Canucks: How to prepare for a game in just two practices

Unlike his old coach Rick Bowness, Canucks coach Manny Malhotra is really happy with what he's seen from all his players at Canucks training camp.

PENTICTON — Long ago, NHL training camps were rife with fights. Usually they involved players who had no hope of making the team, but the idea was that the tougher the training camp, the more hard-hitting, literally, the better for the youngest players in camp.

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The idea was to toughen you up.

The closest thing we’ve seen to a fight in recent Vancouver Canucks camps featured Conor Garland getting annoyed with teammates: in 2023 he had a minor scuffle with Dakota Joshua; in 2024 he had another with Filip Hronek.

But that’s it. It’s been a long, long time since a proper toe-to-toe fight took place.

What you get are feisty moments, like on Friday when Max Sasson and Linus Karlsson dug in deep in drills against each other.

The two are good friends, so it was no surprise that each grinned when asked about how hard they had gone at each other.

“Before the practice we talked about it,” Sasson grinned. “I like going against him. That’s definitely his best attribute: probably in my opinion one of the best in the world at those one-on-one battles in the corner.

“His stick is extremely strong. When you think you got a step, he’ll take it, and when he takes it, it’s extremely hard with his big body,” Sasson explained. “I think he uses his IQ to kind of manoeuvre around. He’s incredible at it. He’s always been incredible at it.”

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For his part Karlsson smiled about the compliment from his friend.

“It’s my bread-and-butter,” the big Swede said.

That kind of intensity is what Canucks head coach Manny Malhotra is after: with just two days of practice before Saturday’s opening pre-season game in Seattle, and with the new CBA restricting players to just two pre-season games each, getting up to speed and getting reps in right away is essential.

And so even though you would like to have practised more before stepping onto the ice for any kind of game, here we are. The systems will just have to solidify as they go.

And Sasson says that even though they’ve only had a couple days with their coach proper, the fact that they were all skating together in captain’s skates over the past two-plus weeks does help them get prepared physically, even if they’re only just starting to absorb the way Malhotra wants them to defend, to break out the puck, to forecheck.

“We’ve been battling against each other for three weeks … and it’s going to be fun to play something else,” Sasson added. “I think whoever gets to go to Seattle will be excited.”

Drew O’Connor has just enjoyed the intensity of Thursday and Friday.

“I think at this time, without the grind of the season weighing down on you I always feel great,” the veteran winger said. “Even after like pre-season, I always feel awesome. Even after four hard practices, you feel so good because you don’t have that half a season that has built up of tiredness from playing so many games. I think it’s important to push ourselves at this point of the year, just to get ready for the season.”

Malhotra said he’s very pleased with how all his players improved from Thursday to Friday and of how high the overall quality of effort and execution was.

“Trying to cover all your systems in two days is a tall task, so we feel that we’ve done a good job of touching on everything just to make sure that they have an understanding of what it’s supposed to look like,” he said. “Our main focus tomorrow is going to be about the execution of the details that we’ve talked about, and then again the overall compete of the game.”

But there’s also just the adrenalin of getting the ship launched. It’s not much different from being a player, he said in conclusion.

“As coaches, we want to get into the action as well. It’s been a long time, it’s been a long summer of planning and putting together meetings and talking about the way we want it to look,” he said. “So yeah, we’re excited to get into that game environment again to see what it looks like.”

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