Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
A lot happened between wins for the Abbotsford Canucks.
Go back to June 23 when the Canucks raised the Calder Cup for the first time to complete a two-month, five-round journey that culminated with a six-game grind through the Calder Cup Finals. That hot, humid night at Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte and the 3-2 victory that Abbotsford pulled out finished one journey and launched many more subsequent voyages across the hockey world.
“Winning that Cup meant the world, and it was such a long grind,” forward Max Sasson said.
The summer, brief though it was, afforded some time for reflection as well. Manny Malhotra, who won a Calder Cup as a 20-year-old forward with Hartford a quarter-century ago, has another championship to his name now, this one coming in his first year as a head coach at any level.
“To look back at what we did, it was quite a special feeling,” Malhotra said. “Going through what we were able to accomplish and how the team grew, it really is a collection of all the cliches that you hear after a championship game in any sport. All those things come to fruition. Guys were playing for one another. They’re playing selflessly. Our goaltender was out of this world.”
That goaltender, playoff MVP Artūrs Šilovs, also headlines the list of changes to the Canucks roster as 2025-26 gets underway; Šilovs was dealt to the Pittsburgh Penguins in July. Key contributors Arshdeep Bains, Linus Karlsson, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Victor Mancini and Aatu Räty all secured jobs in Vancouver coming out of training camp. Sammy Blais, Phil Di Giuseppe, Tristen Nielsen and Cole McWard are among the others who left via free agency. NHL organizations seek out champions.
“I think it helped most of our careers,” said Sasson, who was recalled by Vancouver earlier this week. “A lot of us got good deals, and some of the guys are starting up with the big club. The whole thing really helps all of our development and our careers.”
For the players who have remained with Abbotsford, they are not the same, either. They will get one last celebration at their home opener on Oct. 24 when their Calder Cup banner goes to the Abbotsford Centre rafters. But this season’s mission has long since started.
“We all grew just so much from playing in those high-pressure situations and learning how to adapt and become comfortable when it should have been uncomfortable,” Sasson expanded. “We learned what a team really looks like and should look like, and we can definitely carry that throughout our careers. I think it just helped all of our development and our minds to be very, very confident going into this year.”
The Canucks took their first steps as defending champions last weekend, sweeping a two-game visit to Henderson.
Sasson, now an alternate captain, is being counted on by Malhotra to become one of Abbotsford’s prime offensive threats. The third-year forward had the overtime winner at Henderson on opening night, and his tying goal helped to set up an eventual 4-2 victory the next evening. He recorded nine shots in those two games.
For a team that only dressed seven players over opening weekend who had played in last spring’s championship run, these Canucks looked solid. Their confidence held firm, and they noted a different feel from the get-go in training camp. Sasson recounted first-year Vancouver head coach Adam Foote singling out the Abbotsford players and coaches as “winners” in his first-day speech at camp.
Said Sasson, “Guys like Quinn [Hughes] and [Jake] DeBrusk and [Tyler] Myers, these guys, I think, looked at us with a new confidence that we can help them. It solidified in their minds that these guys are ready to make a jump and help them up in Vancouver. I think that it was brought up quite a bit throughout camp.”
Malhotra sensed that difference in training camp as well. Some might term it “swagger,” but, really, it is simply the hard-earned knowledge that winning a championship provides.
“I think the biggest learning that took place throughout that playoff one is the understanding of how hard it is, how difficult it is to perform every single night, and you can’t take a night off at that time of the year,” Malhotra explained. “And as I watched our guys go through camp… the intensity at which we practice, the focus, and the purpose that we have every time we’re on the ice, there’s a big difference from last October to this October, for sure.
“I think that was the learning for them, that it’s difficult, and if you want to be successful, it has to be every night.”
With some of those opening-night firsts past them now, the Canucks head to Laval this weekend, a place that turned out to have considerable significance last season. The Canucks had meandered through the first half, a mix of inconsistency, changing personnel and underachievement. But a 6-2 loss at Place Bell on Jan. 4 – Abbotsford’s sixth loss in a row – resulted in a players-only meeting that seemed to turn the tide. The Canucks won their next eight games, tacked on a 13-game winning streak down the stretch, and charged through the postseason. A team that left Laval with a 14-15-1-1 record would go 46-17-1-1 from that point forward.
A theme that Malhotra hammers frequently is the concept of repetition. Aim for habits that are reproducible. Then reproduce those habits again and again. Last season’s Canucks managed to master that direct but often-elusive mandate.
“I think for us as a staff,” Malhotra outlined, “our mindset is trying to create that repeatable environment for the guys in terms of how we practice, how we arrive at the rink every day, how we behave, just on a day-to-day basis. We have a full understanding that this is a new team, there’s a lot of new faces.
“There’s going to be a lot of new that goes along with it, chemistry of the lines, relationships within the room, all those things are new for us here. Our focus isn’t necessarily trying to recreate what we had last year. It’s continuing to build on those foundational things that we did really well last year that allowed us to have success and allowed us to grow.”
Still, it’s one thing to believe that an objective is possible. Last January in Laval, the Canucks had to decide that their 2024-25 season was worth saving.
It’s another case altogether to accomplish that goal, to turn it around, to go through the overtime struggles, the travel, the hot weather, the relentless toll of playoff hockey.
Those Canucks did it. These Canucks – old and new faces — think that they can repeat that success.
“I think we all probably believed,” Sasson admitted, “but yeah, when you actually do it – you play all these great teams and great players and you are the last one standing – I think it gives everyone a lot of confidence to know that we accomplished that.
“And then even when you get the Calder Cup and look at all those names throughout all the other teams and NHL [names] are all over that Cup… I think that definitely instills a ton of confidence in all of our games.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.