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Even with Sutter, Eriksson and Gudbranson, the Canucks will still be mightily challenged to win enough this season to make the playoffs. Absolutely they will be better than the 28th team that went 11-21-2 the last three months of the season and finished with 75 points. But will they be 20 points better?

“If people are picking us for the bottom, that’s perfect for us,” Sutter said after his first informal skate with teammates in Vancouver last Thursday. “That’s great. Our expectations in the dressing room are very different.

“I think we’ve got a core group that looks at last season and thinks we’re very underrated coming into this year. You start with Hank and Danny and look down the list and there’s eight of 10 of us with experience who can play at a high level, and we’re all two-way players. Especially at forward, we’re all two-way guys.

“Every year in June you watch a team win the Stanley Cup, and you get kind of a sick, jealous feeling watching someone else win. You just wish so bad it’s you one day. That’s what we’re here for and there’s really no reason for us not to go after it.”

It was strange, Sutter admitted, watching his former team win the Stanley Cup in June. He spent three seasons in Pittsburgh, where the Penguins under-performed in the playoffs.

“Yeah, a little bit,” he said. “When I was there, I think there was a whole different feel to that team than what there is now. I think there are maybe only nine of 10 players still there. There’s a new coach. The way they started last year was the way we finished the previous year. Something was missing, something just not clicking. They made a coaching change and it seemed everything flipped from there.”

Sutter’s spring was far happier than his winter. He got married – his wife, Giselle, grew up on a farm about a mile from the Sutter place outside Red Deer, Alta. – and travelled to Africa.

Still, it was the longest off-season of his life. The Canucks “shut down” Sutter on March 20, which he says is when his summer training program essentially began. It seems like forever since he has played. That’s about how long the Canucks’ dismal season lasted without him.