The Vancouver Canucks played hockey tonight, but they were the last subject that the majority of the hockey world cared about. After all, their opponents were the Edmonton Oilers, who were hosting the team in what was the last ever game at Rexall Place. The first time these two faced each other in this arena, they combined for an eight-goal tie. This time? Still eight goals, but the result landed drastically in Edmonton’s favour, as the Canucks fell 6-2.

The Oilers seemed determined to close the books on their home with a high note right from the start, but for the majority of the first half of the game, Vancouver were in control. That was, until Nail Yakupov opened the scoring, scooping a loose puck out of a board battle and sniping a wrister past Jacob Markstrom. Just a few minutes later, Emerson Etem’s attempted to move the puck out of the defensive zone was intercepted by Patrick Maroon, further widening the gap.

The Canucks did little to respond; Henrik Sedin attributed this to not showing “enough passion or emotion”, something that the opponents had in spades on this night. By the end of the period, the gap was widened even further; Connor McDavid took advantage of a penalty to Chris Tanev and scored a 3-0 powerplay goal.

For a moment, it looked like the Canucks were going to make a push. They came flying out of the gates to start the third period, and five minutes into the final frame, Matt Bartkowski ‘s point shot took an odd redirect off of Adam Pardy’s stick to give Vancouver an opponent-assistant icebreaker. The Oilers responded right back though, waiting a few minutes before scoring a pair of goals in the span of seconds to restore their big lead and make it even bigger. Bo Horvat put his nifty hands to work to give the Canucks another goal with seven minutes remaining, but that’s as close as the game got; Leon Draisatl added another tally before the Oilers let the clock wind down on an era.

It’s moments like these when you remember why Bo Horvat is thought of so fondly by the organization. Even if the goal came at a relatively pointless part of the game, it was so, soo pretty.

I still don’t know if I’m in favour of the Andrey Pedan at forward experiment. I do believe he’s best suited on defence, and that for every Brent Burns, you find dozens of “utility players” who are mostly just bad on both regards. But he and the rest of his line had a solid night tonight; All three finished with on-ice possession numbers over 75%. Hopefully, the team is able to decide on a position for him by the end of the year and stand by it moving forward.

The loss makes the Oilers a little less likely to finish 30th, and more importantly, makes finishing any higher than 25th impossible for the Canucks. This means that, at absolute worst, the Canucks will have a top ten pick in this year’s draft, currently sitting at 9th as the doomsday scenario. In a class that has little to no real consensus between 4th to 8th, approaching a lock-in scenario is good news.

There’s still more hockey to be played! Tomorrow is an especially meaningful day, as the Canucks take on the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome. Though the standings battle is important, the biggest focus for this game has to be on Money on the Board; make sure to get your pledges in!