Let’s not drag this out. The regular season is within arm’s reach.

Let’s find out which CanucksArmy contributor Hot Take Canucks fans loved the most!

In an effort to prove how ready Canucks fans are for the 2023-24 season or that democracy doesn’t work, a grand total of ELEVEN votes were collected from the CanucksArmy comment section and our Google poll.

Side note: come on, people. Really? Eleven?

To ensure a fair, democratic elimination process, we kept the final vote simple: the take with more “Hottest Take” votes than the other won.

With that. By the slimmest of margins, winning by a vote of six to five, the winner of our first season of CanucksArmy Hot Take Survivor is…

The [fanbase] has spoken.

Congratulations to Lachlan Irvine for a wonderful campaign that saw his Hot Take selected as “hottest overall” in four of the seven votes, falling out of the top three just once during the entire competition. In fact, during the second vote, Lachlan’s hot take tied with Stephan Roget’s with the lowest score but won the eliminator due to having five times as many 1st place, “hottest take,” votes as Content King Roget’s.

Ironically, this final vote occurred right before Carson Soucy’s injury in the Canucks’ last preseason game, which prompted Akito Hirose’s recall to the bigs. There’s a possibility that Chris Faber’s “Akito Hirose plays his way into the top four and becomes Filip Hronek’s partner for years to come” starts coming to fruition in game 1 of the 2023-24 season. A longshot, certainly. But as Eminem once asked, “If you had one shot, or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment. Would you capture it or just let it slip?” Hirose, sweaty palms or not, has the moment to own it and never let it go. This won’t be his one shot, but these opportunities come once in a lifetime.

Congratulations are in order for our runner-up contestant, Chris Faber, who may have lost Hot Take Survivor but won this past weekend when he married his better half in a ceremony on Vancouver Island. We’ll never know how he found time to plan a wedding amidst going to the rink every day, staying up until 4 AM, clipping SHL videos, and dishing Hot Takes for HT Survivor.

We know some folks wanted Lachlan’s Hot Take GONE through most of the campaign. Alas, here he stands, champion above all, thanks to the fanbase’s blissful optimism that Elias Pettersson can outduel the greatest player in the NHL today for Art Ross supremacy.

Is the take far-fetched? Absolutely. But that’s the point of Hot Takes! Heck, Lachlan even threw in a wee bit of self-awareness in his take by saying it would take Pettersson until the final game of the regular season to surpass McDavid. In hockey, anything can happen during the regular season. Remember, Jamie Benn won the art ross with just an 87-point campaign in the last decade. Maybe the Oilers dial back on the offence during the regular season to play better defensively. Perhaps Kuzmenko replicates his sky-high rookie shooting percentage and scores 50+ with Pettersson assisting on them all? Maybe the Canucks’ power play can find another gear last season, and Pettersson hits 50 himself after supplanting Horvat as the PP1 ace! Maybe Pettersson and Miller will surprise the NHL with double-digit shorthanded points totals!

Who knows! All this is to say, if it does happen, then Canucks fans are laughing! If it doesn’t happen? Oh well, that’s what Hot Takes are for, baby! If you’re right, you look like Nostradamus. If you’re wrong, who cares?

For those of you who did care about this goofy little series, thank you for tuning in and reading! Hopefully, we’ll be able to bring the series back next offseason. Until then, let’s get the 2023-24 season started!