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VANCOUVER – Outside of the National Hockey League draft lottery and the draft itself, don’t be the least bit surprised if you don’t hear a peep from the Vancouver Canucks until training camp. That appeared to be the message from management as the players cleaned out their lockers and said their final good-byes Monday at Rogers Arena.

After back to back summers in which the team spent liberally in free agency, the Canucks have the look and feel of an organization now prepared to take a step back this summer and hope that the post-Sedin era of hockey in this city includes plenty of improvement from within.

While it’s unlikely that prospects Elias Petterson, Jonathan Dahlen, Adam Gaudette, Olli Juolevi and Thatcher Demko all make the big-league club next September, the Canucks seem prepared to give the youth movement a chance.

It may lead to another difficult season in the standings, but it looks like management will abandon the quick-fix route of trying to patch together a line-up by plunging into the free agent waters on July 1st.

“Obviously on a day like this, we’re disappointed by not achieving all of our goals,” Canucks President of Hockey Operations Trevor Linden said as he addressed the media. “At the same time, we’re encouraged as an organization with where we are moving forward. I think this group has an identity with its young players. That’s exciting. We’ve got a long way to go. We know that. There are a lot of positives and we have to keep building on those and working toward getting better.”

Linden pointed to the continued development of Bo Horvat, who will be entering his fifth NHL season in September, and Brock Boeser, who lived up to his advance billing with 29 goals in 62 games before his first full NHL season abruptly ended with a back injury on March 5. Those two will be the cornerstones of the franchise’s push to once again contend for the playoffs after missing out the past three springs.

This season the club finished with a 30-41-11 record and the 73 points in the standings marked a modest four-point improvement over last season. But that was also after the club jumped into free agency last July and hoped to bolster its roster with veterans Sam Gagner Michael Del Zotto, Anders Nilsson, Alexander Burmistrov and Patrick Wiercioch.

Gagner finished the season with 31 points, Del Zotto managed to play in all 82 games but struggled with his defensive game while Nilsson got off to a decent start, but won just one of his final 16 decisions (1-12-3). Burmistrov walked away from the club at Christmas and Wiercioch never saw a moment of action in the NHL this season.

All of those signings came one year after the Canucks went all in on Loui Eriksson and have seen just 21 goals in the first two years of his massive six-year/$36 million-dollar free agency deal.

Spending to the salary cap and doling out big dollars to mid-range players has hardly been the recipe for success for the Canucks in recent years. So, maybe’s it time to take a different approach to team building and it seems that will be the case this summer.

“I think it’s very likely we could be several million (dollars) below the cap,” Linden revealed. “We have to be better within the confines of where we are as a group that has transitioned significantly in the last couple of years and needs to get to that next point. There is going to be a ton of opportunities for young players to grow. We’re going to be very young next year, and I think that’s exciting, but at the same time presents some risk as well.”

Beyond the front line prospects the Canucks have assembled in recent drafts, the hockey club has to figure out where the likes of Sven Baertschi, Markus Granlund, Jake Virtanen, Brendan Leipsic, Nikolay Goldobin and a few others fit on the depth chart. Through injuries and inconsistency, not a single one of those players reached the 30 point mark this season.

The Canucks are banking on some of their returnees stepping into bigger roles with the departures of Daniel and Henrik Sedin. A key question is going to be what will the Canucks power play look like without the Sedins on the first unit? As a team, the Canucks finished the year with 53 goals from a power play that wound up ninth in the NHL this season. That’s going to be difficult to replicate next season.

So brace for more tough times ahead. Although it sounds like if the Canucks are going to struggle, they’re going to do so with young players learning on the job rather than a new wave of mid-range veterans under-achieving while collecting over-sized paycheques.

Canucks fans have seen enough of that – and, at long last, it sounds likes management has, too.

“This is a process we have to be patient with and we have to stick with it,” Linden said. “This is the first year where we’ve kind of got an identity. No one is happy with where we are today, but we think we’re on the right path and that’s important.”

It’s easy to say on April 9. Let’s see if the message holds true on July 1st.