PITTSBURGH — Everybody on the team loves the young guys.

Kids are enthusiastic, fun, eager. Every day in the National Hockey League is an adventure for them. A little goofy but charming, they remind the older guys how much fun hockey — and getting paid to play it — is supposed to be.

So everybody loves the young guys. Maybe right up until they push the older guys out of work.

Team dynamics is a balancing act — a fluid and constantly evolving element as important to a team as skill. You can be a little short on talent and still win. But you’re doomed if you lack harmony and happiness in the dressing room.

A Vancouver Canucks example: In 1997-98, when Mike Keenan took over from Pat Quinn and brought in some of “his guys,” a roster that included Pavel Bure, Alex Mogilny, Mark Messier, Markus Naslund, Mattias Ohlund, Jyrki Lumme, Bryan McCabe, about 14 goaltenders and, for a while, Trevor Linden, won just 25 times in 82 games and finished with 64 points. The team fractured. The Canucks became a failed state.

From that debris, former general manager Brian Burke was able to build the foundation that allowed the Canucks to grow and become for more than a decade one of the winningest teams in the NHL. During that time, the team transferred relatively smoothly from the hands of Naslund, Brendan Morrison, Todd Bertuzzi, Ed Jovanovski and Ohlund to the care of Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Roberto Luongo, Ryan Kesler, Alex Burrows and Alex Edler.

But it has never undergone the kind of transformation occurring now, with general manager Jim Benning and coach Willie Desjardins pushing young, mostly unproven players into the Canucks’ lineup in numbers unprecedented for the franchise.

Seven of 18 Canucks skaters in Thursday’s game against the Boston Bruins were 23 years of age or younger, and the portion of youth will be the same Saturday (9:30 a.m., on Sportsnet, Team 1040) against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Half of the 20-man lineup was born in the 1990s. The Canucks have tried eight rookies this season, and four of them played against the Bruins.

This doesn’t make the Canucks a young team, by average age, because there remains a large contingent of 30-something players. But it makes it a team with a clear divide on paper: young guys who will get an increasingly larger share of playing time, and older players who will get increasingly less.

This is where Desjardins and Benning and Linden, the Canucks’ hockey-operations president, are performing their balancing trick.

Waiving respected and well-liked winger Chris Higgins last week and banishing him to the minors was not popular among his older teammates, just as sitting out Brandon Prust on Tuesday against his former team, the New York Rangers, would have been viewed by some veterans as a pretty crappy thing to do.

So Prust played, badly, then was replaced against the Bruins by 19-year-old Jake Virtanen, who was named the game’s second star by Boston media. Adam Cracknell was replaced as the fourth-line centre by minor-league call-up Mike Zalewski, 23, and the upgrade in speed was unmistakable.

With the current roster maxed out at 23 players and key centres Henrik Sedin and Brandon Sutter due to return from injuries after next weekend’s all-star break, it’s hard to see how Cracknell, 30, and especially Prust, 31, will survive this revolution much longer.

“I think that’s a theme in the NHL, trying to inject young guys,” Canucks winger Radim Vrbata, 34, said before the team travelled to Pittsburgh and practised Friday. “Based on the salary cap — and the new guys are cheap and you can send them down (to the minors) — that’s today’s NHL, I guess. Everybody knows how the business works. But definitely it’s tough when you see something like that happen to a good guy like Higgy.”

“It’s the cycle of the business,” Burrows, 34, said. “When I came in, they were sitting out Jarkko Ruutu, sitting out Richard Park. It’s the cycle. You know that when you get older, you could get pushed out. It’s part of it. I’m trying to enjoy every moment of this. We’ve got a great group of guys and it’s exciting and I’m still playing the game I love. One day it’s going to end, like for everybody else. Right now, I’m just trying to enjoy it.”

Burrows has helped himself by scoring in each of the last two games after going 24 without a goal. Winning helps smooth everything, and the Canucks are 9-3-3 the last five weeks.

“Positive results really help,” Desjardins said after the 4-2 win in Boston. “If we would have had a couple of games where we lost 5-1, it’s such a different feeling here.”

Still, there is potential for unrest in the dressing room.

“Yeah, but this is still Hank and Danny’s dressing room,” winger Jannik Hansen said of the irreproachable Sedins. “They lead, whether it’s in the gym or practice or games. Of course, with a lot of young guys coming into the dressing room, it’s not changing diapers and your wife that you’re talking about. So (the dynamic) has changed a little bit, but it’s fun and they bring a lot of enthusiasm.

“A lot of stuff is new to them. They’re excited when we come to Boston for the first time, New York for the first time. It’s new and brings a lot of energy to the dressing room.”

“Everyone follows the Sedins and they’re such good leaders,” defenceman Chris Tanev agreed. “It’s not delicate but, I mean, obviously Higgy was a good friend to everyone. Everyone is very close here. But at the end of the day, everyone knows the team is going to do what’s best for the team.

“As long as everyone stays close and has each other’s back, we’ll be fine.”

imacintyre@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/imacvansun

Who’s Next? | Canucks @ Penguins



THE MATCHUP

Vancouver won 4-2 Thursday in Boston. It was easily the Canucks' best game of the road trip after they were outplayed in Carolina, Brooklyn and Manhattan but got brilliant goaltending there to steal five out of six points. The Canucks are 3-1-1 on the trip and 9-3-3 since Dec. 17. The Penguins rallied from a two-goal deficit to beat the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 on Thursday, but are still just 7-7-4 since Mike Sullivan replaced Mike Johnston as coach.



MILLER TIME

Despite stopping 93 out of 97 shots while taking three out of four points off the Islanders and Rangers, Canucks starter Ryan Miller watched from the bench in Boston — part of the coaching staff's desire to keep him fresh and get more playing time for backup Jacob Markstrom. But Miller will be back in goal Saturday against Marc-Andre Fleury. In three starts since returning from injury, Miller is 1-1-1 with a .949 save rate and 2.25 goals-against average.



ROAD KILLING

This is the final stop of the Canucks' six-game road trip and the last of three marathons in three months, a torture test the organization is not likely to ever schedule again. The Canucks won the finale of December's six-game odyssey, 2-1 in Tampa, but before that were 1-7-1 in the final game of trips four games or longer over the previous two years. The Canucks won 3-0 in Pittsburgh last season with Eddie Lack in goal.



WINNING LINEUP

The Canucks practised Friday with the same forward lines and defence pairings that beat the Bruins, so rookies Mike Zalewski and Jake Virtanen will be on the fourth line again and veterans Brandon Prust and Adam Cracknell will be in the press box. The Canucks will have seven skaters under age 24. Centre Brandon Sutter, recovered from hernia surgery, won't play today but is possible for Tuesday's home game against the Nashville Predators.



QUOTEBOOK

"I think these young guys are playing well because of our veterans. They are talking to these (young) guys. For young guys to develop, coaches will play a role but other players on the team will play a big role as well." — Canucks coach Willie Desjardins on the youth movement.

