A few weeks ago, Jake Virtanen murdered Connor McDavid with his body. It was amazing and we all loved it. But unfortunately, the kid they call McJesus has his resurrection feature enabled, and the team was stuck facing him again tonight. Thankfully, Virtanen was one of three young men who thoroughly beat up the Oilers on the scoresheet, snapping their 6-0 preseason record in the form of a 5-2 Canucks victory.

Let’s get one thing straight; this game had the potential to go very, very bad. Just a minute and a half in, Ben Hutton seemed to catch up on every rookie mistake he had been expected to make prior in the span of a few seconds, and left McDavid to work with Taylor Hall to give the Oilers a very early lead.

Thankfully, the kids immediately went to work, and before the Oilers finished high fiving each other, Bo Horvat beat Cam Talbot with a pretty shot to tie the game. The Canucks weren’t done, either – Hutton, determined to make up for his prior mistakes, took in a recovered puck from Sven Baertschi and fired it off of Eric Gryba and into the net.

Nail Yakupov tied the game at two in the dying seconds of the first period, but it didn’t phase the Canucks at all. Just 24 seconds into the second period, Yannick Weber pounced on a puck that had dashed out of the corner and roofed it to regain the lead. Vancouver continued to put on pressure, taking fifteen shots in the second alone, when one of those shots decided to go off of Jake Virtanen’s face and into the net. It was a scary moment, but Virtanen ended up being fine and the Canucks were then up by two.

A minute into the third period, the now stitched up Virtanen sprung Horvat for another opportunity, and once again, he made no mistake. From there, The Canucks largely slowed things down; the only excitement we got for the rest of the game was Luca Sbisa trying to be tough with Benoit Pouliot and Derek Dorsett fighting Matt Hendricks. What we had seen before was more than enough, however, as the Canucks cruised to a commanding victory.

This is a night that you can’t give this to one player; it has to go to a line. Sven Baertschi, Bo Horvat, and Jake Virtanen were electric, picking up a minimum of three points each, with Baertschi leading the trio with a whopping four assists. They found each other well and gave fans plenty of reasons to get excited for the years ahead. We can debate all we want about “when”, but it’s looking more and more like there’s a core player light at the end of all of their tunnels.

Here’s a great example of it. Baertschi puts this puck in the corner, Virtanen powers in to grab it, and sets up Horvat for a tying goal just 23 seconds after everybody thought this game was toast. It very well could have been too, if they didn’t find a way to immediate shake off the start of the game like they did.

This isn’t a traditional misplay, but I found it hilarious how much effort Weber put into complaining to the referees about what was a clean hit. Really, I think he was just embarrassed about being flattened by a twelve-year-old. Which is a shame, considering the fact that he had a sweet goal beforehand.