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The Stanchies: Kevin Lankinen takes the loss after playing for five minutes of Canucks’ 4-1 loss to New Jersey
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Photo credit: IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
The Stanchion
Oct 10, 2026, 21:21 EDT
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There was a brief moment during the opening games of the season when Paul Cotter had a glimmer in his eye and almost defiantly pushed back against the idea that the Vancouver Canucks were a bottom-tier team.
“For a team that everybody in the world has said is going to be last in the league, I’m pretty happy with how we’ve been doing,” was what he said at the time, following the Canucks’ 3-2 loss to the Vegas hockey sporting club.
Now this wasn’t exactly Steve Austin in his prime cutting a promo about blue-collar work ethic finding its way to championship gold. In fact, he was downright pragmatic about his approach in terms of using the naysayers as motivation.
“I think every [post] that I saw, I saved just to have some receipts. I mean, that’s the type of stuff that motivates you along the way, you know, if you’re the biggest underdog in the league. We had high expectations coming into this. I’m happy with how we’ve started; obviously there’s a lot of things to clean up with where we want to be. But yeah, if no one has confidence in us, then it’s on us to prove them wrong.”
You would take that every day of the week over a team coming out and saying they’re just hoping to get a win or two as the season moves along, hands in their pocket, glumly kicking a rock down the sidewalk. You want a team to have high hopes and confidence in themselves, a confidence that was very much warranted three games into the season.
But if the opening month of the season is any indication, that shortened pre-season might be having a bigger effect than anticipated, as teams that looked slow to start the year seem to have found their groove.
After that Vegas game of confidence, Carolina’s 7-2 beatdown was a bit of an eye-opener for a team that had done an admirable job hanging around in every game up until then.
Still, that’s the Stanley Cup champions; you can take that loss on the nose purely as a learning lesson. Sure, you lost the fight, but that was Mike Tyson in his prime; that dude is knocking everyone out.
The Canucks’ 4-1 loss in Saturday’s matinee against the New Jersey Devils? It felt more like a sobering reality check from Glass Joe that their distance from the Calgary Flames isn’t quite as far as this team had probably hoped.
The caveat is of course it is only five games into the season, so you’re never going to come to any grand conclusion this early on. If October hockey ever told a full story, well then that 2019-20 Canucks season feels like a real rug pull at this point.
What you can do, however, is notice trends that feel a bit worrying. Not go to the doctor to get checked out, mind you, but enough to ask AI about your symptoms “just in case.”
So what are the Canucks’ symptoms so far? A complete and total inability to move the puck up the ice. Whether it’s in the form of failed passes, being stripped of the puck while skating, or it’s the ol’ faithful “dear God, I have been trapped in my zone for over a minute, and I just want this to stop” clearing attempts, Vancouver has had very little success in finding its way to the offensive zone.
And against Vegas and Carolina, it made sense. They are two elite, highly skilled teams that can pressure you and make you pay for every mistake.
With New Jersey, however, you would expect a bit of a better result. And a lot of the mistakes seen did feel self-inflicted. Even with a bit of time and space, they weren’t able to connect on their outlet passes. Skating the puck up the ice with possession feels like a foreign concept for this team at times. The line of Elias Pettersson, Jake DeBrusk and Jonathan Lekkerimäki was the only trio that felt dangerous on the night, with DeBrusk in particular having his best game of the season.
The problem for Vancouver is that when they get pressured, they currently offer up absolutely no counterattack whatsoever. If you press on this team, they struggle to make quick decisions with the puck, which results in them playing survival hockey for the most part. And nothing looks worse on TV then a team fighting for its life in a game in October, resulting in the dud of a game we bore witness to.
If you’re an optimist, then you hold onto the fact it was a matinee road game on the East Coast, something the Canucks have traditionally never fared well at. If you’re a pessimist, you warily eye Sunday’s game against the Rangers as another potential ugly game.
But for a rebuilding team, games like this are going to happen along the way. The Canucks aren’t good, we’ve known this for years, and now we don’t have to pretend otherwise. That’s been their brand since Mike Gillis left, we are very well versed in it. How many times did you have a bad day over the last decade only to catch yourself and say, “It could have been worse; I could have had tickets to the game tonight.”
The selling point of this season has, and always will be, that at least they are trying a more traditional rebuild that doesn’t involve trading first-round picks for Elias Lindholm.
Vancouver has a long way to go, so you just ride these bumps as they come along. The main focus is how Manny Malhotra handles it, and whether the team can adjust and grow from it.
Unless passing right to the other team is your kink. In which case, oh boy, was this game wonderful for you.
Best shaky start
The game started as they often do, with a pile of sticks in the middle of the ice being thrown to each side to decide teams.
With that task out of the way, there was some foreshadowing of the shaky nature of the Vancouver Canucks peering its head over the fence early on, as Zeev Buium both took the puck away and then promptly gave it up on the same shift:
He makes a good angle on the puck to take it from Nico Hischier but gets stripped almost right away by Luke Evangelista, resulting in a scoring chance for New Jersey. This was a common theme for Buium throughout the night where he just couldn’t get much of anything going, and particularly struggled with trying to find a way to push the puck through the neutral zone. We have many such video clips of such things, everyone’s saying it, even Sports Illustrated is saying it.
That being said, Zeev Buium also had the most ice time on the night for Vancouver, playing a whopping 24:36, with Tom Willander playing the second most at 21:05. Mistakes are going to happen when you are out on the ice all night, especially with these two young d-men who aren’t trying to merely chip it off the glass and out, but are trying to create room with their skating. Add in a bottom-of-the-league team, and it’s a very tough environment to shine in right now on that Vancouver back end.
I personally enjoy the trial-by-fire approach right now, because at this point, why not see how the kids handle some heavy lifting? It’s not like the team is ignoring objectively better options. But we’re also not going to hide from the results either, because Buium and Willander struggled mightily against the Devils.
But move over, you two, because you had plenty of company in your struggles, as giving away the puck was the night’s trending topic.
Here we have Marco Rossi picking up the puck and skating it back behind the net only to drop pass it to the Devils, forcing Tom Willander into fending off a pass into the slot:
And here we find ourselves watching one again as Zeev Buium skates with the puck, only to be stripped easily by the current king of NHL names in the form of one Amadeus Lombardi:
This was how most of the game unfolded. Vancouver did everything in their power to cleanly leave their zone and generate a zone entry on the other end of the ice, but repeatedly found new and exciting ways to fail.
Best once there was a time
Believe it or not, the Canucks led at one point.
Yes, the Canucks scored on the power play with Elias Pettersson on the bench dealing with an equipment issue (a real one, not the Luongo style one), leading to quick puck movement from the Canucks, ending in a Linus Karlsson goal:
Jake DeBrusk charging to the net and almost scoring was the most consistently positive thing Vancouver did against New Jersey, and even though Linus Karlsson ultimately got the goal, Jake’s effort was the main takeaway from the Canucks lone goal.
That and Elias Pettersson’s patience with the puck, allowing him to find an open Linus Karlsson, as he continues to be the team’s best facilitator. Does this mean EP40 is back back? No, we shall leave that angry debate for the online discourse. But his strong start to the season in terms of producing points despite skating two mph each game is still a positive.
Please note that the “two mph” referenced was a joke, it was based on his skating speed stats being at career lows. Lest I fail to meet the standards of journalistic integrity normally reserved for intermission spots.
Best and so it begins
The Canucks penalty kill continues to be the best horror movie of the year, as New Jersey went 3/4 on the night, leaving you to seriously ponder if not even moving on the ice at all would return a better result than the repeated failed attempts at using the diamond formation we have seen thus far.
On the Devils’ first goal, Nico Hischier just sort of glides into the middle of the Canucks’ diamond, which, when coupled with Leevi Meriläinen sliding a bit too aggressively to his left and Jamie Oleksiak just sort of falling to the ice for reasons (bees?), opened up the net easily for the New Jersey captain to put the puck in the net:
You can also add in Fil Hronek flipping his stick out of the passing lane in the middle to try and block the shooting lane, which allows Gritty’s Russian cousin Arseny Gritsyuk to make the pass to a wide-open Nico Hischier.
Death by a thousand cuts and all that.
Best here comes Jeff’s sobering stat
Best working boots
Brendan Gallagher’s start to the season reminds me very much of Brendan Morrow’s career arc, where you see a guy who gave every single piece of his body to the game, but at one point you start wondering when that fuel tank is going to hit empty. He did have his best shift of the season in this game, for whatever that’s worth, which is a highlight for a team that struggled to maintain pressure of any kind in Jake Allen’s end of the ice:
Max Sasson and D Elias Pettersson put in some good work on the boards, and Brendan sneaks in to drag the puck on net, and you know what, solid shift from those boys.
The best player for Vancouver, though? Jake DeBrusk. He didn’t get rewarded for it, but he could have easily had a couple of goals on this night, made purely by the fact he skated his bag off on the rush:
Stick close to the puck, gets his stick in the passing lane, causes a turnover, gets a dangerous shot on net, that right there is what the kids call a Baja Blast.
Best Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light, those days are over
Despite not having a fake goatee, Kevin Lankinen is clearly in the darkest timeline, as he not only got to enter the game to be scored upon, but also took the official loss on record due to letting in the game-winning goal.
How did we arrive here, you ask?
It started with Leevi’s skate blade unaliving itself into the corner, resulting in an equipment repair that took the Canucks starting goalie out of the game momentarily:
So out comes Kevin to do his best Dany Sabourin impersonation, only to watch as Uncle Fil fumbles the puck in front of him, then turns around and whiffs on clearing the puck from the crease, and it’s 2-1 Devils:
It has been a rough start to the season for Hronek, who was the shining light on the back end during the Adam Foote gas leak season. But for whatever reason, luck, bees, hockey gods, he has really struggled on the blue line for Vancouver.
And some of it is bad luck, of course. It’s very rare you see any NHL defenceman flub the puck in that situation, let alone one as skilled as Hronek. He also ends up missing the puck in the crease, so it was a double tap of “eff you” from the hockey gods on this one.
But you also have Zeev Buium watching the puck from afar and not skating back to try and make a play. Which, and hear me out, is not an end-of-the-world thing, of course. It also doesn’t guarantee he could’ve done anything if he had skated hard to get back into the play.
It’s just how many times have you seen a play in the NHL where some guy clears the puck or saves a goal because he came barreling back into the zone? Sometimes it’s as simple as giving yourself a chance to make a play “just in case” rather than sitting and watching an odd-man rush from afar and hoping it plays out ok:
Maybe he skates back and can get a stick on Jesper Boqvist; that’s all I am saying.
And in case you wanted a better angle of just how close Fil was to clearing the puck, I have got you covered:
It’s almost beautiful how Hronek and Boqvist come together whiffing at the puck at the same time to just barely push it past the line.
Best ode to Bad Luck Brian
I am sorry but that is objectively funny in its absurdist way. Kevin gets a night off after the Carolina beating and then gets to jump in for a few minutes against New Jersey to get scored on and take the loss. At that point, you can do nothing but laugh.
Best unforced errors
The Canucks’ struggles to get the puck out of their own end cleanly (I know it sounds like a dirty metaphor for pooping, but it’s not) continued, punctuated by a couple of attempts from Luke Schenn to end the period:
Mr. Plow wants to make a play on the puck, but Jesper Bratt closes in on him, and he biffs the puck between Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Jake DeBrusk. Then later in the same shift, when Schenn gets the puck back, he looks directly into the soul of Jack Hughes skating in with the energy of a man who just had a maintenance day off and still tries to force through a pass to DeBrusk, resulting in a turnover once again.
Early in the second, Schenn once again is just trying to survive and flips the puck out of his zone, only to watch as Timo Meier hits the forward deke button, and almost bunny hops his way right on net:
Jsut a rough game of puck control from the boys in blue, green, and white.
Best killing in the name of
With the Devils heading to the power play in the second period, the Canucks diamond once again shifts heavily to one side of the ice, resulting in a goal mouth scramble that eventually finds the back of the net:
You can see D Elias Pettersson, Brendan Gallagher and Max Sasson collapse into a tiny triangle when the puck heads to the Draisaitl One Timer Spot of Doom (I believe that’s the NHL’s official name for it), which leaves Hronek as the lone guy in front, and initially he does a decent job of defending. The problem is once Hronek crashes into the crease, there is nobody else to push out and defend the right side of the ice, allowing a second Jesper to hit the net.
Which again, even this isn’t the worst-case scenario; if a dude wants to shoot halfway from the corner at the goal line, you take that all day. The problem is Hronek sets up shop against the net and doesn’t allow Meriläinen to seal the post, and since Fil wears much smaller pads than the Canucks’ goaltender, he gets beaten five-hole pretty cleanly:
Craig Ludwig stops that all day long, but alas.
The Canucks quickly regrouped after that goal and got back to what they do best, which is Luke Schenn forcing a puck to Jake DeBrusk, resulting in a turnover:
If there was one guy to try to force the puck to in this game, it would have been Jake. So at least I understand the theory behind it.
D Petey was the next guy to try and thread the needle like a prime Jay Cutler, as his pass to his fleeing forwards resulted in yet another turnover for Vancouver:
Part of it is poor choices by the D-men, but the puck support from the Vancouver forwards on outlet passes has also deteriorated over the last few games. When your three forwards take off up the ice like you just smashed Da Bomb on your controller, it’s going to be hard to sneak a puck through the opposition setting up shop between you and them.
Best glimmers of hope
Like taking Langara up on their letter of acceptance, sometimes you take what you can get in this world. And in this case, at least Vancouver’s best line was once again DeBrusk, Pettersson, and Lekkerimäki.
This is good because it gives Jake DeBrusk trade value.
This is good because it continues Elias Pettersson’s strong start to the season.
And it’s fantastic for Jonathan Lekkerimäki because he continues to showcase that he might indeed be an NHL player.
There were very few times the Canucks moved the puck up and generated good looks on net, but when they did, it was at the hands of this trio. Down 3-1, it was Lekkerimäki chipping the puck up to Pettersson, who briefly held up to wait for Jake to skate into the slot, ending with a dangerous look on Jake Allen:
The trio went right back to the well with almost the same play, as Lekkerimäki once again found EP40 along the boards, who once again waited for Jake to arrive on the scene before feeding him in the slot:
Stick tap to Lekkerimäki for taking the shot to end that play.
And even apart from his friends, it was Jake DeBrusk getting the best chance of the second period, forcing Allen into making his best save of the night with a shot just outside the blue paint:
If these three continue to play at this level, the goals will come; that much is clear.
Best doing his best
Leevi let in three goals on the night, but all three were on the power play. Which means that because Kevin let in the lone even-strength goal, that gives Meriläinen the even-strength shutout. The math maths, I ran the numbers.
And he played well! Lankinen’s struggles are on display for the entire world to see, so what better time than now for Meriläinen to try and grab the brass ring and show he can be a starter in the NHL?
That’s a good save from Leevi, who on the whole seems more structured in his game than Lankinen has this season.
Anyways, remember when Braden Holtby was a goaltender on the Canucks? That was weird.
Best not great, Bob
New Jersey would then close out the night of scoring by getting yet another power play goal, this time after the diamond once again floats to the side of the ice, leaving Hischier wide open for the tap-in:
D Petey slides pretty aggressively to Jack Hughes, which leaves Arshdeep Bains trying to cover the entire middle of the net, which, as it did earlier in the game for Boqvist, leaves the right side of the ice wide open.
There was a time when Ian Cole and Derek Forbort were both parts of high-functioning penalty-killing units. This is a thing that existed.
Best cowardly reversal
Marco Rossi is the current leader on the Canucks in “fueled by piss and vinegar,” so it wasn’t shocking he wasn’t taking encroachment off the faceoff sitting down. What WAS shocking was Evan Rodrigues spearing him in the neck area:
The referees did their classic “call it a major so we can doom scroll for a bit in the penalty box” before ultimately walking back the five minutes to a double minor for high-sticking, which is wild when that is the textbook definition of spearing. How that wasn’t five-and-a-game boggles the mind. Did it cost the Canucks the game? Of course not, but if you don’t like to argue theory and process on penalties, then are you even a sports fan?
Back to the matter at hand, I think spearing overall is weirdly treated like some death sentence when it happens. As if the NHL acts like a dude is lucky to be alive after getting his belly poked. Give me your belly poke vs cracking open my wrist with a two-hander any day of the week, BUT here’s the thing:
  • Spearing is always called like you just cast Avada Kedavra in Geometry Potions class or whatever, so you kind of have to follow your own precedent you’ve set. There is a reason guys flop to the ground like they just lost a round of Mortal Kombat when they get speared; it’s because they know the rule is: you spear a guy, you get five minutes. It’s tradition.
  • That’s a spear near the throat/face, so yeah, they should probably make it 5 as a deterrent for that alone. Amusingly enough, the NHL is supposed to give out four minutes if you even attempt to spear somebody, but don’t make contact. Should you make contact, however, straight to jail. Automatic five-minute penalty and out of the game. Nothing about this video clip suggests it is anything but a spearing motion.
And this is where the NHL constantly loses credibility because clearly the rulebook is more of a guideline than anything. Because again, we are not arguing whether Rossi could have died here or how dangerous it was. The rulebook says absolutely nothing about potential damage caused. It’s very black and white, you use your stick as a spear, you get five minutes. I wish I could make this more complicated, but I honestly can’t. You go poke, you go broke; that’s it.
So when the NHL sees this play, and then randomly says, “herr herr herr, we can just call it a double minor for high-sticking,” then how can you believe in any penalty they call? If they can’t even call the basic penalties down the line, why wouldn’t you worry if they are using game management on every other call that requires a bit of objectivity to make a ruling? It’s an embarrassing call, to be honest.
That being said, the Canucks weren’t going to do much with a five minute power play at the rate they were going in this one, which is what ended up happening with the four minutes they did get. They couldn’t score in the first two minutes, and then with Brock Boeser in the box for slashing (in which he was clearly holding down the other guy’s stick, so if anything it was holding, but whatever, call penalties on vibes I guess), Jack Hughes snuck in behind the Canucks while Tom Willander did his best to race him down:
Only Jeff Tambellini in his prime would have caught Jack there, but Vancouver lucked out when Jack hit the outside of the post, or as any goalie will tell you, Leevi forced him to shoot wide with his perfect positioning.
The rest of the third period was basically New Jersey controlling the game, if we’re being honest. I have given credit to Vancouver for fighting hard in every game this season, but this contest was the first one where it felt like they were looking ahead to tomorrow’s game as the clock was winding down. Just didn’t have any juice and seemed content to leave it at 4-1 because at least that’s better than 7-2.
Max Sasson did make an appearance to save the day from a fifth goal, when a puck got away from Leevi:
But the Canucks just had no answers for New Jersey. Zeev Buium tried to track down Timo Meier only to have his stick shrugged off into space, leading to Brock Boeser just sort of praying the back door pass wouldn’t find its way to Hischier for the hatty:
And much like last game, there was another sequence when both Canucks d-men went down low behind the goal line (this time Willander and Oleksiak), leaving the front of the net wide open for Anthony Mantha:
Just to give an idea of what it was taking for the Canucks to escape their zone, you needed Elias Pettersson doing his dekes just to get a clean exit:
But for the most part, it was just Vancouver hitting a wall when it came to generating offence of any kind. Even when Buium did get the puck in the offensive zone, he struggled to make passes and in this case, ended up banking the puck out of the zone:
A very forgettable night in Newark for Vancouver.
Best 3 up 3 down
Down:
  • Unforced errors on zone exits. We don’t need to go over this, we all saw the evidence. It’s something they need to clean up if they want to score goals consistently, let alone win games.
  • Canucks penalty kill is absolutely atrocious. The diamond formation isn’t working for them. Maybe they keep at it and it clicks but right now it’s ugly.
  • Kevin Lankinen taking the official loss. It just feels like bullying at this point.
Up:
  • Jake DeBrusk. After a slow start and being out a couple of games being sick, he has been the Canucks best forward in terms of attacking the net with purpose.
  • The EP40/Lekker/DeBrusk line. Again, we are not ready for a nickname for these three yet, but they’ve been trending in the right direction for several games now.
  • Leevi Meriläinen. He was a bright spot in an otherwise subpar day of entertainment. Needs a few more over the top glove save animations, but he’s been fun to watch.
Best it could be worse
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