Many people have pegged Ryan Kesler as a potential benefactor from John Tortorella’s hire in Vancouver.
Apparently, Kesler agrees.
"[Tortorella] wants hard work, he wants execution and he wants no mistakes. That’s basically what my game is all about,” Kesler said at Team USA’s Olympic camp, as per NHL.com. “He wants you to compete and doesn’t want anybody to take a game off, which I like.”
Tortorella doesn’t have much history with any of his new Canuck players, so his brief experience with Kesler on the 2010 U.S. Olympic team is important.
Tortorella ran the defense for America’s silver medal-winning side, but still got to work with Kesler during the finest stretch of the center’s career. Kesler scored a career-high 41 goals in 2010-11 while pacing the Canucks to the Stanley Cup Final, capturing his first-ever Selke Trophy (beating out Jonathan Toews and Pavel Datsyuk.)
It’ll be interesting to see if Tortorella implements the same minute distribution in Vancouver as he did in New York. His best players received huge ice time, as evident by Ryan McDonagh’s 53-minute performance during a triple-OT playoff win in 2012.
Kesler has been a workhorse in the past -- he played more than any forward during the ’11 Cup run -- and is looking to get back to that after a myriad of injuries (foot, shoulder and hip) over the last two seasons.
“I feel like I haven’t played in a couple of years,” Kesler said. “I’m 100 percent.”