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Loui Eriksson throws his coach under the bus after another bad season.
Simon Hasteg…Rd/Bildbyran/Zuma  

Loui Eriksson throws his coach under the bus after another bad season.

Wow

HockeyFeed

HockeyFeed

The saga of veteran forward Loui Eriksson in Vancouver has not been a very good one for either party but perhaps no one has been more frustrated by the entire situation that the Vancouver Canucks fan base. 

When Eriksson was initially brought into the Canucks organization in the summer of 2016 there was very little fanfare about the move. It is true that some were happy to see a bonafied goal scorer lie Eriksson join the ranks of the organization but most of the talk surrounded his contract. In order to entice Eriksson to leave the Boston Bruins and join the Canucks the Vancouver Canucks offered Eriksson a big time deal worth $36 million dollars over the course of the next 6 seasons, a deal that worked out to $6 million per season.

Now that would look like a pretty good deal today if Eriksson had brought over the player that he was in Boston to Vancouver, but that never appeared to be the case. Eriksson has never scored more than11 goals in a season as a member of the Canucks, in spite of the fact that he has now been there for 3 seasons, which is a far cry from the 30 he scored in Boston the year before signing this deal, and an even further cry from his career high of 36 goals as a member of the Dallas Stars. His 18 assists this season were his best as a Canuck, but again a far cry from the 33 he put up in his final season as a Boston Bruin, and again even further from his career high of 46 assists.

You could point to a lot of factors for Eriksson's decline during his time in Vancouver, injuries, age, lack of motivation, but it seems like Eriksson himself thinks those are not the primary factor. In a recent interview conducted in Europe in his native language of Swedish, Eriksson revealed what he feels in the reason for his current slump of form.

Eriksson flat out threw his head coach under the bus in a recent Swedish language interview, indicating that the coach did not trust him and was not on the same page as him.

Translated from Swedish:

Well, I do not know. I was benched a match at the end of the season. I and the coach do not get together a hundred and it is difficult when I do not get the same trust that I received from all the other coaches I had during my career. Of course it is tough on that front. 
- The alternative for me is to fight on. It feels like I'm still a good player in the league.

Something tells me that an already frustrated Canucks fan base will not have much time for Eriksson or his comments regarding their head coach.