#Canucks start Bains-EP40-Boeser line and Oilers counter with Podkolzin-McDavid-Draisaitl
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The Stanchies: Canucks play a tight game of hockey in 4-2 loss to Oilers
Photo credit: Perry Nelson-Imagn Images
Nov 8, 2026, 02:26 EST
The Vancouver Canucks lost to the Edmonton Oilers to the tune of 4-2, which was notable in that neither team needed to score more than six goals this time around? That feels like an improvement of sorts, though I don’t dare dive too deep down that path, as I feel that’s an origin story for a humiliation ritual I’d rather pass on.
The game was perfectly fine, all things considered. I would even hazard to say it was one of the Canucks better efforts in this season of rebuilding, where dreary games are often on the menu. That’s very clearly a low bar, but you’d hope the team would show some sort of pushback after being humiliated by the Winnipeg Jets mere days ago.
There were around twenty minutes in this game where I even think I saw the vision Manny Malholtra has for this team. The second period saw a Canucks team hanging with the Oilers and playing tight hockey (so tight), and at one point I let out an audible gasp as I recognized some semblance of defensive structure at play. To the Canucks credit, they were skating hard and did a good job of both carrying the puck up the ice with possession and making sure to forecheck hard whenever they didn’t have it. At no point during this period did Evan Bouchard get a hat trick, which has to be considered a victory.
The end result was a second period that if this was wrestling, would clearly be the moment the Canucks were getting their shine, showing the world that maybe this plucky babyface could pull off the Barry Horowitz upset.
Alas, the Oilers got the cutoff in the third period, because sometimes the heel has to win in order for the eventual victory of the hero to pay off emotionally. Led by six points between Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, the Oilers at least had to work for their victory in the final frame, which isn’t quite a moral victory, but it’s something.
Some other takeaways from this game would be Zeev Buium playing just over 26 minutes of hockey on the night, continuing the sink-or-swim approach the Canucks have taken with him this season. He currently sits second on the team in minutes averaged per game, just slightly ahead of the still-injured Tom Willander. Buium had one of those games where you noticed a few mistakes, noticed some good puck movement on the power play, but overall didn’t stand out much. He remains a work in progress, which shouldn’t be a surprise, as it is sometimes hard to remember he is still just 20 years old.
Jamie Oleksiak continues to be one of the Canucks best threats from the blueline when it comes to shooting the puck, which is just all kinds of bizarre, but we might as well roll with it.
Leevi Meriläinen also had a very solid game and continues his very solid season for the Canucks, showing a nice recovery from the Winnipeg massacre; In a word, solid.
Luke Schenn finally got back into the lineup but was limited to 15 shifts and just under 12 minutes of ice time, so I don’t think Manny has all that much faith in Mr. Plow at the moment.
Brendan Gallagher had a period of hockey where he pissed off the entire Oilers bench, so that was a nice vintage throwback?
Honestly, it was a pretty basic night of hockey, so not a ton stood out. It was very much the perfect formula for a rebuilding team to talk about keeping it close, but having to learn how to handle these moments better in future games.
Maybe it just paled in comparison to Rick Tocchet and the Flyers coming to town on Monday, and wondering if that fanbase will pull the full Jim Benning and get their banner calling for the firing of Tocchet soaring through the air? Sometimes in a rebuilding season you have to pick your battles, and that one seems far more entertaining than being a speed bump on the Oilers’ march towards another Cup run.
Either way, let’s recap this game, as contractually I am obligated to do so. Gif money doesn’t make itself.
Best here we go again
OK, so I am of two minds on the lineup change.
One, this team loses every game, so it’s hard to stan too hard for any one combination. I can’t really argue for keeping Jake DeBrusk, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser together because of how vital they are to the team’s success when said team has very little success. It would be a bit like arguing I need to drink beer at work to “keep my focus” when I am going face first through my desk after lunch.
But on the other hand, this team has such extremely low entertainment value, and that line was like the one thing that was kind of going for them? Again, after that Winnipeg loss I understand that nothing is sacred. But it just feels like keeping the Stockholm Syndrome line together for a bit longer would have been nice? I also feel like you’re putting Arshdeep Bains in a position to fail by putting him on the top line against the Oilers, as the “AHL player only” accusations aren’t going anywhere after this game.
I get it though. Every coach has their guys they love. We saw Noah Juulsen play whenever Rick Tocchet was having a sad. But yeah, it just feels like Bains skill set didn’t mesh with Brock and EP40 in this one.
As for the game itself, Leon Draisaitl opened the game up with a high danger scoring chance when Vancouver politely moved out of his way for reasons (bees?):
EP40 just sort of takes the moment in and let’s Meriläinen get a warm up going by having to stop a mini Leon breakaway.
The Canucks countered this scoring chance with a Drew O’Connor shot around nine minutes into the game, which doesn’t exactly feel super inspiring?
The Canucks would end the night with 22 shots to the Oilers 30, cementing their position as the team that gives up the most amounts of shots per game, narrowly edging out old friends Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard, who are in their own nightmare rotation as they await their UFA status to line up with heading over to Vancouver.
The good news is that Vancouver is first in the league when it comes to generating the least amount of shots per game, so that’s nice, yeah? Even better, they are the fourth best team in the league shooting percentage wise, so this has been quite the heater the Canucks have been on. It can very much get worse from here, which feels oddly cruel.
Reading that back the tone feels confusing, but I fear we must march onwards.
Best what are we even doing
The Canucks have a real knack for leaving the opposition player with the best chance of scoring wide open in their own end. #Canucks
Speaking of Arshdeep Bains, his controller seemingly shut off on the Edmonton Oilers first goal, as he sort has a concept of defense but doesn’t really apply it, as he allows Mattias Ekholm to skate through the slot unmolested, setting up shop for the easy finish on the McDavid pass:
At one point four Canucks are just blatantly staring at McDavid with the puck, which yeah, that’s sort of his thing so I get it. It’s hard to get angry about a team getting caught up in the aura of McDavid, compared to watching like Brett Lebda walk around and dangle the roster.
That being said, Zeev Buium closes the gap on the McDavid entry then drops back into what amounts to zone coverage, before moving back up to chase McDavid with the puck. At this point he is no longer covering the net so Bains really has to keep up with Ekholm in man to man coverage, but he too gets caught up in “zone defense” and I beg of you to see how hard I am using air quotes on that.
The end result is that Bains stops tracking Ekholm, and I don’t know if he just doesn’t realize Buium isn’t down low or that down low has no coverage, but either way he can’t be releasing the Oilers d-man like that. Feels like a weird break down because Buium and Banes jump very quickly from man to man to zone back to man to man, before settling firmly on “Stare at Connor with the puck”, which doesn’t end well for them.
Best I can do
The goal for today is for the forwards to get 10 shots on the Edmonton net—how’s that sound? #Canucks
Look, sometimes shots can come in the form of throwing yourself into the net, as shown here by Brendan Gallagher:
Hey, that feels like Ekholm was pushing a vulnerable player cutting towards the crease, something McDavid appears to be very vocal about, but what do I know.
The officials did side with the Oilers on this occasion, and accused Gallagher of running the goalie, giving Edmonton a power play.
Which you know what, if Gallagher can get a team mad at him for the night, trying to chase him down and start scrums with him throughout the night, I’ll take it. Just give us some sort of energy, that’s all I ask.
Best Ode to Sennecke
Sweet. We scored a goal!#Canucks.
After almost an entire period of hanging on, the Canucks did manage to score on Devon Levi, proving the theory that goalies struggle to see the puck when four dudes are standing in front of them:
Max Sasson managed to get the macaron tip on the Jamie Oleksiak shot, leading to a weird period of my life where I look forward to Jamie winding up for shots from the blue line. I don’t know how we got here but I plan to enjoy it as long as I can. I find myself watching him shoot and thinking to myself “by god, somehow this puck is going to get into that net” which is a fun journey for myself.
Perhaps inspired by a mini-Chaos Giraffe tribute from Oleksiak, Drew O’Connor would almost set up Linus Karlsson for the go ahead goal early in the second period:
Levi has those glove saves where you just find yourself mumbling “ok, relax buddy” because of the extra flair he puts on them for no reason. I don’t begrudge him doing this, and I think the more personality shown the better in the NHL. But I stand by my god given right to roll my eyes whilst telling him to relax.
Best perception is reality
Saturday Night Hockey broadcast team should not be entirely made up of Oilers homers. #Canucks
OK so here is the scenario, and we have to go back to wrestling for this (I’m so sorry).
Elias Pettersson is the Shawn Michaels of selling in the NHL, right? Like this guy draws penalties better than anyone in the league. The guy just has a natural ability to make it seem like you broke three of his bones just by looking at him.
On the other side of the aisle, you have Leon Draisaitl. And while I can’t use swear words (journalistic integrity and all that), Draisaitl has a very long rhymes-with-witch streak in him going back to his WHL days. If things aren’t going his way, or if it’s a close game, this dude isn’t above throwing a tantrum and/or a cheap shot. Give him a sledgehammer and he is clearly Triple H.
So when these two collided in the second period, it was a moment of who won the day, HBK or HHH:
To me, that’s equal billing right there. I think EP40 is such a savant of generating penalties that he put himself near a noted whiney baby in Leon, knowing that the desire to lash out would simply be too much for the German. Leon straight up jumps up at Elias and takes him down, which yeah you could argue he thought Pettersson was going to hit him, but they don’t have a stand your ground law in the NHL. Leon shot first, so he got the penalty, and once again EP40 shows the world why he is the showstopper.
Pettersson would then pull a Wellwood on his next shift (ie dangle through the entire team but agonizingly fail to score), leading to Jonathan Lekkerimäki getting what looked like an automatic goal, only to be thwarted by Connor Murphy:
I’m too tired to play the “Is EP40 back??” game but I hope we can all just objectively agree that was a fine display of dangling, and that we have seen more of that from him this season than we saw all of last year.
Best standing tall
Merilainen playing well
We said it earlier, but it was nice Evan Bouchard didn’t score an endless amount of goals in this game.
He had his chances, but Meriläinen made the stops when he had to. Even if the puck got shot so hard that Leevi needed a moment to collect himself and the rebound after:
Edmonton went back to the well near the end of the second, but once again Meriläinen was up to the task of stopping the Bouchard Bomb:
And after Brock Boeser had to briefly leave the game from merely stopping a Bouchard wrist shot, Meriläinen made a top tier save on a Draisaitl tip on a McDavid shot/pass hybrid combo (I think that means it can run on gas or electricity):
For a lot of the second period Vancouver kept Edmonton on their heels, but you could sense that Edmonton was starting to proverbially “sit up in their chair” as this game continued into the night in a deadlock.
Best strength conditioning
Buium has got to get him pushed out of there. #Canucks
Former friend Jason Dickinson put the Oilers ahead for good right at the start of the third period when Zeev Buium got caught up in chasing the puck instead of playing the body:
There is obviously some bad luck involved here, but it’s another play where Buium tries to go for the puck instead of playing the body/boxing out the crease, which once again led to a goal against. I don’t think Buium will ever be an overly strong player, he doesn’t have the size for it, but he needs to gain some level of strength as his career progresses, and has to figure out at the very least, how to control the stick of people he is defending.
It’s great when you can chase the puck and whack it down and gain control of it in the majority of your battles, but Buium isn’t there yet.
Best jinx
After an offensive zone penalty from Arshdeep Bains, Leon Draisaitl would score after EP40 turned the puck over behind net on the penalty kill:
The Canucks diamond collapses rather quickly into a staggered line of a substance normally reserved for parties in the 80’s, allowing McDavid to feather the pass to Leon, who is one of the best players in the league at scoring from wtf angles. This is where we can very clearly give credit to the Oilers star forwards for being too good at their jobs, as this is something they can do to even the best teams in the league.
What we can’t give credit to is Jason Dickinson dangling around the world’s slowest hip check ever thrown by Oleksiak:
I could almost hear the beeping of the truck as he backed up trying to land that hip check, which ultimately forced Meriläinen into having to make a strong save to keep the game within reach.
Best fighting the good fight
Well, at least the effort was there. #Canucks
It really was a decent effort all around from Vancouver, even if the game was nothing but a major highlight of their lack of star power.
Still, trade deadline candidate of the year Linus Karlsson almost set up Paul Cotter for a power play goal after a nifty bit of passing:
That was also a nice pass from Buium on the power play to Karlsson down low, as he has shown signs of improvement running the second unit for Vancouver.
Karlsson would then almost score himself after Marco Rossi found him in the slot with a pass from behind the net:
We’re at the point where the second unit is actively deserving of equal time on the ice, which I don’t know if that’s a good thing or just a sign of diluted talent, but they have clearly earned it. Buium has been a big part of that as his offensive IQ is being put to good use with the extra man, and he is showing signs of life on that unit.
Best tips all day
Brock Boeser’s goal tonight puts him two points away from 500 points throughout his career. Once he hits that mark, he’ll be just the eighth player in franchise history to put up 500 points as a Canuck. #Canucks
With the goalie pulled, Brock Boeser would pull the Canucks to within one after Fil Hronek sent in one of those shots where he’s aiming at your stick just begging for the tip:
Perfectly executed play by the Canucks and it made it a close game, even if the one goal deficit was short lived.
Best home ice advantage
Well played refs 👏. #Canucks
The Canucks got nailed for an icing late in the game, when clearly EP40 touched the puck, but they didn’t get the call:
The Oilers would follow this up with an empty netter a short time later, and while I can’t prove that this missed call lost Vancouver the game, I can clearly hint at it and raise my eyebrows in a questioning manner:
Draisaitl finishes off the McDavid pass, which meant he didn’t have to try and take anyone out with a cheap shot, so sometimes you take the small victories in life.
At the very least, we can all sleep easy that nobody on Vancouver tried to play defense in a way against Connor that upset him, and sometimes that’s all that matters.
Up next, Rick Tocchet in the Manic Monday showdown. See you then.
Best just saying
Safe to say Macklin Celebrini is frustrated… #SJSharks
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