from Ian MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun,

With 11 pending free agents and a couple of key veterans facing possible buyouts, the Vancouver Canucks have a pile of decisions to make. And they weren’t sharing any of them at a season-ending press conference on Tuesday.

There was little news from head coach Willie Desjardins and general manager Jim Benning, who said the important personnel decisions haven’t really been discussed yet and nothing with be decided for at least the next few weeks.

Benning did say the National Hockey League team’s draft strategy has changed with the Canucks’ 28th-place finish, their worst since 1999, and that if the Canucks pick in the top three they will take the best player available and that that player should be in the NHL next season.

Benning also said the team hopes to have elite prospect Thatcher Demko, the goalie selected in the second round of the 2014 draft, signed this spring. But another outstanding draft pick, 2015 first-round Brock Boeser, will return to the University of North Dakota for his sophomore season.

Benning and Desjardins reiterated the goal for next season, as always, will be to make the playoffs.

Canucks president of hockey operations Trevor Linden, who held a less formal press conference after Desjardins and Benning met the media, said: “We’ve always said we want to make the playoffs, want to be competitive. But we’ve never taken our eye off the future. We’ve never mortgaged the future to make the playoffs and we’re not going to do that now.

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