All that matters for a tanking team is effort. And there’s something very freeing about that feeling.

The Vancouver Canucks are under no expectations to win. In some ways, they’re encouraged not to! But the last week has shown the full range of what a team that’s all but officially out of the playoff picture can accomplish. On Wednesday, the Canucks lost a hard-fought battle with the Hurricanes that earned them zero points but a fair bit of respect for hanging in with one of the Eastern Conference’s strongest rosters. On Friday, they looked totally unfazed by the amount of trade deadline departures they’d faced when they took out the Blackhawks in Chicago. And 24 hours later, they held on to force overtime against the Winnipeg Jets, despite getting brutally outshot and outchanced.

You already know exactly how that happened. Kevin Lankinen suddenly found his god mode again. When he wasn’t making the huge old-school stops on the goal line you’d watch in YouTube compilations, he was using the Force to push the Jets’ wide open chances through the crease and out.

The Canucks played park-the-bus hockey just to get to the end, a move that would surely make Adam Foote’s mentor shed a tear. It got them a point tonight, but man, did it make this game a fight in the mud. Thankfully for Vancouver, Connor Hellebuyck kept slipping in it at the right times.

We don’t know how many more close games like this we’ll get before the season ends next month, so let’s treasure them while we’ve got them, shall we?

This is like when Cartoon Network secretly aired a commercial on Nickelodeon that one time.

It took the Canucks eight minutes to get their first shot on goal in this game. And just like in Chicago, it was the only one they needed.

Max Sasson entered the zone surrounded by a trio of Jets before finding Linus Karlsson with a classic Canucks back pass. Karlsson cut to the right, took a shot against the grain, and somehow found some open space behind Connor Hellebuyck’s blocker.

Now here’s what I think happened. I think Hellebuyck thought that Karlsson had pushed the puck to Tom Willander, a few steps farther away but also closer to the circle. Karlsson, crucially, also has black hockey tape to mask the sight of the puck. Hellebuyck moved a touch too far to his left, and whoops! That’s how you leave some open net.

I guess that’s par for the course for a goalie who got a participation trophy from the US government a few weeks ago. But it was also a perfect sneaky shot by Karlsson through a slight screen.

It feels like every other team in the NHL does giveaways except the Canucks. Sure they do a bobblehead every four years or so, but the promotions other teams run are totally boatracing Vancouver’s.

Now I have negative levels of interest in sitting through a Country Night game. But if you give me a funny team-branded cowboy hat like the Jets handed out tonight, I’d be able to stomach it a fair bit more.

5/10 for the theme night, 8.5/10 for the giveaway itself.

Lankinen was out here BATTLING in the second period. The Jets tried to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the net, particularly off a delayed penalty on Zeev Buium, where Winnipeg had so many chances to bury the puck, but Lankinen went full Dominik Hasek to keep the puck out over a 10-second span.

The willingness to battle is something that can set a great goalie apart from the good ones. If there’s a limb or a toe you can throw at the puck, you’ll do it with gusto. And Lankinen polished this series of saves off with a photo finish.

As long as the goaltending keeps being fun, it’ll be a lot easier to enjoy the rest of this season.

If the saves Lankinen was making weren’t enough to keep the puck out, the invisible shield he set up around the blue paint was.

Here, he draws Cole Perfetti out far enough that the Jet puts the puck clear through the side of the crease.

Then Kevin robbed Morgan Barron with another aggressive push out of the crease. When Cole Koepke tried to wrap the rebound around, Lankinen used his Jedi mind tricks to convince DePetey to seal off the post. Not even a wide-open shot by Jonathan Toews could get past Lankinen’s leg.

Challenging this far out of the crease might be a modern goalie coach’s nightmare. But real ones know this is what true goalie power is supposed to look like. Never change, Kev.

Remember last time the Canucks played the Jets when we talked about Mark Scheifele having a chip on his shoulder post-Olympics? Well, that shoulder is working just fine today, when he finally solved Lankinen with 11 seconds to go in the period.

It started with an incredibly ill-timed icing by Brock Boeser. Jonathan Toews cleanly won the faceoff against a tired Marco Rossi, continuing his long history of being a thorn in the Canucks’ sides. Scheifele was perfectly positioned to take the puck through the circle and found his lane over Lankinen’s glove.

It was only a matter of time before a Jet scored. At least Lankinen can take solace in the fact that it took a perfect set play to do it.

I need to complain for a second?

The Canucks have played the Jets three times this season, and not once did Winnipeg wear their throwback ’80s alternate jerseys. Every time they’ve worn their super stale 2010s-era uniforms, I say enough is enough!

But I’m not going to push for them to bring back the Bobby Hull-era uniforms full-time. I want to see them use their extremely underrated Selanne-era uniforms again. Those beauties are timeless and never get the love they deserve when the Jets do throwback nights. The only time they’ve used it was for their 2023 Reverse Retros, and it was so much better than anything else they’ve worn in the last 15 years.

I dare you to watch them in action and not agree with me.

End of rant!

Liam Öhgren’s goal was a terrific start to the third period, but a conflicting one. Surely they’re not going to win back-to-back games and go on that dreaded March hot streak thanks to this tally, right?

This was a terrific zone entry by the Teddy Blueger line and made possible entirely by how the trade deadline played out. Notably not traded Blueger dumps the puck in, and Linus Karlsson wins a board battle against Jacob Bryson, the defenseman making his Jets debut after being acquired from Buffalo for Luke Schenn and Logan Stanley yesterday. The other piece in that trade, winger Isak Rosen, is also on the ice.

Blueger then gets inside positioning on Bryson’s defensive partner, Hadyn Fleury, before feeding a pass to Öhgren streaking down the middle. Hellebuyck doesn’t pick him up in time, and Öhgren rips the puck right through the wickets.

Imagine how differently this entire shift would have played out had the Canucks traded Blueger as people expected. Or if Colton Parayko had chosen to waive his no-trade clause, and the Sabres hadn’t gone to their Plan B trade with Winnipeg.

But that’s a story for another day… in The Twilight Zone.

Kevin Lankinen is risking ruining the tank by giving the Canucks road trip momentum. How do we fix that?

The heist is simple. First, Max Sasson cross-checks Dylan DeMelo to give the Jets the power play. Then the pressure of over 30 shots finally burst the dam when Scheifele found Gabe Vilardi open on top of Lankinen’s crease. It took a deke in a phone booth for Vilardi to get Lankinen to bite and lift a backhander over his pad.

It turns out sitting back and letting a team completely dominate the pace of play is good for something! Everybody say thanks to Rick!

The Hockey Night in Canada control centre must’ve been a little alarmed at this camera angle.

“Hey uhhh, Dave? Maybe pan out a touch, please?”

This was a Wyatt contribution. Even on his day off, he finds a way to make sure these Stanchies are the right level of crass.

Getting one point in a March game makes sense for the Canucks. But these Canucks are different than any previous iteration. They’ll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory no matter what!

They nearly did walk away with both points when EP40 got a breakaway (terrific pass by DeBrusk, by the way), but Petey couldn’t get the puck underneath Hellebuyck’s pad.

The play immediately turned the other way. Kyle Connor entered the zone before passing off to Scheifele, who quickly set up Josh Morrissey for a one-timer that took a bounce Lankinen wasn’t ready for. Game ovaaa.

Let’s look at the zoomed-in camera for a second. Morrissey’s shot might’ve missed the net, had it not been for the sneaky leg of Fil Hronek. Either he was trying to block the shot, ORRR he was making sure the Canucks don’t lose more ground in the race for the best lottery odds.

Now if that’s not captain material, I don’t know what is!