banter. But he adds it is also a function of a sincere belief he will soon be earning the $875,000 NHL portion of the rookie-maximum contract he signed.
"That's why I came here," Shirokov repeated when asked about expectations.
There is work to be done. Like junior and college prospects getting their first taste of the NHL, Shirokov must adjust to higher intensity on the ice and in the training room. A lack of speed won't help, but he already handles the puck as well as anyone on the team, and Smyl believes his personality will ease both the cultural and hockey adjustments.
"Some of the Russian players I've played with and coached, there always seems to be a wall with trust that's not there with him," said Smyl, comparing Shirokov's character to a former teammate, Igor Larionov.
"The trust has always been there, and those walls are already broken down with his personality. He's very outgoing, he likes to smile a lot, and he makes you laugh with the jokes and comments he comes up with."
| http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sport...rticle1290777/ |
