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The Stanchies: Canucks show signs of quiet quitting in uneven Blues loss
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Photo credit: © Simon Fearn-Imagn Images
Arielle Lalande
Mar 22, 2026, 12:45 EDTUpdated: Mar 22, 2026, 13:23 EDT
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The Vancouver Canucks celebrated their Next Gen game on Saturday afternoon, where kids stepped into the roles of in-arena hosts, DJs, PA announcers, and more. 
In a fitting way to celebrate the next generation of thinkers, creators and innovators, the Canucks dropped an awfully mismatched 3-1 home game against the St. Louis Blues. This is an apt metaphor for the future we’re leaving to our Gen Alpha kids. Sorry, guys, our bad.

TSDW – Too Sad, Didn’t Watch

  • The Canucks were really quite miserable in their own end.
  • Kevin Lankinen was decent in this game, but again, the troops in front of him were really giving him nothing to work with. He put up a .900 save percentage, only allowing one high-danger and low-danger goal apiece, and the amount of shots that went unblocked by the Canucks was absolutely abysmal throughout the game (per NaturalStatTrick). It is rare for Elias Pettersson (EP40) alone not to block every shot humanly possible, so it goes to show how rough this outing was for just about everyone. 
  • The final goal that sealed this game was an empty-netter, which confirms to me that they really did leave their defence at home in this one. And their offence, too, considering the Blues consistently outshot them from puck drop onwards. Their dog probably ate their homework, too, while we’re still giving out excuses. 
  • Watching this game play out on a Saturday is worse than the Saturday detention the main characters of The Breakfast Club served. Much like The Breakfast Club, Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me) only played exactly one (1) time. 
  • This is what we get for putting a Hockey Night in Canada match-up on at 4 p.m. 

The Game

During the national anthems, I had a brief moment where I swear I saw defenceman Justin Holl in the Blues lineup out of the corner of my eye. 
That terrified me, since the last I heard of Holl, he was living out his mid-career twilight years (did he ever even have highlight years?) in Detroit.
Justin Holl, as it turns out, is in fact on the St. Louis Blues. This is news to me. I discovered this only after he came in from the Canucks blue line and attempted to give Nils Höglander a welcoming bear hug.
This set off a series of events that could have easily resulted in a terribly embarrassing first goal against Vancouver, but ended in Cam Fowler managing to trip himself on Marcus Pettersson, who showed up in that spot ready to gallantly defend his net about five seconds after someone should have been there, a signature element of MP3’s game that we have all come to know and love. 
This entire sequence set the tone for the game: the Blues failing upwards and the Canucks failing despite their actual concerted effort not to.
After nearly taking a puck-over-glass penalty in the first 60 seconds of the game, Tom Willander pulled a reverse Uno card and drew the first penalty of the game on Jake Neighbours.
Look at him go. Willander did not even have to sell it; that’s a genuine penalty, but anything will look that dramatic in a slow-motion replay. I, for one, could not be prouder. Cinema awards season may be over, but this was a 4 p.m. television broadcast, after all. Willander has his eyes set on a daytime Emmy.
The Canucks would be first to the power play in this game, which was needed as they struggled to find shots on goal.
My eye test said they were not falling very far behind in the first period. My heart said otherwise, though, and I’m sure this game’s final numbers in The Statsies will agree. 
There is no war in Ba Sing Se, and there are no bad home game records at Rogers Arena.

School Walkout for Kevin Lankinen

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a goalie penalty. 
Kevin Lankinen was assessed a minor for tripping on Mr. Snuffleupagus – my apologies, Jimmy Snuggerud. 
Again, Tom Willander found himself tripped behind the net. I am convinced this team is committed to putting him in a series of increasing physical comedy tests because they’re shaping him to be the next Buster Keaton.
The school walkout for Kevin Lankinen was ultimately cancelled, as Evander Kane would serve Lankinen’s penalty. 
I would like to take this time to remind everyone that skaters serving goalie penalties in their stead or, better yet, too many men penalties, is always really funny. It’s like the exact opposite of doing all the work in a group project and getting an A. Doing none of the work in the group project and also failing horrendously because the other members of the group completely fumbled it, too. 

The Period Where the St. Louis Blues Prove Themselves to be Ontologically Evil

This period of hockey was more deflating than a kid’s birthday helium balloon still clinging onto life weeks after the party. Let’s keep things brief, shall we?
Former Canuck and my personal favourite ex, Pius Suter, opened the scoring, because of course he did. If you enter Rogers Arena as an away team player and are either a) a former Canuck or b) a hometown guy, you are legally obligated to score on the Canucks. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules; I just complain about them.
Et tu, Sute? This goal was a bit late to the ides of March, sure, but a knife is still a knife!
After this, the mini onslaught against the Canucks began. Buchnevich scored to put the Blues up 2-0, followed up by Dylan Holloway. But wait! Holloway’s goal was called back after a coach’s challenge. This is the only time I will say something nice about Adam Foote’s coaching decisions. When this call was announced, I swear I have never heard an arena cheer this loud because of only being down 2-0.  
The Canucks were really just trying anything, and that includes DOC, seen here trying to capitalize on a rebound.
There is nothing Drew O’Connor wouldn’t do for a goal attempt. There is no telling what he would do for a Klondike bar.
With just 0.1 seconds left on the second period clock, Brock Boeser went scream queen mode and took a slashing penalty. That is such a comical margin that you might as well not even bother calling the penalty, but, oh well, that would imply that the NHL’s penalization and rule enforcement is completely inconsistent. We can’t be doing that!
In order to begin the new faceoff and end the period, the time clock was reset to one full second. I didn’t realize that manipulating time itself is something that could be done outside of Daylight Saving Time…yet another thing abandoned by British Columbia.

Best Broadcast Moment

Early on in the first period, Shorty announced that Pavel Buchnevich and Cam Fowler are the only Blues players who have played all 69 games this year.
…Nice.
But seriously, what has been happening down in Missouri? Do they have glass bones and paper skin? They traded away captain Brayden Schenn at the deadline and are, for all intents and purposes, likely heading down the same rebuild route as the Canucks. 
Effectively hearing that they have been black and…blue(s) this entire season just to come out and steamroll the Canucks was not the vote of confidence I needed at this point. It also didn’t help that St. Louis is still only 28th in the league, compared to Vancouver’s dead last.

Best “That Guy Should be Playing in March Madness”

Okay, while there is admittedly not a lot to celebrate about the Canucks in this game, it’s hard not to be entertained when Curtis Douglas is playing. By now, the 7-foot-tall addition to the team is not a shock. Yes, we all know he’s built like the Burj Khalifa. No, he’s not playing college hoops in Canada or the U.S, no, he was not developed as a goaltender. But it’s been an absolute joy to watch him towering over absolutely everyone – despite having a limited role, he is literally impossible to miss whenever he’s on the ice. 
Shorty announced Douglas’ arrival in the first period with the simple but evocative “Big Curtis Douglas.” Possibly the best nickname of all time. It’s factually correct! Douglas blocked a shot like it was a mere raindrop and immediately proceeded to absolutely level Philip Broberg along the boards. 
Broberg is stronger than I am. If I saw a giant of a man skating towards me at full speed with the intent to collide, I would probably start screaming, crying, and throwing up, or perhaps all three.
After he was pulled back slightly in the second period, Douglas was back out on the ice in the third – he played a total of 11:21 in this game, his most as a Canuck so far and, as it turns out, the most he’s played in an NHL game ever. Mind you, he debuted in October and has 33 NHL games under his belt now, but finally getting playable minutes in 2026 after you were drafted in 2018 is a storyline I’m here for. For a last-minute waiver pick-up now in his mid-to-late 20s, I was not expecting Douglas to get as many reps as he has, but I’m damn happy about it. I only wish the same for the long-suffering, grizzled veterans of this team, like 25-year-old Nils Höglander.
Nils Höglander gets a great chance with a slapshot, here, and it had me thinking how many more coaches are going to park him and do anything but let him play to his strengths before Allvin & co just give up and move on from him. Two coaches are already a comical amount. Three coaches have to be some kind of intergenerational magical sabotage like Dune’s Bene Gesserit. It would be an absolute waste to let him go, but also, Hoglander’s status with the Canucks, even while healthy, has been frustrating, to say the least.
Say the name Vasily Podkolzin around any Canucks fan, recently, and they’ll visibly start experiencing visible horrors. Let’s…not experience that again!
Marco Rossi is a total pro and absorbs this hit from Colton Parayko to set up Hoglander – an entirely normal play, but Rossi is such a polite Austrian child new in town that this made me see red and experience white-hot rage.
The only people who wanted Colton Parayko off of the Blues more during this game than I is the Blues management team, apparently. 
Too soon? Apologies, let it be known that I am pro-labour, anti-tampering, and anti-going-to-Buffalo while they’re still getting snowstorms dumped on them in March. The trade deadline isn’t real anymore; it can’t hurt us. 
As the third period continued, Zeev Buium and Hronek were put out there, firing on all cylinders in a form of a Hail Mary. Either that, or they are seriously trying to reverse-engineer Quinn Hughes and genetically reconstruct him from his successor and his former D-partner. I am definitely not saying that that will work, but it won’t necessarily not work, either.
The Canucks limped to the finish line after an empty-net goal from Jordan Kyrou dashed their hopes of keeping it a 2-1 game. Truthfully, this is not the best sequence ever for any of the Canucks on the ice, especially young star defencemen like Buium and Willander. Drew O’Connor took out his frustration, which frankly seems like undeserving collateral damage. Considering this was the Next Gen game, I’m not sure the Canucks will be scoring very high in the “self-regulation” section of their next report card.

Post-Credits Scene

All in all, the Canucks did just enough in this game to prevent a shutout and then called it a day. If this game were a 9-5, the Canucks would answer just enough emails not to get fired, but not so many as to convince coworkers they’re actually good at their jobs. They’d be out of the office at 5 p.m. on the dot every day. The quiet quitting masterpiece has been achieved; it is late March, and the Canucks’ 2025-26 campaign is effectively already over. 
Defenceman Zeev Buium had some hopeful words for CanucksArmy’s Tyson Cole this week, speaking to the close bonds forming amongst the new and fresh-faced players that make up the next generation of Vancouver Canucks. He was mature and insightful, and honestly, after the last year and a half feeling like a confrontational dinner party on The Real Housewives of Vancouver, friendships and chemistry beginning to form on and off the ice is a positive development. There is no reason to believe that the kid is not being entirely genuine and intentional with his words (note, at four years and 23 days younger than myself, Buium still possesses Kid Status. Anyone born after the first Bush term in office is a newborn to me). Whether this team culture overhaul can actually come to fruition while the powers that surround the team remain unchanged – well, that’s a different story. 
So, the Canucks have a young, up-and-coming group. They are a talented bunch, as is, but their ranks will soon be complemented with more draft picks. A young roster like this is bound to make mistakes, but what’s important is how they bounce back. Cool. To be clear: the future is bright, and I am legitimately excited for what lies ahead for this team. That still does not negate the fact that the Canucks are hard to watch right now. 
The kids are alright, but I most definitely am not. This was the Next Gen game, after all; imagine sitting through this game on your March Break when you could be enjoying the beautiful spring weather or absolutely bodying a Fortnite Battle Royale match? Won’t somebody please think of the children?!
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