It wasn’t a pretty win. It was the kind of win you’d bring home and only introduce it to your third cousin, claiming you were “just friends” before making a peanut butter sandwich and watching YouTube videos in silence for a while.
But damn it, the Canucks will take it.
And to be fair, the Vancouver Canucks 3-2 overtime win over the Florida Panthers had a lot more elements of Tocchet hockey to it than any game this season.
Yes, it was a sloppy game at times. And holy shit, did Quinn Hughes have to do an incredible amount of heavy lifting in this game to keep the Canucks in it.
But that compete level? Those battles for the pucks? The taking away the guts of the ice as Tocchet insists on using as a metaphor despite the fact he can see how uncomfortable I am with it? The Canucks were able to dig down and bring some of that to the forefront for the first time this season.
Goodbye forever, brat summer hockey?
Even if the Canucks had lost this game, it would have felt like the first true “moral victory” of the season. Don’t get me wrong, moral victories are the empty calories of the NHL. You have too may of them and before you know it that flight of stairs to the basement becomes a one way journey due to your cardio issues.
But used sparingly? Moral victories are a fine snack.
And the Canucks were in desperate need of showing some life on this season. Yes, four games in is not a very stable barometer of an entire season’s worth of success. But in a market that now has the dreaded “expectations” placed upon it, you better find your footing quickly otherwise Connor McDavid might fire your coach and replace you with one of his friends.
Even if the game could best be summarized by a smoking Ben Affleck meme, this at least felt like a game where the Canucks showed an identity.
Now it’s up to the team to continue that into Philadelphia.
Which can be hard, because they sometimes throw batteries at you.
Best summary
Best spoiler alert
This just in: Quinn Hughes is good at hockey.
The NHL is a fast game, and we have Erik Gudbranson to thank for showing us just how hard it can be at times, especially when you have to make a quick decision in hockey. With people bearing down on you at fast speeds, sometimes you only have a split second to decide what to do with the puck, much less tell your body to make a nice pass versus soiling yourself while screaming “GET AWAY FROM ME” and flinging the puck off the glass.
Quinn Hughes, though? He doesn’t get rattled. The guy just seems to enter the matrix and slows things down. Two guys trying to get the puck from him, taking away his passing lanes? No worries, he’ll just wait an extra second until he can open up a lane over to Elias Pettersson.
It’s a small play, but when every small play he makes is of the “Geezus, did he just do that?” and “How does he make that look so easy?” variety, often sending you into an existential crisis about how you’re so bad at hockey in comparison that you don’t know why you ever bothered playing the sport, much less watch it, you realize that’s what makes up a Norris winning life style.
Best Kuzmenko remix
In Daniel Sprong’s defence, he has only been with the team a short time, and you need to give him at least a month or two before you decide if Tocchet is going to ask him to be traded to Calgary.
And it hasn’t just been Sprong who has had defensive lapses, other players have stepped up swimmingly to show that yes, they too, enjoy a good defensive lapse here and there:
We saw this a lot more under Travis Green, where the entire team would sort of form into a seagull formation and float together in unison with each other all over the ice. A beautiful, but deadly avian approach to defensive hockey.
The end result here is a wide open lane for Niko Mikkola, who’s name for some reason just sounds like it would have been a fierce competitor for Razr Motorola in the early 2000s.
I give credit to Arshdeep Bains for honouring the legendary Canuck Mats Sundin’s number 13 by diving to block the pass over to Mikkola, but this sequence still required Lankinen to make a big save very early into the game.
Best plot twist
Despite a rather low event first period, the Canucks did manage to get on the scoreboard first.
In fact, it was the dreaded Kiefer Sherwood/Teddy Blueger combination that got this party started:
Fun fact, in 50% of his pictures, Kiefer is looking right at you like he’s Jim in The Office and he can’t believe what his co-worker Tyler Myers just did.
The play probably isn’t anything JT Miller hurriedly drew on the bench, but the heart of the goal was about winning the battle for a loose puck. Watch the replay of the goal and you’ll see Teddy Blueger moving his feet and skating hard towards the net even before Kiefer fully gets the shot off. That’s the level of compete Tocchet wants from his players, where they’re moving their feet and putting themselves into positions to win battles. Through the first three games it felt like the Canucks were standing still for large stretches of the game, whereas on Thursday night you could see the difference in skating effort.
And because of this effort, Teddy was able to honour Anson Carter’s Team Canada goal by putting his team up 1-0.
Best short-lived gains
Like all things in Florida, the happiness quickly came to a crashing halt as the Panthers tied the game up mere moments later:
Honestly, the Panthers did to Vancouver what the Canucks did to them; They got on their horses, forchecked hard, and won the battle for the puck. That’s just a basic dump in that the Panthers are able to turn into a goal due to their effort and the Canucks’ lazy coverage.
Can I explain why three Canucks end up covering one man in front yet still somehow can’t cut down the pass that goes through the crease? Only John Tavares’ crystals could explain that.
Best the Elias Pettersson thing
Elias Pettersson debate is all the rage lately, what with the huge contract and the fact the last time he scored an even strength goal Blockbuster video thought an online model for watching videos was just downright silly.
And there’s going to be two ways to look at his game.
One in which you look for signs that maybe his game is turning around, and you wonder what the Canucks can do to encourage that along.
Two, he is directly stealing from your wallet and how dare he get babied like this, he should be able to score five goals by himself with what he’s getting paid, and you deserve to be beaten half to death with the low bar you’ve set for Elias.
For me, it’s a bit of both in that I think the Canucks do need to put him in a position to succeed, but you can still also admit that at some point he needs to become the game changer he was signed to be.
As it stands now, tonight’s “great game” from Elias was centred around his passing game and hockey IQ, which was on full display.
What we’re still missing is him doing his dekes, being strong on the puck, and having shifts where he takes over the game.
And shooting. His shot, for whatever reason, is a far cry from his rookie debut. Remember that velocity? Remember that accuracy? Remember the speed, agility, power? He used to be a big fan of those things.
So while we wait to see if that comes back, playing Elias with Corolla Garland and Nils Höglander, whom Jamey Vinnick on X coined “the energizer bunnies”, seems like a good plan:
You basically have Garland and the pig man racing all over the ice, creating turnovers, and looking for you in the slot. If anything is going to force Elias to shoot more, it’s going to be playing with the bunnies.
Best securing the bag
Near the end of the first period, Florida once again generated a prime scoring chance by dumping the puck in and winning the battles for the puck:
But you know who doesn’t care about your plans in life, Florida? Kevin! Kevin Lankinen.
Kevin is the kind of guy who would set up murderous booby traps meant to kill would-be intruders with bricks and paint cans. You think he’s going to sweat over having to go right to left to make a hard save?
Best sobering insights
You know hockey is back when J-Pat drops a tweet letting you know that The Road is an uplifting romp about a father and son journey compared to something the Canucks attempted.
Best sobering reality
You know a player is struggling when Sportsnet Stats out J-Pats J-Pat.
Best remix addition of the song about missing
I struggled between writing “Kevin” or “Lankinen”, but Kevin feels right. Kevin feels like your buddy from high school dropped by to have a beer or two while you talk about old times. Lankinen sounds like a mysterious ranger who suddenly shows up at your doorstop with a quest about a ring.
Kevin ended the night with 26 saves on 28 shots, but that doesn’t tell the whole tale. Natural Stat Trick had it down as only 8 high danger chances for the Panthers, but for a team struggling with confidence, each save felt massively important:
Do I want Kevin handling the puck that often? No, no I do not. “What are we doing here, Kevin” escaped my lips a few too many times for my liking.
But that swagger and confidence from K-Dawg was fantastic. Your team feels good about themselves when you can make saves like this:
Evan Rodrigues tried to Anson Carter the Canucks with a sneaky wrap attempt, but Kevin wasn’t having it.
Even when Spicy got his pocket picked in the slot, Kevin gave the shooter absolutely nothing. Even when the Canucks gave up a 2 on 1, Kevin gave the shooter absolutely nothing:
It’s a lot easier to shed your brat summer hockey vibes away when you’ve got a goalie that lets you get away with a mistake here and there.
As for the Canucks, you started to see the first signs of offensive life in the second period:

Sergei Bobrovsky is what the kids call a good goalie, however, so not all paths led to gold. The important thing is that there was pushback from the Canucks, and they didn’t just fold up shop.
Best hammer bros
So who else but Quinn Hughes to let the world know the Canucks might be coming out of their slumber?
Nothing says “eff you” hockey quite like unleashing a dapper clapper slapper. There was no wrist shot on this play. No tricky skating. No deceptive changing of angles on the shot.
Just a straight up, “hey go eff yourself” slap shot from Quinn Hughes. And it wasn’t on the first shot, either. He blasts a shin pad then just calmly collects the puck and does it all over again. It was beautiful.
If that’s Jiri Slegr shooting then someone is getting domed in the head in the upper bowl, but Quinn Hughes, he’s putting that perfectly past Bobrovsky, who I’m still not sure if he knows that puck beat him.
Best moral victory season
The Canucks’ power play went 0/2 on the night but I will say this chance from Brock Boeser was an inch or two away from full chub status:
The Canucks have used a bit of a new zone entry this year on the powerplay. It tends to consist of Quinn Hughes screaming as he skates right up into your face before quickly cutting back and finding a trailing skater to enter the zone instead. Back the team off due to the fact it’s Quinn Hughes and he’s the biggest natural predator on the ice, thus allowing another player to enter the zone with time and space. It’s still essentially the drop pass play we know and love, but in an EDM remix format.
Another way they try and remix the drop pass is by doing multiple version of it, such as in the play above where they attack the zone not once, but twice, each time dropping the puck back for someone to move in with speed.
The end goal is still the same, which is to get the team to back off and give yourself space to move into the offensive zone. And on the play above, not only do they enter the zone, they kept moving the puck with speed, eventually ending up with Brock Boeser getting a glorious look at a one timer on the far side on Bobrovsky.
If that scores, I make a gif of it and make $500 off of it easy. That’s how good it would have looked.
Again, it didn’t score, but you can see the concept of a plan there.
Best Rage against the machine
The second the arena played RATM, you just knew someone would get fired up and fight. I just didn’t think it would be Teddy Bear:
Perhaps inspired by Troy From Richmond dragging Edmonton back into their game Wednesday, Teddy threw some knuckles to inspire the boys.
Though I do have to admit, anytime I think of someone unexpected fighting to fire up the boys, I remember when Patrick Marleau tried to fight Kevin Bieksa and it seemed to absolutely deflate the Sharks.
Sometimes I find myself staring out the window and just thinking about how sad the Sharks looked after Bieksa beat up their boy, while Kevin jauntily walked back to the locker room after the fight.
Anyhoo.
Best signs of life
There was a point where I started seeing signs of some chemistry between Jake DeBrusk and Elias Pettersson that got me thinking of them being on a line together again:
If Elias is in pass happy mode, maybe him finding the soft spots of the ice for Jake wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
But then I saw DeBrusk with Miller and Boeser on a unit to end the game, and let me tell you, inject that line directly into my veins. The combination of Miller’s playmaking with Boeser’s shot, and Jake revving up the train and skating full tilt towards the goalie every other shift?
I want to see more of this.
Nay, I must see more of this.
Speed, agility, power. I am a fan of these things.
Best main character syndrome
In case you thought Kevin wasn’t still producing A+ saves:
The guy gives up nothing on the breakaway and then tracks the puck perfectly to make sure he’s in position to slide over and make the save on the follow up. It almost looks boring. And when a goalie looks boring in net, that’s when I know he’s locked in.
Comparing this puck tracking to that of Silovs just makes it feel like Kevin is the guy to go with for the next while.
Best don’t want none don’t start none
Here’s the thing, if you  high stick the Chaos Giraffe, he’s going to do something about it:
You think you can go up to a wild beast and take a swing at it without repercussions? That’s not how the law of the jungle works. The visual of Myers just skating over and shoving a dude to the ice will never not be funny to me. It’s so simple and primal. It’s like those stupid “bully pushes around kid and finds out” videos where the bully gets knocked out and you find yourself nodding because that’s just how the world should work sometimes. It makes sense.
Alas, Florida fans began chanting “ref you suck” after this play, however, so the Canucks were promptly assessed a cross-checking penalty moments later to Fil Hronek, which led to the Panthers lone powerplay goal of the night:
Carson Soucy essentially skates in a circle a couple of times trying to cover anyone who ends up with the puck, before settling down and catching his wind in the corner by taking someone out.
Which left Tyler Myers to do what chaos giraffes do, which is, well, who knows.
He basically just sort of watches the play and then offers up a token stick near the shooting lane. Which to be fair to Anton Lundell, that’s a tremendous shot. Just above the pad on the blocker side of the goalie is the G-spot of goalies. The “Great, that’s a goal spot.”
But man, how many times do we Tyler Myers drift away from the play in other games. Sometimes he double covers people when he goes full Tokyo Drift. Sometimes he just floats away from the front of the net for reasons.
But then sometimes he just refuses to move and lets you skate in right on top of him to pick your spot.
This is why he’s the chaos giraffe. You truly never know what you’re going to get.
Best engine of the team
Make no mistake about it, the Canucks won this game on the back of Quinn Hughes.
Kevin was great. JT Miller had a dope goal. Elias made some nice passes. Jake had some fun rushes.
But Quinn Hughes absolutely carried the team tonight.
Best are you sure about that?
OK but here’s the thing, have you thought about how fun that would have been if it had been a goal?
Remember Quinn Hughes’ goal? Going full Vanek is never a bad thing. Bringing out your inner Brian Rolston should be encouraged.
Sometimes scoring by imposing your dominance on the other team is worth more than a wrist shot.
Best push back
As much heavy lifting as Quinn Hughes did, you still have to give credit to the rest of the team for using that gift and generating more and more chances as the game wore on.
Elias Pettersson drew in three skaters at one point which allowed him to find Fil Hronek open for a high danger shot that required a fantastic save from Bobrovsky:
The energizer bunnies would then put themselves a post away from scoring after Corolla corralled a high pass from Hughes, before finding pig man directly in the slot, staring down Bob:
Garland would then follow that up by preventing a zone clearance, stealing the puck back and setting up a greasy point shot that bounced dangerously in the Panthers crease:
It was a solid combination of slick looks on net along with greasy, grindy shots on net, and done at a volume not seen in a game this season by the Canucks. You could tell there was urgency behind their game on Thursday.
Best Quinn-ing at life
This is such a master class of hockey from Quinn Hughes, aka the kid who was too small to be a Norris winning defenceman.
To the dummies that said he was too small, once again we can point out that it’s pretty easy to be elite in your own end when you always have the puck.
Are huge hits nice? Damn straight they are. Nikita Zadorov had me going six to midnight many a time when he blew a guy up along the boards, I’m only human.
But what really makes me go is when someone goes full Sherlock Holmes and beats you at the mental game on the ice.
And at the start of this play, you can see how Quinn does this. He’s heading into a physical battle for puck, and instead of trying to out-body his opponent, he fakes him out. He makes it look like he’s going to sweep behind the net but at the last second he cuts back and goes the other way.
After shedding his check, he then moves the puck up the ice for yet another zone entry, something he’s quite good at generating.
He then followed that up by preventing the puck from being cleared by the Panthers and then setting up Nils Aman with an incredible chance down low in front of Bobrovsky.
Do I have proof of this glorious scoring chance? No, no I do not. I thought I had recorded it but my clip cut off just before it got to that highlight, which only further proves my point that I don’t think Nils Aman actually exists, and is just someone I made up in my head.
Best name that line
We will workshop a name for this line later (Make All Goals Amazing?), but I really enjoy me some DeBrusk/Miller/Boeser hockey:
Jake attacks the zone with speed and just goes right to the net, whether that’s in the form of a shot or merely trucking the goalie into his own net. There is something a bit Todd Bertuzzi about his approach to zone entries where you just feel like he’s at peace with having to run anyone over if it means gaining the blue line.
And as we know with the powerplay, coming in with speed, that backs people up. It creates open spots on the ice. And as in the example above, allowed Brock to sneak in behind the net to get the pass from DeBrusk and find JT Miller all alone in front.
With under three minutes left you also saw the board work from the trio when they worked the puck around the boards and got Hughes open for a shot, which almost led to Boeser popping in the rebound:
If the team wants to find some offensive pop in their game, they might have just found it with this trio.
Best nightmare fuel
The good news is they didn’t hurt Quinn, they just made him do an angry spin on the ice before overtime:
Best sign you’re playing well
I have to say, I did not know a large portion of Jake’s game was ramming the puck down your throat, and I am here for it:
Watching Jim Benning wait for Virtanen to evolve into a player he was never going to be just seems immeasurably silly when you compare him to a player that actually does the things Jim said Fake Jake did.
Best Jimothy Timothy
Who better than JT?
His name is Jimothy Timothy of House Miller.
Overtime is a magical place where the only thing that matters is puck possession, and to the Canucks credit they made sure it counted this time. They were aggressive with the puck, they took shots when they were available, and JT Miller made sure if he got a good look at the net, he was going to bury it.
The three periods that preceded it were more important for the context of the season, but getting the two points felt almost like a necessity to take some of the spotlight off of the team’s first three games.
Overall, it was a good game. If the Canucks trend in this direction, then this season starts to feel a whole lot better. Maybe we don’t see as many acerbic Paterson statistical tweets.
Let’s see which team shows up Saturday, shall we?
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