I hope you’re ready for an intro loaded with talk about babies! And no, I’m not just talking about Oilers fans!
No, yours truly pulled a Quinn Hughes and devoted his offseason to grit, determination, and many sleepless nights to be at my best for August and beyond.
For Hughes, he devoted his offseason to repeating as the Norris Trophy winner. It’s a feat that he’s made look incredibly easy. Though Saturday night wasn’t Hughes’ best performance, he’s looked to be in better form to start this season than he ever did in his peak last season when he won the Norris.
For me, I devoted the offseason to becoming the best first-time dad I could be. A feat that has proven incredibly difficult. Though Saturday night wasn’t my best performance, I managed to squeeze in a Stanchies recap, a bath, and helping my wife with the kid’s bedtime, something I didn’t think would be possible last month, let alone last season!
If I’ve learned anything over the last three months, it’s that the newborn phase is go go go. To succeed, you’ve got to be on top of everything. It’s like Tocchet hockey (I can’t believe I’m comparing parenting to hockey); it requires you to work and never take a shift off.
You take a shift off during the newborn phase, and you’ll be cooked!
Heck, one day, you’ll think you’ve put in enough work, the kid is napping, and you convince yourself that you can coast for a shift, “You can doomscroll Canucks Twitter for 45 minutes! Why not!?”
Little did you know that dirty half-drank milk bottles were piled to Vesuvian heights in your sink, clothes you didn’t realize you wore overflowed in hampers you didn’t know you had, the comically excessive supply of burp cloths had suddenly vanished, and meals you had made during your last shift had gone stale sitting on the counter.
Like that, you’re behind the eight-ball.
Take a shift off during Tocchet hockey, and the same thing happens! You’re cooked! Your ice time craters, you get bumped down the lineup, bumped out of the regular rotation, and if you keep taking shifts off, you’re either in Trader Allvin’s next trade package or on the bus out to Abbotsford.
Now that the Vancouver Canucks aren’t breaking records for PDO as the percentage-kings of the NHL, they can’t afford to take a breather on their shifts. You would think that the season-opener loss to the Calgary Flames would have taught them that. You would think that the blowout loss to the New Jersey Devils would have taught them that.
But nope.
There we were on a crummy, rainy Saturday night in Vancouver, watching the Canucks, once again, forget that they were not in a position to take shifts off.
In game eight against the Oilers, the Canucks didn’t just take a few shifts off; they took off entire periods.
It was brutal.
This Canucks game was three precious hours that I could have spent with my son that I, and you, will never get back.
Let’s get into Saturday’s embarrassing collapse before the clacking of my keyboard wakes him.
Best available lineup
Worst Hart Resume Padding
You knew the game would go sideways when Connor McDavid broke Quinn Hughes’ streak of PIM-less games.
After losing a d-zone faceoff, the Oilers rattled off a point shot that deflected just wide of Kevin Lankinen’s post. While giving chase around the half-wall, the refs caught Hughes with his arm draped around McDavid long enough to warrant a whistle.
The call also set an unfortunate precedent for holding and interference penalties. More on that later.
Fortunately, the Canucks PK was game early. Though Sportsnet’s extra $5.99/month failed to produce a working power play clock, they still managed to focus the camera on two timely steals from Pius Suter, two from Kiefer Sherwood, and one from Tyler Myers. The active stick work from the Canucks PK units kept the Oilers’ lethal penalty kill out of the Canucks’ zone for some [tbd] time.
At one point, McDavid knocked Conor Garland’s right skate off the ice in clear view of the ref. However, Garland is no McDavid, so play continued.
Funny how that works!
Cruelly, Leon Draisaitl fished a loose puck from behind the goal line and roofed it over Lankinen’s outstretched pad just as Hughes’ penalty expired.
The early goal against sucked, but it did give us the following from Stanchies contributor Trent Leith:
Best “Man getting hit by football!”
I don’t know what the Czech phrase is for, “Argh, my groin!”
But I’m sure Hronek said it.
Worst reminders of game seven
The Oilers felt fully in control throughout the first period. It brought back painful memories of game seven from this past May. The Oilers held the Canucks to the perimeter, with most of the club’s offence coming from low-percentage wristers with zero traffic.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Quinn Hughes led the pack with three shots on Stuart Skinner, with Aatu Räty, Nils Höglander, Filip Hronek, and Danton Heinen each getting one shot on net each.
This shot from Heinen may have worked if the Canucks had anyone in range for deflections, but the Canucks’ timing and chemistry felt noticeably absent through the opening 20 minutes.
Don’t get me wrong, the Canucks had some moments of inspired possession inside the Oilers’ end. However, it was almost exclusively thanks to Hughes’ work at the top of the zone.
Unlike game seven, Hughes was on another level on Saturday night. Between putting McDavid in a straightjacket and rifling heaters off of Skinner’s collarbone, Hughes worked to set up each of his d-partners with one-timer passes.
Yes, the Canucks rolled out a seven-man d-rotation, meaning Hughes played at least one shift with every single one of Myers, Juulsen, Soucy, Brannström and Hronek during the first period. Vincent Desharnais, who has struggled to find his footing in Vancouver since signing, played six minutes in the first period and none with Hughes, strangely.
Ultimately, it was an awkward period lacking cohesive play, somewhat redeemed by the efforts of one guy aiming for back-to-back Norris Trophies and another guy desperate to show that he’s worth every penny of his $11.6-million-dollar contract.
Worst start 2 (Miller’s version)
It’s tough following a lacklustre opening period down a goal against the best forward in the entire NHL.
It’s even tougher when you give up two additional goals in the first five minutes of the middle frame, both off of brain-dead plays.
First, Carson Soucy leapt off the line to hammer a one-timer into Conor Garland’s boot, giving McDavid and Draisaitl a two-on-one against Tyler Myers.
That McDavid didn’t draw some kind of penalty on Soucy’s backchecking effort was nothing short of miraculous. The Canucks were incredibly fortunate that McDavid whistled his shot wide of Lankinen after stymying the backpedalling Myers.
Then, it was an odd pairing of Noah Juulsen and Erik Brannström, who, under pressure by the Oilers forecheck, iced the puck with an aggressive high-flip. The icing led to one of Sportsnet’s few working clock graphics and, eventually, Corey Perry’s third goal of the season.
Tragically, Brannström looked to have cleared the zone with a flip off of the glass. However, he hit the exact spot on the stanchion that Alex Edler did some 13 years ago. It was Derek Ryan with the Bieksa-like reaction to the deflection, weaving to the wall before spotting Mattias Janmark with the cross-ice feed. The quick passing caught the odd couple pairing completely flat-footed, leading to an easy tap-in for Perry.
Tough break! But the breaks weren’t over yet!
Two minutes after Perry’s tap-in, a weak pass inside the offensive zone by JT Miller gave way to a rush opportunity for Edmonton and a 3-nothing lead off a wicked snipe from Viktor Arvidsson.
Tocchet has spent the better part of his two seasons in Vancouver stressing the importance of protecting the guts. I doubt he will love Garland coasting through the neutral zone, watching everyone else get on their horse to try to clog up the middle on the rush defence.
Nice of Garland to save his worst shifts for when Wyatt’s got the night off! Garland did recover with some bright ankle-breaker plays in the offensive zone later in the game, but you can blame Sportsnet’s glitchy stream for the lack of clips.
Miller, too, had a brutal evening. Nearly every offensive zone possession with Miller on the ice played out like the below sequence.
  1. Someone gives Miller the puck.
  2. Miller holds for too long and either turns the puck over with an errant pass or a strip by the collapsing Oiler.
  3. The Oilers turn the puck the other way for a rush chance.
With Miller on the ice at 5-on-5, the Canucks were out-attempted 15-3, outshot eight to zero, and outscored three nothing. It was awful.
The Canucks landed zero shots on goal with Miller on the ice at 5-on-5.
Tocchet appeared to slash Miller’s ice time as the game progressed. Following a two-minute PK shift at the start of the third, Miller would play just six more shifts at 5-on-5.
Miller finished the game with the 6th-lowest ice time at 5-on-5 among all Canuck skaters. I’ll refrain from dogging on his performance more with bad clips because the most egregious ones are already sprinkled throughout this recap. Rumours abound that Miller is playing through more than one injury, which is admirable. However, I worry that this game marks the diminishing returns portion of Miller’s attempts to gut through injuries that are clearly hampering his performance.
Best “We are so f*****g back” (Pettersson’s version)
Earlier in the first period, I clocked a slick effort from Elias Pettersson that should have led to a scoring opportunity for Vancouver but instead to a scoring chance for the Oilers. From Vasily Podkolzin, no less.
Collapsing on the right wall, Pettersson sights the cross-ice pass attempt into the neutral zone and deflects the pass backward toward Jake Debrusk. If Debrusk settled this puck faster, the Canucks would be looking at a quick rush opportunity up the middle or a dump-in retrieval for Höglander, who was itching to blaze past the Oilers’ backline.
While this sequence was a bit of a bummer for Pettersson and Debrusk, hitting his fastest shot of the season felt like a culmination of all the little things he’d done well in the game to that point. And no, that’s not a typo. Pettersson did clock a shot over 90mph.
Yes, he missed the net, and it didn’t even look like he threw his full weight behind it. But the man wound up a clapper like he was [insert 90s hockey player reference that only Wyatt or Lachlan would appreciate here]!
Alas, that wind-up clapper attempt was a sign of the good coming for Pettersson after the early smattering of bad.
As they often did during last season’s playoffs, the Canucks dug deep into their magic bag of chaotic tricks, this time to score two goals in two minutes to put themselves within a goal.
Less than twenty seconds after Arvidsson’s goal, Debrusk and Pettersson figured out their timing, with the latter executing a nasty deflection on the former’s wrister to finally get the Canucks on the board.
The last-second angle change while in motion was vintage Pettersson.
There was hardly any time to savour the goal sequence, either.
Two minutes after Pettersson and Debrusk got the Canucks’ mojo going, a hodge-podge line of Heinen, Garland, and Teddy Blueger suffocated the Oilers’ inside the offensive zone with possession, leading to a second straight failed clearing attempt by the Oilers’ defence and a second-straight goal for Vancouver.
The nasty tic-tac-toe passing sequence between Heinen and Blueger helped split the defence and set up Filip Hronek for his first goal of the year.
Following a chaotic power play sequence that the Sportsnet app refused to let me rewind through to clip (sorry, folks), Desharnais looked to Pettersson in the slot for another redirect attempt on Skinner as the Canucks pressed to equalize.
Pettersson’s continuous hunt for the deflection kept the Oilers’ defence on their toes. On a late drive, Pettersson cut toward the middle and angled himself to box out Matthias Ekholm, giving Höglander a clean look on Skinner around Darnell Nurse.
Worst finish
Like game eight, despite a brief effort to keep things close, the right result wasn’t in the cards.
The second period concluded with the Oilers all over the Canucks inside their zone. Then, the wheels completely fell off, following a handful of baffling calls and non-calls.
This trip on Hughes by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?
Nope!
The exact same trip on McDavid by Myers 90 seconds later in the third period?
Yes!
If it’s any consolation, the power play gave Canucks fans this positively absurd paddle save by Kevin Lankinen.
After breaking Juulsen’s ankles, McDavid drifts the entire Canucks PK contingent toward him, forcing Lankinen to go all out in his highway robbery of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ sure goal.
The Oilers’ suffocating power play also gave way to an incredible stick save by Pettersson on McDavid to keep Vancouver within one.
Despite being out for almost the full two minutes, Pettersson spots the cross-ice pass from Draisaitl and denies McDavid’s tap-in with an immaculately timed stick.
Unfortunately, the rest of the period happened, which pretty well undid any goodwill the Canucks may have gained from their gutsy PK effort.
Worst “You did your best.”
Look, I don’t envy referees. It’s a brutal job, and you have to make snap decisions that will change the trajectory of a game whether you make a call or decline to.
The Canucks are masters of D-zone picks, so it feels silly to argue against interference done toward them. But this blatant hold on Garland to prevent him from catching a dump-in felt pretty obvious.
The refs tried their best and failed miserably.
The lesson? Never try.
At this point, I’d prefer to post pictures of my kid and call this Stanchies a wrap. But, contractually speaking, I have to get into the third-period meltdown that brought up memories of Willie Desjardin’s Canucks giving up seven goals in the third period to the Islanders back in 2014.
Plus, absolutely no one wants to see pictures of your kid.
No one.
Worst Gut protection/60
Six minutes into the final frame, Troy Stecher betrayed his old team with a simple dump-in, resulting in a horrendous defensive effort outside of Lankinen’s crease and the second goal of the night from the Oilers’ fourth line.
“Something, something, gotta stick to our landmarks,” or fundamentals, or whatever grabby training camp catchphrase Tocchet has been using this season.
Four skaters can’t tie up one stick? In this economy?!
Best anthem singer; worst period
Not long after Connor Brown’s goal, Hronek threw the Canucks back on the PK with a blatant grab on Arvidsson.
Connor McDavid scored ten seconds onto the power play, batting the puck out of mid-air to give Edmonton a three-goal lead.
It’s hard to fault anyone on the sequence. It’s a tough bounce off Soucy’s stick that deflects into the air, where McDavid is ready and waiting.
Such was this game. The Oilers threw pucks into the middle, the Canucks froze, and the Oilers scored.
Worst return to the lineup
In less than six minutes of ice time—5:28 to be exact—the Canucks were outscored three-zip with Noah Juulsen on the ice at 5-on-5.
The first goal was the brutal bounce off the stanchion after Juulsen’s icing helped pin the Canucks in their d-zone.
The second goal came off a failed stretch pass of Juulsen’s that missed Höglander in the neutral zone. The errant pass ended up on the tape of Ty Emberson, who sprang McDavid into the Canucks’ zone with a quick-up pass. McDavid’s presence sent the Canucks into slip-and-slide panic mode, opening space for McDavid to spot the trailing Kulak at the top of the zone.
Juulsen scrambled to interfere with Kulak’s shot attempt but missed the block. The Oilers’ third of the period was arguably the weakest one Lankinen had allowed all night. However, given the earlier paddle save and the complete no-show from Vancouver in the third, he was allowed to concede a muffin or two, which he did in short succession.
A few minutes later, Juulsen hopped over the boards just as the other Connor (Brown) jumped up the ice to lead the rush. Juulsen hung his stick, looking to block a centring pass instead of taking the body. The opening gave Brown enough time and space to rifle a wrister past a dog-tired Lankinen.
Tocchet gave Lankinen the mercy yank, giving Arturs Silovs his first taste of action since the club’s embarrassing blowout loss at the hands of the New Jersey Devils.
Silovs would record a (personal) shutout, stopping all four shots faced over the final nine minutes.
Best gallows humour
I’ve got to say; I had to stifle my laughter to avoid waking my kid when Al Murdoch laid on the arena horn following Suter’s goal.
You’d think the Canucks were on the precipice of tying the game, given the decision to blast Simple Minds’ Don’t You (forget about me) in a 7-2 drubbing.
The GIF of Pius Suter’s power play tally off a brilliant pass from Pettersson for those of you without Twitter:
Best Future Considerations
On Friday night, Patrik Allvin continued padding his 2024-25 Jim Gregory Best GM Award resume by trading Daniel Sprong to the Seattle Kraken for future considerations.
The move accomplished a handful of things:
  1. The trade affirmed that the team would make moves at the expense of depth in favour of fit and opportunity.
  2. The trade opened a roster spot to call up Nils Åman and Arshdeep Bains ahead of Saturday’s tilt.
  3. The trade gave the team a semblance of street cred with the players. They could have waived the veteran, Sprong, for the AHL. However, moving him to Seattle allows him to continue hammering away at a full-time NHL job.
  4. The trade saved the club $775k in base salary.
For the better part of a week, local and national media wondered aloud whether Jonathan Lekkerimäki was due for a call-up sooner than anticipated.
Ahead of Saturday’s game, Allvin expressed as much: had Lekkerimäki been healthy, he’d have likely been one of the call-up options over one of Åman/Bains.
As one of the foremost “don’t sleep on Lekkerimäki playing games to start the season,” guys, can I quickly chime in to suggest that Canucks fans pump the brakes on their expectations of Lekkerimäki.
Yes, he has an unbelievable shot rate at the AHL level. Absurd, really.
Lekkerimäki’s 5.57 shots per game leads an AHL playerbase of 768 skaters. Not even Providence’s Max Jones’ five shots in one game were enough to usurp Lekkerimäki’s spot as shooty-king of the AHL.
I ask fans to pump the brakes because of the lofty expectations I’m reading online that Lekkerimäki will be some 5v5 “shoot-first, do everything else later” dynamo.
Though Lekk leads the Abbotsford Canucks in 5v5 shot volume, the Canucks have been getting crushed in goalscoring by the opposition in his minutes. The Farm has been outscored eight to three in Lekk’s minutes at 5v5 through seven games.
To break this down further, when the game is tied, the Canucks have traded even in Lekkerimäki’s minutes at 5-on-5, two goals for and two against. When the club is down by a goal, and this is more indicative of a team problem than Lekk specifically, the Abbotsford Canucks have been outscored three-zip with him on the ice at 5-0n-5. The team as a whole have yet to score a 5-on-5 goal when trailing by a single goal (yikes!). When the club is down by more than one goal, the Farm has been outscored one zip during Lekk’s 5-on-5 minutes. Though Lekk leads all skaters with the most shots at 5-on-5 when trailing.
The above is all to say: pump the brakes on your expectations of Lekk’s immediate impact.
The kid is quick on loose pucks, ambitious in board battles (unafraid to engage despite his stature), quick to find open ice in the offensive zone, whip-smart with his shot selection, and rips rubber toward the net without hesitation.
He will undoubtedly thrive as a shooter but probably struggle in trading even at 5-on-5 (depending on who he’s lined up alongside).
And that’s okay!
I’m excited to see what the kid can do at the NHL level! However, don’t treat his (almost certain) upcoming cup of coffee like an “ABSOLUTE guarantee” that he will single-handedly fix Elias Pettersson’s 5v5 scoring woes or the club’s anemic power play issues.
Let’s try to run just one Swedish forward out of town this season, folks!
I kid, I kid.
Pettersson was solid. Unfortunately, everyone else was mostly not.
Worst back-pat
The last thing I wrote for CanucksArmy was a mailbag that dared wonder if the Panthers had enough in the tank to match the heat of McDraisavid.
Spoilers, they did, and despite almost getting reverse-swept, the Panthers spared us an offseason of Edmonton media doing a real-life recreation of the “Drake thinks he’s part of the team” meme.
Total side note: before we close out the review of this thriller of a game, I must point out that I nailed last season’s playoff finals prediction!
I think this game goes the full seven games and gives us the best Finals series since 2011.
The Panthers made it look easy against Tampa, Boston, and New York, whereas the Oilers had to bust their asses to push Vancouver to seven and survive Dallas in game six.
Also, I can’t in good conscience pick a team that would give Mark Spector any reason to back-pat or pretend he was right in his analysis. For that alone, I’m picking Florida.
I might not write another one of these until next year, folks. I need to cram as much back-patting in here as possible!
Best night for guys named Elias Pettersson
Counting the result of the Abbotsford Canucks, the Oilers organization outscored the Canucks organization 10-4 on Saturday night! Neat!
Yes, I’m mostly joking about the Pettersson’s having great nights.
Saturday was a bounceback for Elias Pettersson (the NHL one), a nice little return to his Selke-calibre form minus the gaudy production, swag, results, and vicious goalscoring. Regardless, it felt more like the EP40 we’d grown accustomed to over the past six years. It was a wonderful reprieve from the weird, swagless imitator of EP40 who’d Invasion of the Body Snatcher’d him sometime around last year’s All-Star game and hung around until this recent California road trip.
Best Dramatics
Saturday night sucked, and if I’d spent $400+ for lower bowl tickets, I’d be miffed too.
Tossing a jersey is a bit drastic. But I respect the passion!
Never change, Vancouver!
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