It feels like the Vancouver Canucks have been manufacturing consent for a Filip Hronek captaincy for a couple of months now.<\/p>\n
And then Jim Rutherford outright said that Hronek is a candidate for the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t got to that point yet; that will be a discussion in the summer,\u201d said Rutherford on the 100% Hockey podcast<\/a>. \u201cBut in my opinion, he would be on that very short list for sure. He has all the qualities to be a very good captain. What you see on the ice is what you see off the ice. He\u2019s a leader.\u201dHronek absolutely is a leader for this Canucks team. He\u2019s far more vocal on the ice and in the room<\/a> than he is in interviews, and he\u2019s played a key role as a mentor for the team\u2019s young defence corps.That said, it\u2019s fair to ask whether Hronek is the right fit as captain<\/a>. After all, the captain of an NHL team isn\u2019t just a leader; he\u2019s the public face of the team, expected to speak on behalf of the team in the media or directly to the fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s not a role Hronek seems particularly interested in, even as he\u2019s increased his availability this season. He once famously went 1,000 days with the Detroit Red Wings without a single media interview, so the handful of postgame pressers he\u2019s done feel like a massive amount in comparison.<\/p>\n If Hronek were made captain, however, he\u2019d have to talk more. A lot more. And not just about the game on the ice, but about events surrounding the team off the ice, or perhaps even moments in the wider world, as Bo Horvat had to with COVID and the Black Lives Matter protests.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s okay. Hronek might step up when asked to speak more frequently and be more comfortable with it than anyone expects.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the real question, aside from whether Hronek is a fit for the role: Why do the Canucks need a captain at all?<\/p>\n The Canucks have just started a rebuild and, as much as they seem to believe they\u2019ll be competitive as early as next season, it\u2019s more likely that fans are in for some lean years in Vancouver.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Canucks are a rebuilding team with a lot of work ahead of them before they can be considered a contender to even make the playoffs, let alone win a Stanley Cup. There\u2019s plenty of time for a true captain to naturally emerge, rather than just handing the \u201cC\u201d to one of the few veterans still on the roster.<\/p>\n Being the captain of a rebuilding team is a thankless job. So, why have one?<\/p>\n The Boston Bruins and San Jose Sharks decided to go without a captain this season. The Toronto Maple Leafs once went three seasons without a captain before John Tavares took on the captaincy and the captain\u2019s C.<\/p>\n Jim Benning had more misses than hits in his time as general manager of the Canucks, but one of his best decisions was to forego naming a captain for the 2018-19 season. Instead, the Canucks had four alternate captains who rotated who was wearing an \u201cA\u201d on the ice. Then, when Bo Horvat was finally named captain in 2019, it felt special and significant, and it happened to coincide with the Canucks finally getting back to the playoffs.<\/p>\n As has often been said by players and coaches, you don\u2019t need a letter on your chest to be a leader. Hronek can be a leader and a mentor without the \u201cC,\u201d especially since the public-facing aspect of the captaincy isn\u2019t exactly his bailiwick.<\/p>\n Right now, the Canucks don\u2019t have a player who makes sense as a captain. In fact, it has felt like there\u2019s been a leadership void with the Canucks for a while now, with some of the players who were supposed to be leaders more of a source of drama than leadership, and Quinn Hughes as captain, unable to quell those tensions.<\/p>\n If none of the players currently in the room have been able to keep the team on track, maybe the next captain of the Canucks isn\u2019t in that room yet.<\/p>\n So, maybe the Canucks should hold off on naming a captain until a leader emerges who is deserving of the honour.<\/p>\n Sponsored by bet365<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It feels like the Vancouver Canucks have been manufacturing consent for a Filip Hronek captaincy for a couple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-509302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}