The Canucks released the first video of the prospects in action at this year's development camp and it's a combination of fun and cringe-inducing.
Shoutout to Jake Virtanen, who is rocking a polo shirt tucked into a nice pair of slacks, while everyone else is wearing shorts. Okay, everyone else except Jordan Subban, who is looking slick as hell in his all-black ensemble.
Meanwhile, Mackenze Stewart is wearing a tank top. Come on, Mackenze, step your fashion game up, at least to make up for that haircut.
As for the video itself, it's pretty neat to see a bunch of dudes pull a school bus with a rope, but you could see where this whole thing was going right away.
First, Perry Pearn calls on Jake Virtanen to pick three teammates to try to pull the bus (and all the other prospects) by themselves. Virtanen tags Stewart, Anton Cederholm, and Brock Boeser, but, shockingly, they can't do it.
At this point, I'd like to point out that two of the Canucks' top prospects have had serious back injuries that have derailed their careers. Obviously, Cody Hodgson and Zack Kassian didn't injure their backs trying to pull a bus, but still, this doesn't seem like the best way to start off camp.
In any case, after Virtanen, Stewart, Cederholm, and Boeser utterly fail, Pearn grabs six more guys. Together, the ten prospects are able to slowly move the bus, using the power of teamwork.
Then a few other guys get out and push the bus in the opposite direction and it slows everything down. I almost feel like Pearn threw this part in just because he wasn't expecting the ten guys to actually pull the bus. "Oh crap, they actually did it. I thought it would take everyone to actually move the bus. Uh...quick, you guys get in front of the bus where you're at risk of getting run over!"
Finally, everyone gets off the bus and works together. With everyone pulling their weight except Thatcher Demko, who is coming off surgery and is clearly just holding the rope up in the air, the bus moves easily! Hooray!
All good, right? Everyone's learned a valuable lesson about teamwork and working together and pulling in the same direction and... oh no. Why is Perry Pearn talking?
Pearn, who we learned last year is fond of these types of activities, torturously explains the point of the exercise, which I can guarantee every single one of those players already understood. You can see it in their faces as Pearn talks: they all have identical, "Yeah, Perry, we get it. Please, please stop talking."
But he keeps going, over-explaining the concept of teamwork to a group of guys that have been members of teams for pretty much their entire lives.
Pearn ends his talk by saying, "The Vancouver Canucks organization, we'd like to have, when we go out to play, 20 guys on the rope pulling the bus in the right direction. And we think if we do that, we're going to have a lot more success."
I think, if you do that, you're going to end up with a lot of two-minute minors for roping.
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