With more and more reports emerging of an all-Canadian division for the 2020-21 NHL season, hockey fans across the country celebrated what will most likely be one of the most intense NHL seasons ever seen. Sure, we have had some bloody rivalries over the years in the United States — Detroit vs Colorado in the late 90s was a dry run for the Battle of the Bastards in Game of Thrones, and Boston vs Vancouver, well, we’ll follow Fight Club rules about that one — but there is something special that occurs when it’s between two Canadian clubs.

The Stanley Cup is so ingrained in Canadian identity that the idea of being the first team since 1993 to bring Lord Stanley’s Cup back to the homeland adds an extra layer of intensity to Canadian hockey feuds. The bragging rights that are on the line for whichever Canadian team wins the Stanley Cup next are immense.

Remember, social media wasn’t a thing in 1993. You couldn’t update your avatar to show your team hoisting the Cup, or send a tweet chirping another fan base. Back then you had to dial up on a modem, pray your mom wouldn’t pick up the phone and kill the connection, then search for a text-based message board to try and trash talk another team. This process could take up to 15 minutes.

It was exhausting.

Now though? If your team wins the Cup you can hold that over other fan bases within seconds. The ability to gloat and dance on the grave of fallen fan bases has never been easier, so the stakes are incredibly high for Canadian teams. Make no mistake about it, Canada is about to give a master class to the United States on what online sports fighting really looks like.

And clearly, any game is one Mike Matheson body check away from turning into a heated rivalry, but heading into the season, there are some Canadian match-ups for the Canucks that hold more intrigue than others. So without further ado, here are the Vancouver Canucks rivalry power rankings in the Canadian division.

It’s impossible to hate something that isn’t a threat, so the Senators are basically everyone’s little brother. Sure, they might test you once in a while, but at the end of the day you just ruffle their hair, tell them you love them, then gently, and again, I can’t emphasize enough the loving way in which you do this: destroy them.

It’s like when you play a younger sibling in NHL, you let them have the first period before you sit up in your chair and actually start trying.

It’s also hard to get heated with a fan base who’s biggest feud is with their own owner. How can we provoke and rile up Ottawa fans when most of their energy is dedicated to battling Eugene Melnyk? Ottawa and Vancouver share a similar situation in that it’s hard to hurt a fan base that has already been hurt more by its own team.

And sure, maybe due to the fact they’ll play each other often, Vancouver and Ottawa gain a little friction. Say a Senator gets a hat trick against Vancouver and you start thinking “Well here we go, game on.” Sadly, that player has now increased his value out of Ottawa’s price range and will be traded before the next game.

It’s just hard to maintain much anger against a team that’s just holding on for dear life until a new owner shows up.

I’m pretty sure everyone in Vancouver has a family relative or close friend that loves Montreal. And while you would think that would be a perfect recipe for an intense rivalry, there is just too much respect for the Canadiens for anger to fester. The fans don’t seethe with long-distance loathing for each other as they do with Toronto, and the atmosphere around the games never bleeds onto the ice like it does against other clubs.

When Montreal visits, it’s like a visit from the Queen. We respect the heritage and history on display, we politely applaud all that they’ve done, and then we both do our best to ignore how far from grace they’ve fallen.

It’s a lot like running into that person from high school at Best Buy. Sure, they used to be an elite athlete and led your school to several championships, but now they’re an accountant with a 9-5 job, rocking sandals with socks on, just trying to find a good deal on AirPods like everybody else.

“Remember all those Cups we won?”

“We sure do Montreal.”

“Yeah, that was pretty cool.”

“Yeah. It really was.”

“Anyways, I heard Best Buy has $10 off of Air Pods!”

“That deal expired yesterday I think.”

“Ah damn it. Hey, remember all those Cups we won?”

“We gotta go.”

Winnipeg is similar to Ottawa, in that it’s hard to get too angry with them. The Manitoba Moose were the Canucks’ farm team from 2001 to 2011, and it fostered a very, if not loving, amicable relationship between fan bases. It’s hard not to think positively of a city that saw Ryan Kesler, Alex Burrows, Jason King, and Kevin Bieksa rise through the ranks before becoming pillars of the 2011 Cup run.

The Canucks fan base was probably happier than anyone else outside of Jets fandom when Winnipeg got its team back, that’s how positive the relationship is between the two.

There is also the fact that Vancouver has never lost to Winnipeg in the playoffs before. And sure, they only met twice (in 1992 and 1993), but remember, the Canucks didn’t have a pretty history up to that point. They didn’t beat many teams in the playoffs back then, so for them to have two series victory wins over another team? That was a big deal. The Canucks even stormed back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Jets in ’92.

So maybe deep down, Vancouver just always feels like even if they meet in the playoffs, Winnipeg will Winnipeg. Not many teams find ways to collapse the way the Jets have done (in both iterations), so it’s possible at the end of the day there is a lot of Jets apathy at play.

That being said, Patrick Laine could start a feud with Olli Juolevi in Fortnite or Adam Gaudette in Warzone that spills onto the ice. There is also the fact that Vancouver just doesn’t seem to play well against the big Jets and it could very well be a hard match-up seeing them multiple times next season, and a possible playoff series. It wouldn’t take much for this rivalry to take off.

But remember, it’s Winnipeg. If anyone can out-lose Vancouver, it’s them.

Elias Pettersson vs the other team’s best player makes for good TV. Not only does it seem to fire up Pettersson to play against the top players in the world, but it sure fires up a fan base that revels in seeing Pettersson’s swagger on full display. The Sedins are the two best Canucks of all time, but the way Elias has a twinkle in his eye as he tries to destroy the souls of those around him is a different feel from the twins.

Elias Pettersson was made for prime time.

If Henrik Sedin dangled around and made you look like a fool, he’d probably apologize to you after he scored, offer to give you tips on how to defend him better next time, and then send a gift basket of baked Swedish goods the next day. Then you could count on a second bigger gift basket being sent the next day from Daniel Sedin because there is no way he’s letting Henrik beat him at being nice to people.

If Pettersson dangles you, he’d give you a death stare for having failed at hockey, then he’d throw a napkin at you on the ground and tell you to go clean yourself up, as if he had just dropped you with a haymaker and your nose was leaking with embarrassment instead of blood.

Seeing Pettersson trying to outplay two of the best players in the world in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl will undoubtedly produce must-watch TV moments in the NHL next season.

There is also the fan base of Edmonton at play here. Like Montreal, they’ve enjoyed some of the highest moments in sporting history. But unlike Montreal, they don’t walk around with dignity about a history they are so far removed from. Instead, they act as if it’s still the mid-80s and the moment a bit of success comes their way, they’re right back at it, talking as if Gretzky was still putting up 200+ points for their team.

Remember when they went to the second round in 2017? They were already bringing the “City of Champions” placard out of the basement and trying to remember where they put the screws for it.

They invite you over to their house for tea but when you ask them why there aren’t any tea bags in your cup, and why the roof is leaking, they scream at you to get out while they mutter about how Grant Fuhr lets in 8 goals, but he always saves the 9th.

In any other year, Toronto would be number one, but they land in a solid second place here. Much like Montreal, you have the marquee matchup of Elias Pettersson vs Auston Matthews. And much like Pettersson, Matthews seems to revel in one-upmanship, as we saw when he went toe to toe with Brock Boeser in Boeser’s rookie year. You know if Petey scores a highlight-reel goal that Matthews will be first in line to try and out-do him.

(A quick side note, yes, John Tavares is also a superstar, so it is by default an interesting skill match-up. But he is also a human cyborg devoid of emotion. So even if Tavares scored a game 7 series winner by deking out Pettersson, at most you’d see a small smile, then you’d have an entire post-game scrum of seeing how many times he’d talk about “sticking to the game plan” and “not looking too far ahead.” The real match up here would be Bo Horvat vs John Tavares in seeing which guy could out-Captain the other guy by saying the most words without saying anything at all.)

There is also a lengthy history of West-coast vs East-coast feuding simmering underneath the surface at all times between these two teams. Every time Toronto scores, the times Vancouver had to start their games at 4 PM on a weekday comes flooding to the surface. Anytime Toronto lands a big hit, the times the Canucks’ TV coverage was delayed because a game went into overtime in Toronto comes flooding to the surface. Anytime Toronto wins a game, the time TSN shut down their website and held a national holiday for three weeks when John Tavares signed with the Leafs comes flooding back to the surface.

If it wasn’t for Don Taylor, coverage of hockey on the west coast might still be relegated to the last 5 minutes of the show on the major networks. Suffice it to say, there is little love lost between Vancouver and Toronto.

So yes, this has potential to be the most interesting match-up of any two Canadian clubs. Add in the fact the Canucks hold the last victory in the playoffs over the Leafs, way back in 1994, and now finally have the potential to match up in the playoffs in a non-Finals series? Do you know how intense it will be if Vancouver faces Toronto in the playoffs next year? This is like the nWo crossing over to take on Degeneration X in their primes.

I don’t know if there will be more fighting off the ice or on it.

That being said, there is still one team who somehow managed to topple Toronto from the top spot…

Vancouver and Calgary have a healthy rivalry that has been pretty consistent over the years, with Iginla and the 2004 playoff series leaving its mark, to the Sedins being used as the boogeymen to scare Albertan children to go to bed, to John Tortorella becoming the Ultimate Warrior and trying to rush Bob Hartley in his dressing room during intermission back in 2014. Sure, rumours persist that Tortorella was simply trying to leave the game early to beat the traffic and accidentally ended up in the opposing locker room, but the point (Roberts) remains, these two teams don’t enjoy each other’s company.

But ever since the Flames went full Single White Female during the latest off-season, the groundwork has been laid for this rivalry to reach new heights in toxicity. Calgary, in their attempt to not just take over Vancouver but to become Vancouver, signed former Canucks Chris Tanev, Jacob Markstrom and Josh Leivo. On top of that, the Flames’ new reverse retro jersey also looks alarmingly similar to the Canucks’ Skate logo colour scheme. At this point, you’d be excused if you were worried that Mark Giordano was going to attempt to stab a Canuck with a high-heeled shoe at some point during the next season. Someone should also check in on Gus Horvat, just to be safe.

Watching Chris Tanev block an Elias Pettersson shot will be strange enough, but imagine a season where they meet seven times and have a potential playoff match-up as well? We still hear of the infamous, mythical Michael Ferland from the 2015 matchup against Vancouver, so we know how enduring playoff legacies can be between these two clubs. If someone has a big series between Calgary and Vancouver, it’s the stuff of legends, legends that can even cause GMs to sign players many years down the road long past their expiry date because of it.

A lot is on the line.

There will be no squashing of beef between these two clubs. Markstrom vs Demko, Tanev vs Schmidt, Leivo vs Virtanen.

The teams are already rife with subplots before adding in anything new that happens on the ice.

This without a doubt is the most intriguing match-up heading into the NHL next season.