The Vancouver Canucks say claims its players are embedded in a culture of heavy drinking are "categorically false" and don't align with the team's values.

The comments were made by Irish hurler Lee Chin after he spent a week training with the team in February as part of an Irish TV reality show called Toughest Trade.

The 24-year-old, who swapped places with former Canucks goalie Alex Auld, took part in on-ice skills sessions and a game with team alumni as part of the filming.

But what Chin said he saw off-ice is getting more media attention than the show itself.

In a newspaper interview with The Irish Times, Chin said he was surprised by what he felt was an accepted drinking culture among players.

“The drinking culture they have, I couldn’t believe it. They were lowering pints the day before a game. And that was sitting at lunch," he told the paper, adding that managers and coaches were present.

The amateur athlete also described a ritual called "change up" he claimed management would call for players that are "not on form, not scoring."

"Basically that player has to go out and ruin himself for the night, then come back the next day, with the attitude of you just don’t care," he told the paper.

“So they send him out, drink 20 pints, go off with a couple of women, whatever he wants. And come back the next day. That’s the way they live. It’s the culture, what they believe in, letting off steam like that. I don’t know if they look at the science behind it.”

Chin later released a statement through his public relations firm saying he'd also "discussed at length the warm welcome he received from the Vancouver Canucks, the skill and grace of the players he met, the professional attitude and set up of the team and how he was in awe of their athleticism."

The statement said that although he did speak about players' personal lives, he admitted that what he said was not a "true reflection of the culture of the Vancouver Canucks or its players."

In the statement, he said he would like to apologize to the team.

But the earlier claims of the young athlete aren't sitting well with the professional team, or insiders close to the Canucks.

 

 

Dan Murphy, the longtime Sportsnet host of Canucks Hockey, took to Twitter to say he has "never heard a whisper about change-up.

“This org that once took chocolate off the plane and didn’t let players eat pizza.”

President of Hockey Operations Trevor Linden issued a statement to CTV Vancouver denouncing the comments and saying the team was "disappointed."

"The assumptions made by Lee-Chin on hockey culture and reported by the Irish Times are baseless and categorically false. They do not reflect our players, their conduct or the culture of our game in any way," he wrote.