'Group chat was buzzing:' Vancouver Canucks believe locker room dysfunction is history | Daily Hive

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The state of the Vancouver Canucks locker room was worse than we thought.

The catastrophic downfall of the Canucks has been well-documented ever since the infamous feud between J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson. However, we’ve now learned that things didn’t demonstrably improve following his departure.

“It was really bad,” Canucks president Jim Rutherford said on Friday when asked about how dire things got in the locker room.

He also dropped another fascinating nugget, suggesting that things didn’t really improve until last month.

“Since the trade deadline, and since the young, character, energy players have come in here and stepped up to bring that energy in the room, the chemistry and the culture in the Canucks dressing room over the last five weeks is the best it’s been since I’ve been here.”

At the deadline, the Canucks shipped out veterans Tyler Myers and Conor Garland.

For Myers, he was seemingly a well-respected leader in the locker room.

“I love him. He’s been amazing to me since the first day, texting me, making me feel comfortable,” Buium told Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre when asked about his thoughts on the Myers trade.

While Rutherford said he didn’t want to point fingers at his end-of-season availability, his comments indirectly don’t reflect well on Garland.

And in case you don’t believe someone like Rutherford, who isn’t in the locker room on a daily basis, Canucks players have echoed similar thoughts on their increased togetherness.

“I can tell you, and every I’m sure every guy in here said this, you know, how much closer of a team we were,” Max Sasson said.

“Our group chat was buzzing every single day. We were going to dinners on the road,
everyone. I think there was a lot more buying in and a lot more energy around the group.”

“Even on the bench, I think we’ve had that conversation before, just about what a winning bench feels like. And I think the last 15 games, that was the closest that I’ve felt, at least in my time here, that everyone’s pulling the rope and everyone’s rooting for each other.”

Sasson has only been a full-time player for the Canucks since the end of October, but the longest-tenured Canucks veteran echoed a similar sentiment on Friday.

“We’ve hung out so much outside of the rink,” Brock Boeser said on Sportsnet 650’s Canucks Central.

“We’ve gotten together, and almost everyone shows up. I don’t think there’s a guy that hasn’t shown up. That just shows how much each guy cares for each other. And I think that’s important to just getting comfortable with guys.”

This narrative has been leaking out from Canucks players, coaches, and management over the past few weeks.

“It’s nice to see a room starting to take care of things themselves, which I think, for years, was missing here, and [Filip Hronek] is a big part of that,” Adam Foote said on March 11 when asked by Daily Hive about Hronek’s growing role as a leader on the team.

The Canucks may not be good next season, but at least they don’t appear to be a fractured group anymore.

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