Cheers and Jeers March 6th: Leipsic’s Hot Start, Boeser’s Injury & Edler’s Record

It’s Tuesday, and at this point, you know what that means. That’s right; it’s time for everyone’s favourite piece of midweek scheduled content!

Let’s start with a hearty round of cheers for Canucks trade deadline day acquisition Brendan Leipsic, who’s been on fire since moving to Vancouver. Last night, for example, Leipsic had an assist and two goals including the overtime winner. In total, Leipsic is now at five points in his first three as a Canuck, with eight penalty minutes and 12 shots on goal to boot — he finds his way onto the scoresheet no matter the fashion.

Jeers to Leipsic’s deadline day peer, Tyler Motte. I don’t want to be too hard on the guy because we’re talking about a three-game sample, but the early returns aren’t that encouraging. In Motte’s three games with the Canucks, he’s yet to find the scoresheet with 0 points and only three shots on goal. Worse still, Motte’s getting just dominated at five-on-five so far, as the Canucks control about 37% of the shots when he’s on the ice. It’s early, so I’m not ready to give up on the guy, but I’d like to see some form of improvement sooner than later.

Cheers to Henrik Sedin’s supremely lopsided stat line. Currently, Henrik has 43 points, and all but two of them are assists. Barring another goal in the final 16 games of the season, Henrik will have set a record for the fewest goals of any player to ever crest the 40 assists mark in the NHL. That’s just so delightfully fitting that I’m almost actively rooting against Henrik finding the back of the net again down the stretch.

Jeers to Brock Boeser’s brutal injury to his back suffered in last night’s 4-3 overtime win over the New York Islanders. In the final moments of last night’s game, Boeser tried to hit Islanders forward Cal Clutterbuck and awkwardly went flying into the boards, which wouldn’t usually cause an injury like this one might think, save for the fact that the Canucks’ gate was ajar when Boeser met with the boards. It was a terrifying scene for everyone involved. Boeser pointed to his lower back, which led many to worry about a spinal injury of some sort.

According to the Canucks press release, Boeser suffered a “soft-tissue injury and a small non-structural, non-displaced fracture of the transverse process in his lower back.”

That leads me to my next cheers, which is going to that same play for the simple reason that the injury Boeser suffered has a four-to-six week timeline for a full recovery, and there won’t be any quality of life or career-threatening impact from this injury. That was such relieving news. You never want to see anyone get hurt, but that holds especially true for Boeser, who is by all accounts an excellent person on and off the ice. I’m just so glad that the actual extent of the injury is far less grave than it at once appeared.

A massive jeers to Sportsnet 650’s James Cybulski for this uncharacteristically gross tweet about Boeser’s injury status. Let’s be clear — whether you’re #TeamTank or #TeamPatience, there is no silver lining to a player’s injury unless you’re talking about a better than expected outcome. The break here isn’t in the “Dash for Dahlin”. The break is that Boeser’s injury isn’t even remotely as severe as it looked at first glance.

That said, I feel compelled to go out of my way to make clear that this isn’t an attack on Cybulski. I’ve never heard a bad word said about the guy in my many years covering this team; in fact, all I’ve heard are glowing reviews about his quality as a person. Let’s call this a slip-up, see it for what it is, and hopefully move on.

I’ve made no shortage of mistakes on social media, so I’m not going to take a hardline and suggest that this tweet means Cybulski is a bad person or deserving of your condemnation from this point forward. It’s just an awful tweet, and it needs to be called out accordingly.

Cheers to Alexander Edler for breaking the points record among Canucks defencemen with his 325th point in Friday night’s loss to the Nashville Predators. Let me also take this opportunity to point out that I’ve generally felt that Edler’s been unfairly maligned in this city, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. He deserves so, so much better than he typically gets from the loudest segments of this fan base.