Tensions boil over in Vancouver; teammates Holtby and Miller exchange words

The Vancouver Canucks may have amassed a 6-9-0 record through the team's first 15 games, but those six wins unfortunately do not reflect how poorly they have played this season.

One of the team's newcomers, goaltender Braden Holtby, has been a very focused and introverted player for the vast majority of his career, rarely seeming to let his emotions get the best of him - but what he has had to endure in Vancouver during the early part of his tenure there has been a strain on his patience, and we're beginning to see that now.

Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman made some comments following the Canucks' 5-1 loss to the Leafs on Saturday, though he did caution viewers that he may be reading a little too much into things, that Holtby seems fed up with the poor defensive play in front of him - touching on just how out of sync the team has been in front of him this season.

This is very uncharacteristic of Holtby, who would often re-frame postgame conversations to be around the parts of the game he could control, rather than the parts of the game that he could not during his time in Washington.

You can see a recap of Friedman's comments, along with an exchange that Holtby had on Saturday with teammate J.T. Miller, who seemed to quit on a number of plays here, at steamable.com.

With the new division alignment creating more frequent matchups with Eastern Conference teams that the Canucks aren't used to, like the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs, you have to wonder if the Canucks will be able to learn from the early losses and turn things around as the season progresses.

The Canucks' core has remained almost entirely intact after experiencing some success in 2019-20, though the team did lose a few key players in Chris Tanev, Jacob Markstrom and late-season acquisition Tyler Toffoli. Still, losing these three players has seemed to create a bit if a roster imbalance in Vancouver that could be tougher to navigate through than originally thought, and could push the team into making moves that they otherwise may not have considered making. The rocky start may even trigger the possibility of slightly increasing the length of the ongoing rebuild, which had seemed to otherwise be over at the conclusion of last season.

Though the Canucks have been less-than-mediocre, at best, most nights early on this season, the rumblings of another potential rebuild scenario have not sat well with team captain Bo Horvat.

"I don't think we should be rebuilding at all, and I don't think we are rebuilding. I definitely don't want to go through that again," said Horvat after another lopsided loss.

The Canucks have one more meeting in their three-game series against the 1st place Maple Leafs on Monday before beginning a series against heated rivals, the Calgary Flames this week. Should the Canucks continue to falter, it's only a matter of time before the heads start to roll - whether that happens from the top-down, starting with GM Jim Benning, or from the bottom-up with the players in the locker room.

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