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The Stanchies: Canucks campaign to go 84-0 starts off in style
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Photo credit: Perry Nelson-Imagn Images
The Stanchion
Sep 30, 2026, 03:42 EDTUpdated: Sep 30, 2026, 04:31 EDT
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Guess who’s back? Back again. Stanchy’s back. Tell a friend.
Yes, folks, another Canucks season is upon us, and you might be asking yourself, what is different this time around?
To be honest, not much, but also, all of the things? Stick with me here.
On the surface, this team is still finding its way. It has officially embraced the rebuild (as much as owners tend to embrace such a thing), but we are still looking at a season of few wins and many struggles. With 84 games on tap now, the season will literally feel longer than ever before, so riding out the season with potentially nothing but the draft lottery to look forward to might quickly feel eerily familiar to many, a sad Pablo Escobar meme journey beginning anew.
Of course there are some differences, and this is why all of the things have changed. We aren’t sitting around wondering when Mom and Dad are going to get a divorce, and that one small change has begun the Good Vibes Only Era in Vancouver. It honestly feels like a lifetime ago that Quinn Hughes was a Vancouver Canuck, and the team was still doing their best to pretend they had a playoff run on their hands; bringing in anyone they could find that might possibly be a friend of the former Captain, signalling the short but sweet Pick Me Era.
Yes, it was merely a season ago in which everything imploded. JT Miller had some tantrums and eventually left town. Quinn Hughes quiet quit on the team and brought his travelling roadshow to Minnesota, where they await his next move. Veteran stalwarts in Tyler Myers and Conor Garland moved onto bluer and greener pastures. Adam Foote surprised everyone by giving Bill LaForge a run for his money as the worst coach of all time in team history and has since been let go. Jim Rutherford is no longer doing interviews exposing where the nuclear codes are kept, nor is the off-putting assistant-to-the-manager dynamic Patrik Allvin had with the former team President lingering in the air over everything.
Instead, it has all been replaced with once again asking the Sedins to lead Vancouver to glory, cautioning them to tread softly, because they tread on the fandom’s dreams. And with them, they bring a renewed sense of, well, maybe not full-on optimism, but they bring a level of hope that things can get better. Maybe not on the ice right away, but surely off the ice. The dynamic between team and fandom might have been at its absolute worst under the Quinn Hughes era, as never has the disconnect between the two felt so large. I wrote about it before, but there was this sense you got that the team was almost antagonistic with the fanbase, as if the fans should be thanking the Canucks for allowing them to give them money. Charity work, social media content, media scrums; there was just this vibe of “holy sh!t, just leave us alone so we can do our thing” that precedes almost every terrible breakup in human history.
Which is why the Good Vibes Only Era is a much-needed antidote for a team that had poisoned the well. Now is the time for the team to reconnect with the fans. To climb down from their ivory towers and show they’re all pulling on the same rope. Times will certainly be tough in the near future, but that’s why it’s vital the team shows that they are in the muck with the rest of us. The Sedins set the bar for the culture of a top-tier hockey team, and now it’s time they bring the Canucks back to that.
In a way, it’s kind of sad how low the bar got with the team in terms of how it approached the fans. Merely doing charity work or having a player look somewhat happy to be here shouldn’t be something you need to give a standing ovation for. But that’s honestly how bad environments come about. Every day, things slowly chip away until years later, you don’t even recognize or remember what a well-functioning sports team looks like.
All of which is to say, good times don’t last, but bad guys do.
Wait, no, that’s not it.
See, this is a season in which what happens off the ice is almost as important as what happens on the ice. To watch what the Canucks are building. To see how they are going to fix things. To once again bring the team and fans together. And you know what does that better than anything?
THUMPING THE EDMONTON OILERS 6-5 ON THEIR HOME ICE TO START THE SEASON. OH, THE FANS HAD HIGH-VIZ VESTS ON, YOU’RE SO HARD-WORKING, SUCH BLUE-COLLAR PEOPLE, BLAH BLAH BLAH
You know who doesn’t need a vest to cosplay as someone who works hard? Someone who has no problem getting their hands dirty and doing the work that needs to get done?
Paul.
Effing.
Cotter.
Sure, it’s game one, and to extrapolate anything from this game to cover a whole season is a fool’s game, but book a 50-goal season for this guy now. Maybe a bit extreme, but the numbers don’t lie, and they spell disaster for the rest of the league.
Forget the rebuild, this team is ready for the playoffs NOW. Forget everything I said earlier; time to acquire assets and push this Paul Cotter-led team as far as it gets, because let me tell you something: a team that wastes the prime window of Paul Cotter does not deserve to be in the league.
Tristan Jarry, more like Listenin’ Barely, as Mike Babcock reams you out tomorrow and demands to see your phone.
Hey McDavid, the jerk store called and said they’re running out of you.
If you’re waiting for me to back down from this and joke about having a laugh, I’m not going to.
LET’S RECAP THIS GAME.
Best chaotic giraffe based memories
Using the vaunted bend-and-snap methods in ways Elle Woods and Paulette Bonafonté never dreamed of. You are missed in Vancouver, Chaos Giraffe.
Best hold onto your butts
The first game of the Manny Malholtra era was a bit of a roller coaster, and if I could break it down into periods, I would so thusly:
First period: nervous.
Second period: solid.
Third period: to quote Jon Bois, “why watch overtime playoff hockey when you can simply snort cocaine and ride a motorcycle out of a helicopter.”
The first shot kind of set the tone for the night’s adventures, as Leon Draisaitl drove wide into the Canucks zone, finding former friend Vasili Podkolzin in the slot for the one-timer, which I am told by EA, if he had an X-Factor for this, would have scored here:
Using a level of physics and science I do not possess, Kevin Lankinen somehow made the save and managed to force the puck to dribble just wide of the net, but the message was clear: the giraffe may be gone, but chaos is part of the Canucks DNA. Life, er, er, er, finds a way.
And while there were plenty of things to dislike in this game (Marco Rossi clearing attempts), there was a lot to like as well.
One of the things that stood out to me was newly-minted-with-the-A Zeev Buium had himself a sneaky solid game. What he can bring to the offensive side of the ice usually gets the spotlight when it comes to the young defenceman, but he has struggled in his own zone during his brief time in the NHL. Smaller d-men are always going to have to prove they can hang with the big boys, and against Edmonton, I thought his positioning and lane control were light-years ahead of any game we saw under Adam Foote.
Not since Cole Cassels shut down Connor McDavid have we seen someone so effortlessly slide into frame and shut down a rush from the Oilers captain:
Zeev watched McDavid skate by two of his friends, and he didn’t panic; instead, he took away ice from McDavid and closed the gap while not overcommitting to the point Connor could skate right around him. If that were me, I would have said I pulled my hamstring the second McDavid touched the puck, and I would wave to the crowd as I was taken off on a little cart.
That being said, the extra pressure from Drew O’Connor on the backcheck, or Drew Connor according to Jack Michaels, helps tremendously on this play because yeah, you know what, sometimes having three dudes on McDavid is the right answer. It felt like last year every Canuck player was on an island, and if they made a mistake, there was no one around to bail them out or help them out of a bad spot.
And that teamwork continued to shine, as shortly after this, Brock Boeser found Liam “Hutty” Öhgren with an absolutely sublime chip pass off the glass that Jarry just managed to get the shaft of his stick on:
Now we have a proud tradition of nicknames in The Stanchies, and I do feel like I have to explain the Hutty situation we find ourselves in.
You see, Liam Öhgren talked during the preseason about how he was given a 99 overall player card of himself in NHL 27 in HUT mode. He went on to explain how he was beating all these other teams, who, if we’re being honest, were probably lucky to have a couple of 86 OV players at best.
Which means people were booting up their game, going online to play a game or two, only to find a 99 OV Liam Öhgren being manned by Öhgren himself, tearing them to pieces.
Which, on one hand, I absolutely love and respect. If this was back in the day and I found out Tommi Santala was crushing me in a video game with a souped-up version of himself, I would happily embrace that.
But on the other hand, you have to own that sh!t with a weird nickname in the Stanchies.
Sorry Hutty, I don’t make the rules.
Well I do I guess.
Still.
Best sign the Sheriff is back in town
Luke Schenn has returned for his third tour of duty, and if ever there was a sign that a guy loved a city, it’s the fact he returned to a rebuilding Canucks team. He willingly said, “Yeah, that sounds good.” in a market that eats its own young when things get tough. Craig Janney couldn’t last two days with even the thought of playing here, yet here comes Luke Schenn riding in on his horse for the third time to punch dudes who get fresh with his goalies.
And while I won’t pretend Luke Schenn will be an integral part of any offence from this team, I will always enjoy the fact that he has a particular set of skills, a set of skills that makes him a nightmare for people who go in the crease:
Luke Schenn is out here like Mr. Plow, clearing away the snow and debris so his goalie can get home safely. Look at the frog technique he uses to push himself forward in the crease to clear out all the bodies, and then leans on his opponent at the end to assert dominance.
Now, will face washes and crease clearing save the world? Of course not.
But for a team looking to establish a new identity, the idea of giving a fu*k seems like a good one?
Call me crazy, but looking down the bench and seeing your Captain staring into the void as your team gets rag-dolled probably doesn’t rally the troops as much as you’d hope.
Give me Luke Schenn putting some respect on the logo by defending the crease any day of the week over whatever the hell last season turned into.
You know what else you can give me?
Paul.
Effing.
Cotter.
BUT YOU ALL HAD HIGH-VIZ VESTS ON, EVERYONE WAS ON THE SAME PAGE, HOW COULD THESE BLUE COLLAR FOLKS BE DEFEATED, NOTHING MAKES SENSE IN THIS LIFE ANYMORE.
Paul Cotter. That’s why. That’s why this happened. The James Dean of hockey turned a Kevin Lankinen rebound that he hadoukened into the middle of the ice into a two-on-one, and not for a single solitary second did he think of passing to Arshdeep Bains. He knew the entire way: “yep, I’m sniping this past Jarry,” and that’s just what he did. That nonchalant bastard.
He’s Paul Cotter. This is who he is.
That’s the rule. That’s the goal now.
Best we are so back
Kevin Lankinen’s game was kind of all over the map on the night, but it’s hard to fault a goalie for giving up goals against the Oilers. In fact, he basically had the Grant Fuhr special where he let in a lot of goals, but also had a couple of crazy saves, and ultimately made one more save than the other guy to end the night to take the dub.
I will say I think we’re all kind of waiting to see who emerges from the gas-leak Adam Foote season, to see just how much that impacted players last year. Foote’s system seemed particularly cruel to goaltenders, so I am expecting a bounce back of sorts from the Finnish fiend this year, which means we will see more saves like this:
What’s nice is that there weren’t fourteen backdoor tap-in goals on the night, which feels like a nice departure from the gas leak season. This was probably the closest the Oilers got to that kind of scoring chance, as the Canucks played with a much tighter structure to start the year.
Best eat your vitamins and say your prayers
By my quick math, Evan Bouchard got around 37 points in this game, and he got his first goal off of a faceoff after Mattias Ekholm set the “oops, tee hee, did I do that?” interference pick on Liam Öhgren:
To be fair to Ekholm, that is a very slick pick, and the resulting open ice is all Bouchard needed to pick a spot past a Zach Hyman-screened Kevin Lankinen. Lankinen felt he might have been interfered with, as he put one arm up in the air in the universal goalie language of “uhhh wtf man”, but all contact was outside of the blue paint.
Best putting on for your city
The Oilers are a good team, and if you replayed this game 100 times, I am not sure how many times Vancouver would win again in the same manner, but that isn’t the point of this season. This is the Good Vibes Only Era, and you know what good vibes are made of? Fil Hronek stealing Elias Pettersson’s job as the backup goalie, blocking shots without a care in the world:
It’s weird talking about a game in which the other team scored five goals as some sort of example of better structure than last year, but THAT’S HOW BAD LAST YEAR WAS. THIS IS BETTER STRUCTURE.
This game was almost like ruthless aggression efficiency in that both teams were just really, really good at cashing in their high-scoring chances. At the end of the night, the high-danger chances at even strength were only seven for Edmonton and five for Vancouver. I bet Manny Malhotra would say this kind of win isn’t how he drew it up.
“Not the way we drew it up, for sure.”
Exactly. But you take it.
Best doubling down
Now, Jamie Oleksiak didn’t have a banner night. He struggled with the speed of the Oilers and wasn’t the best helper bee for Tom Willander, leaving his new young friend in some tough spots. Give him time to settle in, and let him play another team that isn’t stacked with human cheat codes on offence, and we will probably see better from the big man. How much better, we shall see, but he still has plenty of time to fill that giant tall d-man role that Tyler Myers left for him.
That being said, he did have a couple of highlights in this game, one of which was making a save to help bail out Lankinen:
He might get nutmegged on the pass, but dude is out here stacking the pads like a young Kirk McLean to make up for it. Again, that’s the honest effort this fan base wants to see from this team. They might get out-skilled on a lot of nights, but just show some hustle and heart and this fan base will be right behind you the entire way.
Due to that save, it then led to Hutty finding Marco Rossi with the breakaway pass, and somehow the Canucks were up a goal on Edmonton again:
You can see Rossi blitz out of the zone the second Öhgren goes to the puck along the boards, and with Jake Walman’s coverage falling apart faster than an Eric Schmitt perjury accusation, it leaves a nice open lane for Hutty to spin and fire the pass up for the breakaway. Marco Rossi is, of course, quite gifted with the puck, and Tristan Jarry is currently a goaltender in the NHL, resulting in the Canucks regaining the league.
Best Mr. Plow, that’s the name
That name again is Mr. Plow:
Again, low bar, I get it.
But yeah man. Shove that dude for even THINKING about looking at your goalie. I want to live in a world in which if an opponent of the Canucks even dreams about going near Kevin Lankinen, Luke Schenn is going to show up outside their house with a baseball bat.
Best questionable choices
The Max Sasson, Drew O’Connor and Linus Karlsson line did an admirable job keeping McDavid and friends in check, in part because they can actually skate. The Canucks have rarely been a speedy team, and they still aren’t, but they finally have a handful of guys who can go, which is something Malhotra pointed out helped them with keeping Conor McDavid in check on the night.
“It definitely helps. To be able to kind of match that speed and try to be on top of [McDavid] as much as possible to limit his opportunities to transition and use his speed the way he does.”
The problem you can run into, however, is when Linus Karlsson is out here trying to thread the needle like prime Josh Allen through the middle of the ice towards a pair of teammates who wanted a line change:
The end result was Connor McDavid finding Evan Bouchard for his second goal of the night.
And watching the replay, part of me kind of thinks Willander could have made better choices in coverage, but also, that’s a tremendous move by Bouchard. Like, you legitimately have to hand it to him on that goal and just accept that sometimes good players do good things, and you can’t get too mad about it.
Would prime Sami Salo have shut that down? Of course. He grabs that pass, goes bar down from center ice and skates into the dressing room with what I would imagine would be three pretty severe injuries.
But not everyone can be Sami Salo.
Best what’s that name again?
Oh right, Mr Plow:
Kasperi Kapanen has a quick, fleeting thought of going near Lankinen, so Luke Schenn escorts him off the premises; then when Kapanen tries to shove back, you can see Schenn put on his serious Dad face to subdue him into submission. You can almost hear him saying, “Is there going to be a problem here?” before Kapanen starts patting his legs and checks to see where he put his keys.
Best giving the fans what they want
Hey man, Drew O’Connor winning a jump ball and running into the rare occurrence of someone not scoring on Tristan Jarry is still a good highlight:
The Good Vibes Only Era just wants the effort, baby.
Fun fact I originally wrote that as “just wants the effort baby” without a comma which made me picture what an effort baby would look like. Probably wears a high-viz vest.
Best Prime Time
Remember we talked about Oleksiak having a couple of cool plays on an otherwise kind of sh!tty night? Well, if you’re going to have a nice play, make it a skilled poke check that gets the puck up the ice for a goal:
Jonathan Lekkerimäki has that Alex Mogilny five-hole desire in him where you can tell his kink is beating dudes through their legs. His best asset has been and always will be his shot, so assuming he can beat an actual NHL goaltender later this season, it bodes well for a player that I think many people have written off, myself included. He’s in a bit of a do-or-die season in terms of showing real NHL improvement, so this is the exact start he needed.
Also, if you wear number 88, you HAVE to produce points. You cannot in any way choose that number and be a middling player. If you don’t show you are worthy of the 88 number, they WILL kick you out of the NHL.
Kudos to Jake DeBrusk on this play as well, as he clearly realizes his Seth Rogen Superbad role and just lets the faster younger kid do his thing. Dude couldn’t give the puck quick enough to Lekkerimäki before pulling over to the side of the road to puke.
Best swarm swarm swarm
Once again the Canucks found themselves looking down the barrel of a Connor McDavid rush, and once again Zeev Buium stood his ground. Once again the speed of Sasson and Drew O’Connor came into play, as they not only swarmed McDavid (with the help of Linus Karlsson), but they then transitioned the puck the other way, leading to Max Sasson eating Jarry alive with the soft back-hander:
Again, it’s not often we see the Canucks kill a team with speed, but DOC and Sasson’s ability to skate with the puck created a chance out of nothing but hard work. They shut down McDavid, then scored a goal.
Ruthlessly efficient.
Best all gas no brakes
And what night would be complete without an Elias Pettersson power play goal from the bumper spot of all places:
That’s just a very slick goal from EP40, one in which the entire goal funnelled through him. We’re so used to him unloading one-timers from the wing that we never stopped to think if it was possible he could run the bumper. They were so unconcerned with whether they could that they never stopped to consider if they should.
For a team that hasn’t had an efficient, consistent bumper man since Bo Horvat was kicked out of town by someone very bad at his job traded, maybe this is a good place for EP40 to work special teams. His tip pass to the point, then the redirect on the shot, is a nice reminder of the kind of high-end skill he once displayed on a nightly basis.
Best revenge served cold
Not since Love is Blind have I found myself shaking my head so much at life in the Podz, as Bouchard picked up his third point of the night, this time an assist on Podkolzin’s goal:
Podkolzin was, of course, traded out of Vancouver by someone very terrible at their job, and has since found his career on the upswing with Edmonton.
Is it easier to do said career revivals playing with McDavid and/or Draisaitl? Of course it is.
But there was always something weird about giving up on the former first-rounder in Vancouver so quickly.
It was just such a stark contrast to trying to will Jake Virtanen into being a thing over the course of six seasons, to turn around and then see the team be like, “nah man, this Podkolzin guy has got NOTHING, we clearly need to dump him to keep…Daniel Sprong.”
I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that this goal happens because Marco Rossi does the hockey equivalent of working on the lights while Christian Bale is trying to do an emotional scene, as he just ah-da-da-dah’s in the background, casually throwing a backhanded clearing attempt softly up the boards right into the Oilers’ hands.
For shame, Marco. For shame.
Best getting back to basics
Under 30 seconds later, the Canucks found themselves with a faceoff deep in their end, and well, I guess you can’t get all the Adam Foote out of your system in one game, as the Canucks once again got scored on right off the draw:
Lankinen couldn’t find the puck through traffic, and suddenly Oilers fans were happy, which always feels a bit gross to experience.
You could also sense that the Oilers were like, “You thought you were going to beat US, on a night when we handed out high-viz vests??” as momentum completely swung in their direction; momentum Kapanen almost used to walk through the entire team to score with:
Yes, that’s Oleksiak doing the ol’ spin-and-pray, as he stopped skating and instead invested heavily in his belief in his long arm span to stop the speedy Oiler forward. Luckily, Lankinen was able to ping-pong the ball around his pads, and it ended up sliding out the other side, but it felt more like a question of when the Oilers would tie it up, not if.
Best summoning your inner Hasek
But Kevin Lankinen was in full Grant Fuhr mode, so just when you think you have him beat, he’s out there spinning through the air delivering a save with the cruelty of a backhanded compliment:
This was 1980s hockey, and it was glorious. The only thing missing was Jake DeBrusk cracking open a six-pack and having a smoke in the tunnels between periods.
Best ref ball
I try not to get too involved in the discussion of the officials, but one of my least favourite things in the world is slashing penalties called because a stick breaks.
And look, sometimes I get it: if a dude jackhammers down on a stick and it breaks, that’s a good visual, that’s probably a good time to call a penalty. Even if today’s sticks can break from a coquettish wink from afar, I can accept those ones where it clearly looks like a guy is working out some emotional baggage on the ice.
But when you’re Linus Karlsson, and you just got Jan Bulis’d to the ice, so you flip your stick in the general direction of a stick that is probably already broken, and it snaps so they call you for slashing? Garbage. Just straight garbage:
The NHL has no desire for accountability with, well, pretty much anything, so all you can do is shake your fist at the clouds and try to deal with it. Objectively, though, that is a terrible call to make, and the official should feel shame for it.
All of which led to Evan Bouchard getting his fifth point of the night because why not, as Podkolzin once again finds the back of the net:
Look, I get that Podkolzin had to score, but did he have to make that snipe so filthy? Feels rude to do that to the team that had an old man who was clearly bad at his job trade you away that drafted you.
Best his name is Paul Effing Cotter
I won’t lie, I assumed the Oilers would get the puck in overtime and then never give it up until they found a way to score. Their skill set as a team is very much aligned with three-on-three hockey in a way that feels like bullying.
But much to my surprise, it was the Canucks who took it to Edmonton, and aside from one brief scoring chance from McDavid, it was mostly the Canucks doing all the work.
In fact, Zeev Buium almost ended the game on a pass from Marco Rossi, except apparently only Podkolzin is allowed to snipe like Simo Häyhä:
Which brings us back to one man.
Paul.
Effing.
Cotter.
I don’t even need words to describe this goal; just watch it. I am pretty laid back when I watch hockey nowadays; you cover a team long enough writing about it and a lot of your soul just sort of dies, but even on this goal I found myself jacked up watching it.
Look, a skilled goal; everyone loves that, right? Pavel Bure, mind-blowing to watch.
But there is just something extra primal about watching someone outwork the absolute sh!t out of another person before scoring what is still also a very skilled goal. Paul Cotter was an absolute badass on this goal, but Max Sasson also made a brilliant play by dragging Zach Hyman towards the corner with him, opening up the lane for the backhand pass to Cotter.
You know how many times we have watched a failed check in overtime lead to an odd-man rush the other way? I was so certain Cotter was going to lose his guy, but then he just kept grinding. Kept working. Put his head down, and then even when he fell, he’s making a pass with the puck. Then he gets back up, charges to the net, and dingle-dangles his way to overtime heroics like a young Kyle Wellwood.
I tell you one thing: if that goal had happened in Vancouver, Rogers Arena would not be standing; the roof would have blown completely off.
Paul Effing Cotter, man. If ever there was the epitome of what this city wants from the team this year, it’s the effort on this goal.
Best name game
Best he’s not wrong
Best duality of man
Best putting respect back on the logo
Best long term planning
Investing in local businesses, you say?
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