If your team goes undefeated, clearly it’s a sign that all the players trained really hard in the off-season, and not once did they fudge their results with videos of running up some stairs in Bali. You start off a lot of sports talks with your buddies with the “Look, I know it’s just preseason…” disclaimer before launching into how this season is finally the one.

That little disclaimer allows you to lay out the road map of the team is going to be marching to the Stanley Cup knowing you can later say “hey, I told you it was just preseason.” if the team tanks, before you start wondering when OEL’s cap hit comes off the books.

Conversely, if your team struggles in the preseason? Well, clearly the players didn’t take the off-season seriously enough. They didn’t come to camp prepared. They got too high on their own fumes from last season’s run. You also use the “I know it’s just preseason…” disclaimer, but this time you use it to end your speech about how the season is doomed.

That little disclaimer allows you to tell people “I tried to tell you during preseason, if they didn’t hit the ground running it would come back to bite this team in the ass. They just thought it was going to be so easy to march back into the playoffs.

Preseason is both real and not real, that’s the beauty of it. It matters, but it doesn’t. It allows legends like Sergei Shirokov, Fedor Fedorov and Steve Kariya to shine. They are immortalized, but they aren’t. It’s a time when anything is possible, even allowing someone like Quads to call me a diva for not writing in the preseason, but yet here I am, writing.

Nobody knows what is real during the preseason.

But what is real is this will just be a short article, as it’s a preseason for me as well. It won’t be a full Stanchies, it will just be five observations from each period taken from the Canucks 4-3 overtime win over the Calgary Flames in Abbotsford.

Let’s get started, shall we?

I think the biggest excitement surrounding Sprong has been the ways to come up with  explaining how he gets sprung for scoring chances.

Sprong has been sprung? Spring has Sprong if he scores in April? We have some options ahead of us.

And during a first period powerplay, Sprung showed some flash on the powerplay, loading up for one timers from the left, moving the puck well, and almost scoring on this rebound:

He missed the net, alas, which, according to preseason rules, means this season will be a total failure.

Unless he scores a goal later, then clearly he is line for a 40 goal season.

What we do know for certain is he could be a player that makes the Canucks second unit powerplay look a little more dynamic. If he can be a reliable one timer threat on the left side, you can imagine a unit with Corolla Garland trying to set him up, or using Sprong’s shot as a decoy could inject a little more lethality into the 15 seconds of PP time that second unit gets after the first unit changes up.

Back in the old days, there were five top level goalies in the NHL, and then the rest were a bunch of 5″2 guys using gear they bought from Cheapskates.

In today’s NHL, an Arty Party can break out of nowhere and now you’ve got a new NHL goalie on your hands.

So I will assume Jiri Patera, he of 8 NHL games under his belt, will one day start a third round playoff game for the Canucks, gutting out a 2-1 win. And with Thatcher Demko’s health seemingly always a concern, the more capable goalies in the system, the better for Vancouver.

Patera ended up having a very solid first period against the Flames, punctuated by this first period breakaway save:

Patera didn’t even bother moving on the slow deke offered up to him on the breakaway. I think both skater and goalie were disgusted with that attempt, but a good save was tacked on to the end for good measure.

You know in beer league, when a guy who played in the AHL a few years back is somehow on the other team, and you know he’s taking it easy on you, and he knows he’s taking it easy on you, but he still tries for one shift just to let everyone know he could win the game by himself if he wanted to?

That was Quinn Hughes during this game:

He effortlessly set up Aatu Räty for a scoring chance in the slot, and then thought “why not” and just skated through the ice to try and go top shelf where Mom keeps the plane tickets to her new life once you finally move out.

He then settled into just being a nice host, and finished out the game without embarrassing the Flames too much.

Sammy Blais is trying to continue his NHL career on the west coast, and while he didn’t get on the scoreboard, he did throw some nice hits?

I doubt he will make the opening day roster, but I do like how casually he tossed Tyson Barrie to the ice, as if the Flames player was refusing to move out of the doorway on the Skytrain at Metrotown.

Max Sasson started his journey to the Abbotsford Canucks by playing for the Brookings Blizzard back in 2017. I bring this up because I wanted to point out the logo for the Blizzard was some sort of angry looking snow demon that I wish to know more about. Alas they have moved since they and been rebranded the Norsemen, so I fear I will never know how this creature came to be.

All of which is to say Sasson banked a puck into the net for the Canucks first goal:

You’ll notice Jake DeBrusk digging for the puck, but he never actually gets a piece of it. He actually apologizes to Dustin Wolf because damn it, Jake has excellent manners. He then winks at him and says “I have a tip for you for later” and skated off mysteriously.*

*This did not actually happen but let’s just pretend it did. For the lore.

Elias Pettersson is already in regular season mode at drawing penalties:

Nobody is able to turn sticks touching his skates into penalties quite like EP40. It’s not just that he has a supernatural ability to feel even a hint of wood on his skates that he turns into a tumble, it’s how he makes it look so convincing. Saul Goodman would have made a killing with him.

Fun fact: Jake Bean was the kid a lot of fans were scared Jim Benning was going to draft back in 2016 because “big” and “good old Canadian kid”.

Instead, the Canucks chose Olli Juolevi just ahead of Matthew Tkachuk. Good times, good times.

And here is Jake Bean scoring one of those goals that is just screaming for the “you know the goaltender is going to want that one back” commentary:

Patera loses the angle on his net and just gets beat.

Somewhere Ian Clark is shaking his fists at the skies and screaming about too much color on those pads.

The good news is Patera generally had a very solid game, including this five alarm save on the penalty kill:

Dare I say it, he looked like a young Eddie Lack on this play.

I’m just kidding, Eddie would have let that one in.

The Canucks may have lost Nikita Zadorov, but they replaced his size at least with Vincent Desharnais.

The bad news? He doesn’t have the fashion sense of Nikita Zadorov.

The good news? He understands the Vancouver tradition of large Canucks defencemen taking elbowing penalties:

Tyler Myers is crying a proud tear somewhere.

The sign of a true NHL sniper is when they look bored scoring a goal in preseason:

Like, that is a deft tip. The deftest of tips. If I scored that, I would be skating around in circles screaming “did you see that? I tipped that. Did you see? I got a piece of that. I did that.” before running over to look at the jumbotron, waiting for Al Murdoch to shout out my name.

Jake DeBrusk? He has the swagger of a man who knows he’s going to drop 40 goals this season. Preseason means nothing to this guy, he is already locked in.

He scored that goal and it looked like his first thought was wondering where the orange slices were.

Much like Conor Garland and Kyle Wellwood before him, I am always entranced by skill guys who can’t quite lock in a consistent top 6 spot, battling to carve out a career for themselves.

In terms of preseason intrigue, I am most interested in Daniel Sprong. He has the potential to be an absolute bargain deal for the Canucks if he can find a way to inject offensive skill into the bottom six.

Plus he’s wearing number 91, so my brain assures me anyone who wears that number is an absolute lethal weapon of offence, as shown here with this majestic pass to Phil Di Giuseppe:

The only thing left to wonder is if he can find a way to fit into Rick Tocchet’s system while still maintaining that air of offensive mystery.

Basically he can’t go full Kuzmenko.

Never go full Kuzmenko.

Things Rick Tocchet won’t enjoy? Not getting the puck in deep and giving up a goal on the resulting odd-man rush:

Christian Wolanin’s deployment of Jiri Slegr defensive zone coverage was a bold strategy that did not pay off, Cotton. He ends up having more of a concept of defence than anything and ends up letting Samuel Honzek skate in behind him for the tap-in goal to make it 2-2.

Dryden Hunt would make it 3-2 with under five minutes left in the third period:

Now, since it’s just preseason, I won’t dig too much into the defensive failures on this goal. I won’t point out Noah Juulsen roaming out of position, fueled by a deadly combo of hopes and dreams. I won’t point out Kiefer Sherwood watching this play out, yet still almost pantomiming the act of walking back towards his own zone.

All I will say is that was a nice deke from Hunt. That’s how you trick a goalie, utilizing triple dekes. The Mighty Ducks taught us this for a reason.

What did I tell you? WHAT DID I TELL YOU?

“Look, I know it’s just preseason, but…”

50 goals. Book it now.

All I am saying is if you pull off a goal normally reserved for Connor McDavid, that’s a sign you have some skill on your stick.

Look at him slice through that team like a young Jack Skille.

Again, the only thing left to see is if he can give Tocchet what he wants on the defensive side of the ice. Because on the offensive side of things? Sprong could be a huge addition to the Canucks’ bottom six, one that already had an absolutely elite unit in Garland, Joshua and Blueger.

Tocchet spoke about needing to find more offence this season, and Sprong just made a statement that he thinks he can contribute to that.

Go ahead, give yourself another minute to re-watch that. I’ll wait.

Remember how I said Quinn Hughes showed the Flames he could end the game whenever he wanted? Yeah, he could. And he did:

DeBrusk ends up tapping in the perfect pass from Elias Pettersson, which shows both a) he is good at getting into position to score goals and b) hopefully is showing some signs of chemistry with Elias Pettersson who desperately needs a linemate the Canucks didn’t find on Craigslist.

My main takeaway from this, though? Quinn Hughes staring down Martin Pospisil and easily stripping him of the puck, effortlessly turning the play back the other way, and setting up Elias Pettersson down low with a nifty backhand pass to set the game winning goal in motion.

Chefs kiss and all that.

George Michael was right, you just gotta have faith.

The Stanchies returns October 9th, see you beauties soon!