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The Stanchies: Canucks serve up defensive zone breakdowns in Thanksgiving loss to Rangers
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Photo credit: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images
Lachlan Irvine
Oct 12, 2026, 02:07 EDT
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Canadian Thanksgiving is a time for generosity. A chance to gather with your family, look back on the year and celebrate the people you care about.
The Vancouver Canucks have been extremely generous to those around them so far in this short season: they’ve gifted a league-leading 35 goals to their opponents. Tonight was their chance to get things back on track in Manhattan against a New York Rangers team that just lost their most valuable player, goalie Igor Shesterkin, to a season-ending leg injury.
At one point, it looked like a close hockey game might break out. The Canucks killed a penalty, controlled play in the Rangers’ end at times, and Lankinen made some clutch saves in the second to hold his team in. Heck, they even scored a shorthanded goal!
But just as quickly as a battle of theoretical equals seemed to be forming, it was very quickly snuffed out. Three goals across the final minutes of the second and the early moments of the third put this one on ice, and the Rags added one more late for good measure in a 6-2 drubbing.
It’s very early, and there’s a lot of teams doing objectively worse than the Canucks are. Yes, they’re allowing goals, but at least they’re also scoring some. They may have an extremely busted penalty kill, but at least some of the young defenders are making good plays and decisions. We all knew the deal entering this season; you gotta take the sour with the sweet. But it’s hard not to look at just how out of hand the last three games have gotten — you can arguably include the second game against the Edmonton Oilers as well — and wonder how much of this a group of players can take before the bottom falls out.
The Canucks talked a very big game during training camp about not playing ‘losing hockey’. If this isn’t losing hockey, I’d hate to see what is.
Let’s get this Thanksgiving dinner into some Tupperware.
Best Burying the Lede
It’s all been leading to this. Elias Pettersson squaring off against J.T. Miller on the opening faceoff. There hasn’t been this much tension at Madison Square Garden since Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s vows.
In the ultimate battle of beef, Elias Pettersson won the opening draw against J.T. Miller! A HUGE redemption arc for the People’s Champion.
Then the Canucks got off to the worst start New York has seen since Shane Gillis bombed in his SNL monologue last night.
Now I know everyone’s first instinct is to heap the blame onto Lankinen for kicking Miller’s initial shot into the slot right to Tye Kartye. But we’ve got to have a little talk about Zeev Buium, who essentially created the odd-man rush with a very poorly timed step-up towards Alexis Lafreniere in the neutral zone. Buium has struggled a lot at both ends of the ice so far this season, notching just one assist in the offensive zone while he and Fil Hronek have been getting turnstiled as a unit in their own end. It might be time for Coach Malhotra to make some adjustments to the D pairings.
Lafreniere gets the puck to Miller, and J.T. and Kartye suddenly have only Fil Hronek to get around. Hronek tries to take the puck carrier; Petey hustles to take Kartye for him, but it’s too late.
If there was a way to unplug the game and restart it, I’d rip the cords out right now.
Best BREEZE BAH!
After almost two years of waiting, Guillaume Brisebois is FINALLY back in an NHL lineup. Through all the ups and downs of the modern Canucks, Brisebois has witnessed it all. He’s the old wizard in every mythical book who disappears for long parts of the story, because keeping him around would make the hero’s journey too easy. He’s the Canucks’ own Sam Reich: he’s been here the whole time.
Needless to say, Brisebois wanted to make up for lost time. And within five minutes of puck drop, he had two of the best chances the Canucks would get all game. One was a wrist shot from distance that the Rangers’ sudden #1 goalie Dylan Garand blockered away. The second was a ripper from the circles, set up by Paul Cotter, that the Victoria, BC native managed to bat away.
Just when you start to forget what an NHL uniform can mean to players, there’s Brisebois to remind you of its power, and just how much he wants to keep it.
Best Molly Carlson impression
Have you seen her videos served to your Instagram feed? She literally jumped into shark-infested waters this year (there was a tank around her, but still).
EP40 loves to draw penalties. He’s frankly a master at it.
This interference call that sent Mika Zibanejad to the box… wasn’t the most ethical of Petey’s career. But hey, you gotta take the wins where you can get them right now.
Molly puts a little more flair into her dives too.
Best Thanksgiving… Beef?

DeGoooooaaaallllllll!!!! #Canucks

— Ryan avgtraveller (@viewfromtherog.bsky.social) 2026-10-11T22:38:24.054Z

There are few players in the NHL more dangerous than a locked-in Elias Pettersson. It’s a form that, over the last few seasons, was almost as scarce as a Harry Styles concert anywhere near Vancouver. (Meanwhile, he has time to do approximately 23,000 shows in New York. Not all of us can afford a hotel and airfare to LA or Toronto, Mr. Treat People With Kindness.)
Lined up once against his archnemesis, Petey wins the draw clean back to Tom Willander for a one-timer that Garand pushes to the corner. But Petey’s already hustling to the corner after the rebound, with Jonathan Lekkerimäki in hot pursuit.
The pair of Swedes win the board battle as Jake DeBrusk positions himself near the left faceoff dot. Lekkerimäki feeds him the puck, and DeBrusk slingshots the biscuit faster than Garand can even pick up what’s happening.
For a player who looked almost invisible in the games pre-illness, DeBrusk has maybe played the best hockey we’ve seen from him since his first season here. And I’m sorry, how does EP40 not get an assist on this goal?? He absolutely deserved one.
Best Deja Vu
Normally when teams talk about starting a game on time, they’re only talking about the first period. The Canucks had already bungled that, but they had a chance at redemption if they could just keep the puck out of the net in the first few minutes of the second.
Spoiler alert: they did not.
Will Cuylle is more than just everyone’s favourite Ranger with a name that reminds you of Cool Whip. He’s also good at using the traffic caused by the Canucks’ backcheckers — namely, Luke Schenn taking a knee and Brisebois chasing Noah Laba — to get a seeing-eye puck right through the Lankets (that’s shorthand for Lankinen wickets).
Hopefully this won’t become a trend!
Best Goalie Corner
Not to state the obvious, but Kevin Lankinen’s season has seen a lot of twists and turns. His confidence in net has disappeared for vast parts of this year, and while pro-tank enthusiasts might be fine with the results he’s turning in, it’s not in anyone’s best interest for him to be playing at this all-time low.
Take this shot from the top of the circles by Noah Laba, for example. Lanks makes the initial stop, but doesn’t even cover the puck properly. This is the point where I started sweating bullets like my parents used to whenever a puck entered my general vicinity.
But seemingly out of nowhere, prime Lankinen returned for a limited engagement. With the Rangers swarming and the Canucks’ defenders scrambling, Lankinen made a huge stop on Mika Zibanejad in front of the net before shutting down a Vladdy Gavrikov one-timer.
This version of Lankinen was a sight for sore eyes. It didn’t last.
Best Surprise Pumpkin Pie 
The Canucks didn’t have a single penalty on the board until late in the second period. And if recent history was any indicator, the Rangers scoring on their first power play opportunity they got would’ve been totally par for the course.
But… PLOT TWIST! The Canucks penalty killers read a Mika Zibanejad mistake off the boards perfectly; Brendan Gallagher stole the puck and took off like a Bullet Bill from Mario, with Drew O’Connor and DePetey following for an odd-man rush.
With Run-DOC serving as the decoy, Gally passed back to DePetey, and he let an absolute laser beam go that was labelled for the bottom right corner. DePetey has himself another goal, and Vancouver’s favourite Giant (we don’t talk about the other two big names from that WHL era) has his first point as a Canuck. Get that man the puck!
At this brief shining moment, everything felt like the tide was turning.
Best Turkey Fire

Welp this is what I expected going into the season #Canucks

— thespookydandino (@thegreatdandino.bsky.social) 2026-10-12T00:15:47.049Z

Just like John Tucker forgetting to pat the Friendsgiving turkey dry before deep-frying it, no one on the Canucks informed the goalie of the danger they were about to be in. (And by the way, shout out to Briar Hawks tendy Kenny Simonovsky, who got basically no lines or backstory in Off Campus, because no one ever makes the goalie a love interest).
The Rangers didn’t want to wait for the start of the third period to regain the lead this time. It only took them about two and a half minutes. The Blueshirts walked through the Sasson line like a knife through butter, and the Buium-Hronek pair got victimized again by Miller and Lafreniere, leaving Tye Kartye all the time in the world to label a shot for the top corner far side on Lankinen for his second goal of the night.
This goal isn’t entirely on Lanks. When a shot pings off the bar like that, not even Lachlan Irvine in his prime could have probably stopped it. But with a clear sightline of the puck, it’s also not going to get the critics to quiet down.
The third period won’t help matters either.
Best troubling trend
Why can we never get all the Canucks’ big names scoring at the same time? It’s like when the three Fates are all trying to share an eyeball and a tooth.
I’m no expert lip reader, but Brock did not like this call.
Best comedy comes in threes
The Canucks’ biggest issues all came to roost at the same time in the third period. A bad start to the period, Brock Boeser taking a penalty, and the Canucks PK turning into a hot mess all mashed together like raisins in mashed potatoes. No one wants these together, except the Rangers who made them.
The man who brought those nasty potatoes to today’s dinner? Jonathan Tonathan Miller, who cut right into Lankinen’s pad and sent the two of them careening in different directions. All Alexis Lafreniere had to do was tap the puck into the yawning cage.
The refs convened to consider if this should be called goalie interference. But — and I know I’m risking my Goalie Guild card by saying this — Lankinen was well out of the blue paint when he collided with Miller. Can’t fault the former Canuck on this particular charge of goalie violence. I can ABSOLUTELY still blame him for being a jerk to poor Collin Delia, though.
Best After Dinner Nap
You know the feeling. Thanksgiving dinner is over, you ate too much, and now you just want the whole couch to yourself as you count down the hours until you have to go into work again. After Lafreniere’s goal, that lethargic haze is all the rest of this game was.
The 5-2 goal was far from a Picasso by the Rangers, cause it didn’t need to be. The Canucks got caught chasing, Gabe Perreault got inside positioning on Jonathan Lekkerimäki in front of the net, and Adam Fox served up a slap pass on a tee for Perreault to redirect. Lankinen barely reacted as he briefly questioned the life choices that got him to this moment.
The worst part is there’s no Black Friday sales and retail therapy to distract yourself during our version of Thanksgiving.
Best Little Victories

The score is 6-2 for the Rangers.Elias "Junior" Pettersson and Tom Willander are both plus-2. #Canucks

— Daniel Wagner (@passittobulis.bsky.social) 2026-10-12T00:30:47.618Z

It’s like the Monty Python song goes. Always look on the bright side of life.
The young defenders haven’t played perfectly, but DePetey and Willander have both shown flashes of improvement. Plus-minus doesn’t tell us everything, but it does inform us that the Rangers’ offence wasn’t clicking with them on the ice. In a rebuild, that’s a genuine win!
This game nearly ended in disaster for DePetey, though, as the skate of a falling J.T. Miller clipped him in the chest. The quick grab at his body and immediate skate to the bench were extremely terrifying, but it seems like, thankfully, he avoided any serious injury.
On this final goal, it’s the veterans Schenn and Brisebois getting walked by the Rangers’ third line, as Will Cuylle spins off of Schenn after an Eeli Tolvanen shot to whack the rebound past a prone and probably tired Lankinen.
And before you ask, yes, it is way too early to be running Tankathon simulations. That’s a post-New Year’s activity at the earliest.
Best when you accidentally become important at work
Manny might only now be understanding the gravity of the coaching job he has to do, but it definitely could be worse. Have you seen what’s going on in Philly? I think Gritty’s been watching Rick Tocchet hockey through a paper bag.
Best Starting Lineup
I’m OBSESSED with the Salmon Skate jersey coordination going on here. And each of them is wearing a different player (from left to right: Bure, Mogilny, Naslund, Linden)!
All they’re missing is a Kirk McLean.
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