I feel like we’re all pretty aware of how this season has gone so far, so I don’t have to drill down too deep in this intro.
Tyler Myers legacy game aside, the latest Vancouver Canucks loss, this time in the form of a 5-2 defeat to the mightiest Anaheim Ducks you know, hit all the usual notes:
  • Elias Pettersson’s slow evolution into Loui Eriksson continued, as he has now hit eight games without getting more than a single shot in a game
  • Quinn Hughes, despite looking like me when I try and get out of bed in the morning, did his best to generate goals through sheer force of skill and will
  • Arturs Silovs probably isn’t an NHL goalie
  • Conor Garland remains the most agitating guy to work a board battle against
  • Kiefer Sherwood hit a bunch of dudes, so there’s that
  • I think Boeser still plays for the team?
  • Drew O’Connor was solid?
It was the type of game normally reserved for the pre-season, the kind of game that tends to match up with Rick Tocchet’s post-game comments where we often hear about how the team “looked nervous” or “weren’t moving their feet” or they “gotta fix a few things”, oh and don’t forget about not “having enough juice out there.”
It is the type of game we have seen far too much of this season, which just makes the Canucks season ticket pricing increase all the more incredulous for an owner that has yet to prove it has any sort of long term plan in place to provide a winning team. The days of Mike Gillis leading this team on the cutting edge of hockey management are long gone, and while the book is still out on Allvin and Rutherford, Francesco Aquilini’s era with Jim Benning has eroded any trust that might have still lingered from the 2011 core.
Two years is a long ways off, but we’re now at the point now where you have to start wondering just what exactly are the Canucks going to be offering Quinn Hughes in order to get him to sign a new contract with this team.
Which is why I guess the ticket price increase bothers me so much. You have a fan base that did its best to support Jim Benning and an owner cosplaying as general managers for almost a decade, a fan base that watched a team sink to the bottom of the standings year after year, being told to empty its wallets because last year was pretty decent.
One year of moderate success, and suddenly champagne problems are back on the menu?
I don’t know; I don’t get it. Maybe Allvin and Rutherford have a long-term plan. Maybe they have a re-build or re-tool in mind. Maybe there is a plan to surround Quinn Hughes with the team he deserves waiting in the wings, and we just need to be patient. Maybe that Marcus Pettersson trade was just the beginning for a new Avengers team being assembled for Vancouver.
It’s just that’s an awfully big ask from a team that has shown it can’t even upgrade the seats in the arena in a reasonable amount of time.
But as I was told during the Jim Benning Era, you just have to give it time. Sit back and let management cook! Which I guess, sure, that’s all we can do. We have no control over this; we can’t change anything, so all we can do is wait.
It’s just really hard some nights to wait for it to get better when we have to watch a game like we saw Thursday night, stuck in this Groundhog Day loop of being told that first step is a real doozy. I’m not sure how much patience this city has, but it sure feels like potentially missing the playoffs and still jacking the ticket prices up might be the final straw for some people.
At least we’ll always have that first period from Tyler Myers?
Let’s get this over with.
Best once upon a time there was a tavern, where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours? Think of all the great things Myers would do:
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end; we’d sing and dance forever and a daaaaaaaaaaaay.
This is, without a doubt, the highlight of the game. Savour it, drink it in, inject it into your soul.
After taking a penalty for a delay of game, Tyler Myers walked out of the box and gets a slick pass from Drew O’Connor and absolutely uncorks a lethal piss missile that Gene Hackman would have been arguing with Denzel Washington over in Crimson Tide.
Remember, this is a day after taking a puck to the throat and having to leave the game due to it. Instead of sitting out and resting up, Tyler Myers was all “I didn’t hear no bell” and shoved his way into the lineup. I imagine people were holding him back, begging him not to play, but Chaos Giraffe wasn’t having it. He put his damn gear on and went out and had the first period of his life, unloading clap bombs and then dangling around like Mario to set up a goal.
When the chaos goes in your favour, those are the nights CG57 is a God amongst men.
It’s also nice to sit back and enjoy a goal off the rush, something Vancouver just really isn’t that into this year. Sure, goals off the rush are fun, but have you tried defending the guts of the ice instead?
Speaking of Doc, he had himself a night. And by had himself a night, I just mean he was noticeable in the bottom six, which should set the bar at the appropriate level. Like, he’s not out here going bar down like a young Cody Hodgson in his prime, but he was skating hard and making life kind of annoying for the Ducks at times, which is all you can ask for.
And heck, he even managed to get an odd-man rush to go in the Canucks favour a few moments after the Myers goal:
He’s got good wheels, especially on a team where you can swear you sometimes see a pleading look in Elias Pettersson’s eyes, imploring someone to push him so he can feel like he’s going zoom zoom.
Will Doc ever amount to a higher plateau than Tyler Motte? I’m not sure. But on a two-year, $2.5 million extension, at last the risk is minimal? I tend to be of the mind that your pro-scouting department should be able to bring in bottom-six players on the million, but if you see something in a guy that elevates him to that elite third line level, you hand out the extra coin. And hey, I won’t argue that Doc has an intriguing skill set, so have at it Canucks.
Best I promise saves were made
Arturs Silovs had a strong start to this game, but as with most Arty Partys, you wish you had left it earlier.
It was the same old story with Silovs, where he would make a couple of highlight-reel saves only to be undone by a “huh” goal. You know, the kind where a shot goes past the keeper, and you just sort of stare and go “huh” as you wonder how this happened. You understand a goal was scored; you just don’t know why it scored. You almost take it personally, as if the goalie let it in on purpose just to spite you.
Arty would eventually let in two goals on his glove side, and I think it was because he put a little too much sauce on this early glove save:
You can’t be flashing that leather if you’re not going to be backing it up the rest of the game, young man. You had that puck well in your glove without any rotation, but oh no, you just had to go around the world with it afterward. You brought this on yourself!
Still, it wouldn’t be a Silovs game without him making a random grade-A highlight-reel cross-crease save:
Leo Carlsson had a fantastic look at the net on that rebound, but Silovs kicked out the pad at the last second to make the big save.
Those were the days, my friend.
Best stats gone wild
I will say that the shot counters in the NHL live in a different world from the rest of us. They are constantly adding shots or removing them as the game goes on, and sometimes not even counting a shot like this one from Quinn Hughes:
I assume they theorized that shot was going wide, but if a goalie snags the puck off a shot like this, I feel like we have to credit him with a save. I can practically smell their protractors as they attempted to analyze whether this puck had a chance of hitting the net, and you know what, at that point, just count it.
I remember back in my day a Cal Clutterbuck hit would count for seven hits at a time, I miss the days of excess.
Best vintage Calder energy
When Bonnie Tyler needs someone, she speed dials Tyler Myers:
Yes, you just watched the chaos giraffe dangle all around the offensive zone before finding Pius Suter for the easy tap-in.
Go ahead, watch it again. Lord knows it all goes downhill from here. Watch as the ghost of Tyler Myers Calder Trophy season reunites with his body, allowing him to go full Quinn Hughes in setting up that goal.
Is it weird that not a single forward has out-dangled Hughes or Tyler Myers in a couple of months? Of course it is, but this is the world we live in now. Just pay for your tickets and be thankful that we might be getting new black seats in a decade or two.
Best reality
I’m telling you, anytime you anger or hurt the chaos giraffe, that’s when he plays his best hockey.
Best chaos trick
“Questionable penalty” is the polite way of stating that, but yes, this is now officially a Chaos Trick.
Best almost had ’em
I imagine if Nils Höglander scores here, Tocchet would look up at the camera and whisper “not like this” with tears in his eyes, fully certain that he’s about to be removed from The Matrix:
It’s such a fantastic read from Nearly Nils on that pass at the point, and he had that top shelf just begging him to nail it.
The really unfortunate part about Höglander not scoring on that play is that it took away the Canucks ability to blow a three goal lead instead of a pedestrian two goal lead.
But believe it or not, even at the start of the second period the Canucks were still kind of generating rush chances.
You had Doc trying to bust through the middle of the ice, giving Tocchet that North/South hockey he loves so much:
And you had Brock Boeser feeding Pew Pew on a two on one that could have given the Canucks a three goal lead:
And you had Marcus Pettersson shutting down a rush and setting up one of his own, sending in Filip Chytil on a two-on-one only to be shut down by a slip and slide from Radko Gudas:
Fun fact: Radko Gudas had more shots in this game than Elias Pettersson.
Wee.
The point is, the Canucks had a strong start in this game. And while I understand it was a back-to-back night, and that long line change in the second period is a real doozy, it still felt alarming to see how much the Canucks fell apart from this point onwards. It felt like watching my parents’ marriage fall apart, where I could see it happening a mile away, and I was just patiently waiting for the “don’t worry, now you’ll get TWO Christmas celebrations” speech.
Except I never got that Lego set, did I, Mom? Did I?
Sorry, where was I?
Right, Radko Gudas is only 27 shots away from catching up to EP40 on the season.
Best you done gloved up
Frank Vatrano, who for some reason my brain just assumes is still a 22-year-old rookie, is in fact a 30-year-old man who likes to shoot glove side:
Much like your current dating outlook, Fil Hronek probably tried to keep things a little bit too casual? He could have cut down that shooting angle a bit better? He ends up hitting the shot block button very far to the right of Silovs, which would have been great at stopping the shot if Frank had been aiming at the boards.
Instead, to his credit, Frank gets off a hell of a shot that finds the net in part because Silovs is tight and deep in his net. If this was the early 90s, Felix Potvin makes that save easy because the guy shooting at him probably just finished a beer during intermission. But in today’s NHL, players can snipe from anywhere, as we all know.
Again, this wasn’t the biggest defensive breakdown. It was very much a bang-bang play, but it was created due to Anaheim tilting the ice in the other direction, as they started generating more and more scoring chances as the game continued. Make your own luck and all that.
Or sit back and pray you can ride out the rest of the game defending your lead without any sort of pushback.
Tomato, tomato.
Best posting up
Suter has two options on this play: pass to Forbort or pass to Hughes, and he chose the captain:
Forbort could have had his stick up in the air for an hour, and he was still never getting that pass, but I appreciate him playing along with it.
Quinn Hughes ended up hitting the post, but was by far the best Canuck player in terms of generating offensive chances for his team. Hughes led the team at 5-on-5 with nine scoring chances, and just to randomly compare him to another player, oh let’s say Elias Pettersson, a man who only had one scoring chance generated on the night.
The good news is he wasn’t dead last, as Elias Pettersson stayed just ahead of Derek Forbort’s zero scoring chances generated, although I still think Derek holding his stick up in the air for that pass should have counted as one.
Look, I still think Elias Pettersson can figure his sh!t out; I truly do. Whether it’s physical or mental, I think there is a big case to be made that you spend all of your resources trying to repair him.
I just think it’s a bad look when Loui Eriksson becomes an actual comparison for his on-ice play. Dude is straight up doing the little things out there. He’s very good defensively, but oh my god, we’re at the point where I’m starting to wonder if he held back Ilya Mikheyev. This is a very dark place to be in right now.
His game has just fallen off a cliff compared to that kid who came in doing his dekes, and I cannot for the life of me understand why it hasn’t gotten back on track yet. He’s struggling to get a shot on net, let alone multiple shots, that would require a gun rack.
Best you give glove a bad name
The Ducks’ second goal was one of those “huh” moments for me, as Cutter Gauthier made it 2-2 on what was a decent shot, but man, Arty has to have that one:
Now, Silovs wasn’t helped out at all by the defensive version of Elias Pettersson, as he stayed high in the play, allowing Gauthier to get in behind him.
But you also have Arty once again going conservative and leaning hard right, giving that look high glove side that Cutter was able to exploit.
And the Ducks, well, they smelt blood on the water as they continued to pour on the pressure. Apparently, you don’t have to sit back after scoring a couple of goals?
Ryan Strome, another proud member of the “oh sh!t that guy is 30+ years old now?” club, got a good look on net off a bad rebound from Silovs on a Troy Terry shot:
Which then led to another chance that the Ducks almost scored on when Alex Killorn just missed putting in a rebound off a Leo Carlsson:
Again, not a great rebound from Silovs but you can also see the Canucks wilting against the rush chances from the Ducks, offering up very little resistance to zone entries. It was a passive game from a tired team, but good teams can still find a way to win in these situations. Sitting back like this is death, especially with an unproven young goaltender in net.
Best Quinn love
The Canucks dressed seven defenceman again to help ease Quinn back into the lineup, only to have Quinn lead his entire team in ice time at 22:38 minutes.
Which is incredible considering he is clearly not yet 100%, nor do we have any idea of when he might be fully back into form.
All we know is that despite not being at full health, he was still able to dance around the offensive zone, get a shot on net, and draw a penalty:
Which, in a normal world, hey, maybe your team gets a power play goal. Maybe they realize that they blew a two-goal lead and life is fleeting, so it’s best to score as quickly as possible.
Or, you know, you fail to generate any good scoring chances and instead let the Ducks score after the power play expires:
The Canucks had numbers on this rush, but instead of defending the GOTI, they all drift to the right side of the ice, opening up those guts. Forbort, Myers and Blueger all collapse to the boards, leaving Ryan Strome time and space to get off a decent shot.
Yes, Silovs needs to make a save there, but you also don’t need to be giving up that shot in the first place if you just defend that rush better.
You can survive rush chances, or you can survive shaky goaltending, but you can’t survive both.
Do you know how weird it was to watch Anaheim fans have hope in their eyes? Like, not just desperate hope, but actual conviction that they knew they were going to win this game? It was unnerving.
Best hit ’em with your best shot
Give me 20 players with this level of compete, and I’ll get you into the playoffs:
Corolla Garland doesn’t back down from anyone.
The only thing really surprising from this was that Jacob Trouba never tried to elbow Garland in the head later.
Best SOS
Like I said, I thought Doc had a good game. He used his speed here to create a rush chance that ended up with Tyler Myers shooting for a rebound that could have ended up as a goal if God didn’t hate you:
The best part was Ray Ferraro explaining on air about how shooting for rebounds is a smart play, as if all of us didn’t grow up on cheesing EA Sports NHL games using this same strategy.
Best sobering reality
In a season of “are you sh!tting me?” depressing stat tweets from J-Pats, this might be the worst one yet. How are we living in a timeline where the Canucks forwards are this bad. We’re at the point now where if you re-sign Brock Boeser, you almost have to ask yourself, why bother, if this is the best run support the forward group can produce.
Hey, maybe they shake out of this rut, and all is forgiven in a week or two, but that stat should be stapled up in the dressing room until that happens.
The Canucks best chances to tie this game up was this Suter pass to DeBrusk on the power play:
And then Fil Chytil just sort of living life and skating around until a lane to the net magically appeared in front of him:
Natural Stat Trick had the Canucks with only five high-danger chances on the night (three came in the first period) and only one in the third period, so I assume that DeBrusk shot was it.
Which, to be fair, hey, that’s a nice scoring chance. Good pass from Pew Pew, and if there’s any guy you want silently sneaking into your house so he can score a goal, it would be Jake. His blue paint game is the best on the team, so had your best guy giving it his best shot.
It’s just, again, a very sad state of affairs if your entire third period strategy ended up being, “Sure hope Jake scores on the one nice looking chance we generate in this period.”
It just feels bleak.
Best last gasp
As good as Quinn Hughes was, unless he’s shooting on Silovs, he’s most likely not scoring on this play:
Kudos to Hughes for generating that chance. We all know how hard he has to work when he’s the only guy doing anything out there. The fact he even gets a shot on net out of this is a testament to his elite skill set.
But when he does all that work and then has to watch as his team gets boxed out of the crease, giving Lukas Dostal a clear view of the puck, it has to be disheartening.
There is a reason this team cannot score any goals, and it’s because literally nobody aside from Quinn Hughes or Tyler Myers on a Michael Jordan flu game level can produce any semblance of offence.
Remember when Chytil joined the team and started driving the zone and generating chances? Dead. Gone. Over with.
The GOTI system is either outside of the skill set of this current roster, or the GOTI system has serious flaws that destroy offence at an atomic level.
Best please end it
Jackson LaCombe with the goal and the assists going to Conditioner and Shampoo:
Canucks try to enter the zone, they get countered, and in what is clearly a case of “Quinn Hughes is being held together by duct tape at this point”, Hughes gets beat by a LaCombe dangle.
You can see Chtyil jump up into the rush to give Garland a lane down low, but Conor pulls up and ends up losing the board battle, which, to be fair, is a rare occurrence. Regardless, because Chytil is caught so deep, it allows Anaheim to push back the other way with numbers, also kind of due to Gudas literally holding Garland to the boards for around 18 minutes. No call from the refs, but maybe that’s out of pity due to the power play struggles of Vancouver.
Either way, LaCombe, shockingly, goes glove side high on Silovs, who, shockingly, has drifted to the far right of his crease again.
Ready to pay more for those tickets yet?
Best posterity
Troy Terry scored the empty-netter, so I am just posting this so I don’t get fined:
Tyler Myers gets his shot blocked, and it was officially game over.
Congratulations, you made it through another game!
See you Saturday?
Best King Loui
Best those really were the days, my friend
Sponsored by bet365