Is this thing on?
Can you still earn GIF money if you’re the one who writes the cheques? I guess we’re going to find out.
Folks, it’s a Boss Edition of The Stanchies (nobody else was available and I didn’t have time to hire someone new).
There won’t be many wrestling references. There will be even fewer pop culture references. I’ve been doing a lot of woodworking and DYI projects lately, so maybe I’ll slip some power tool jokes in tonight. I don’t really know what the rules are around here, but I do know you’ve gotta make The Stanchies your own. Let’s go on this journey together.
The Vancouver Canucks returned to action on Saturday night after four nations finished facing off. The Canucks were without Quinn Hughes for this game — more on that later — and thought they might be without Elias Pettersson (the forward), but he was good to go for this one.
Best five more years
If you haven’t heard yet, Kevin Lankinen signed a five-year contract extension on Friday. And unfortunately for him, his teammates seemed hellbent on making him earn every bit of it in the first period of tonight’s game.
First they allowed Pavel Dorofeyev to get two 10-bell looks off on Lankinen. One of which came from Elias Pettersson losing a wall battle far too easily.
Then Nils Höglander threw an accidentally-on-purpose slew foot that… went uncalled! Nice!
The Canucks were then called for a bench minor for too many men on the ice. Not nice. What did Kevin do to deserve this? Watch Tyler Myers on this play. He goes to the bench, waves for Elias Pettersson (D) to come on to replace him, then hits the brakes and does a U-turn before heading back to the bench.
To their credit, the Canucks’ penalty killers did a good job to kill the penalty off. Lankinen continued to be great too. He signed a contract extension recently, in case you hadn’t yet heard.
Best enter that zone 
It was all Vegas early on in this game, and in the worst way. The Canucks couldn’t break the puck out of their own end, and when they did get it out, they would chip the puck in and lose the ensuing battle on the forecheck. Even if there was no pressure, they decided to chip the puck in.
That’s why it was so nice to be reminded that noted zone entry savant Filip Chytil is on this team now. He helped create the Canucks’ best chance of the period all by gaining the zone with possession. Elias Pettersson (D) and Brock Boeser got a couple chances off and nearly gave the Canucks an early lead against the grain.
It wasn’t just that one instance, either. Here’s another one where Chytil takes manners into his own hands and transitions the puck up the ice before pulling off a little give-and-go with Drew O’Connor before firing the puck high.
It’s just so nice to see a player willing to pass the puck east-west instead of chipping it in. And make no mistake about it — that’s all because of how much speed Chytil plays with.
It was so bad that even Rick Tocchet zeroed in on it post game.
“I don’t know if we were nervous, but we were chipping pucks when nobody was on us,” Tocchet said. “You’ve got to grab a puck and make a play. We started to do that in the third.”
Unfortunately for you, you have to scroll down before we get to the third period of this game.
Best what’s worse than one bench minor? 
TWO! TWO BENCH MINORS!
How many skaters on the ice?
SIX! Six skaters on the ice!
How many times?
Twice! Twice the Canucks were caught with too many men on the ice.
Do you see who that is frantically trying to step over the boards? The hint there was that we said “step” over the boards” instead of hop.
Neither of these penalties were subtle. These weren’t too many men calls that any team would argue because it happened in the gray area right in front of the bench. These were two cases of guys (Tyler Myers) just not doing what they’re supposed to do.
They’re the types of penalties that frustrate fans, players, and especially coaches.
Best Chaos Giraffe
As you saw, Tyler Myers was at the forefront of both bench minors from the opening 20 minutes, and he didn’t stop there.
First, Kevin Lankinen made a beautiful save off Victor Olofsson.
This was one of about seven five-alarm chances that Lankinen had to make in the period. So what happened next?
Did his teammates use his miraculousness as a building point? Not quite.
Myers was a real Ryobi in that opening period.
Myers’ opening 20 was so bad that Kevin Bieksa put together the same clips you see above during the first intermission. While wearing Canucks colours! Do you think he wants to do this, Tyler?!
Best Shake and Jake
I genuinely didn’t realize the Canucks’ social media team tweeted out “SHAKE AND JAKE” when Jake DeBrusk scores a goal. I don’t know how many times they’ve done it this season, but I’m told tonight wasn’t the first time. I just wanted to say I love that.
DeBrusk scored his 20th goal of the season on the Canucks’ eighth shot of the night.
This came after a great shift in the offensive zone from the Pettersson line, with Kiefer Sherwood especially showing well in the leadup to the goal. DeBrusk is the first Canuck to 20 goals this season.
Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at what the Canucks’ goalscoring leaderboard looked like at this time last year. And yeah, it was quite different.
Best playing with fire 
Despite being up by a goal, you can tell even just by reading to this point that the Canucks were far from in the driver’s seat. The Golden Knights squared things up when a lack of urgency from Myers in exiting the zone led to Vegas regaining possession, firing a point shot on Lankinen, and getting bodies to the net faster than the Canucks could.
If you play with fire, you’re going to get burned.
Speaking of playing with fire, here is a shelf I recently built and gave a burnt look to by using a blowtorch.
Not my best work, but a nice addition to the front entrance and a great place to hang your keys and put your wallet down after walking through the door.
Anyways, the Canucks and Golden Knights entered the third period of this game tied 1-1, with the shot count favouring Vegas by a score of 25-15.
Best that doesn’t look good
Now, I’m no mathmagician, but those charts don’t look good, and I KNOW from reading The Statsies right here at CanucksArmy that a .097 xGF isn’t good.
Best 1 xGF
This next goal was a tough one for Kevin Lankinen. Lankinen is a well-known aggressive goaltender. Not aggressive enough to get called out by Roberto Luongo for playing outside of the blue paint, but aggressive nonetheless. As we saw tonight, that aggressiveness is part of what makes him a great goaltender.
But as we saw on the Golden Knights‘ go-ahead goal, sometimes that aggressiveness can lead to being caught way out of position on broken plays.
Best bank shot 
For a second, it seemed like Teddy Blueger and Nils Höglander teamed up to tie this game up once again. The on-ice officials quickly reversed the call on the ice to no goal, and the Canucks didn’t disagree.
Now, Tocchet didn’t have much of an issue with this one post game. But he did quietly mention that he would have liked it if the whistle hadn’t gone so quickly on this play later, where Dakota Joshua appeared to bang home a loose puck past Adin Hill.
The Canucks, no doubt made the shot total respectable with their push in the third period, but it was too little, too late, as Vegas hung on to win 3-1.
The Quinn Hughes thing 
So, Quinn Hughes didn’t play in this game. Let’s go over the timeline of events that got us here.
January 31st: Hughes exits the Canucks’ game in Dallas, but returns for the third period. The next day, Hughes misses practice and is listed as a game-time decision vs. the Red Wings on Sunday, February 2nd.
February 2nd: Hughes takes warmup, and after a conversation with the trainer at the bench, heads for the locker room and is announced as a scratch.
February 4th: Hughes misses the Canucks’ game against Colorado.
February 6th: Hughes misses the Canucks’ game against San Jose.
February 8th: Hughes is a game-time decision for the Canucks’ game against the Leafs, but doesn’t suit up for the game. The Canucks indicate that going to the 4 Nations Face-Off is up to Quinn.
February 9th: Patrik Allvin announces that Quinn Hughes won’t go to the 4 Nations Face-Off.
February 18th: Mike Sullivan announces Hughes is on his way to Boston. That doesn’t appear to be the case. After wearing a non-contact jersey at Canucks practice, Hughes meets with reporters and shares that he “wants to play” for Team USA in the 4 Nations final vs. Canada, and that he feels like he “needs to be there.” The Canucks’ captain also says he feels “really good.” He acknowledges that rules surrounding the tournament could be the main thing that keep him from playing.
February 19th: Pierre LeBrun reports that Team USA has been informed Hughes won’t travel to Boston, as he wasn’t medically cleared. Despite that, he was a full participant in Canucks practice. Hughes was requested to speak with media after practice, but wasn’t made available by the team.
February 21st: Tocchet says that Hughes won’t be ready to play against the Golden Knights.
That is an interesting timeline, especially when you consider that 20 days ago, Hughes was supposedly a game-time decision vs. the Red Wings. Did a setback happen along the way? If not a setback, what changed? Was the injury worse than they initially thought? Hopefully we find out the answer soon when Hughes returns and speaks to media. Hopefully.
Best making history
Kiefer Sherwood threw his 300th hit of the season tonight, becoming just the 17th player in NHL history (since hits became a stat) to hit — no pun intended — that number.
He is tough, and he’s reliable, almost like a Milwaukee.
383 is the single-season record, and if Sherwood keeps up his pace, he should break that record by a fairly significant margin.
The Elias Pettersson injury debate
Tonight, Elias Pettersson (forward) chose to play after being labelled as day-to-day after an injury suffered at 4 Nations that forced him to leave practice early on Friday. But there’s been plenty of injury talk surrounding Pettersson already this season.
The team, Pettersson himself, and his agents insist that he’s not hurt. We do know that Pettersson admitted to dealing with knee tendinitis down the final stretch of last season. That lined up almost perfectly with his play falling off a cliff in 2023-24.
At training camp this season, Pettersson admitted to having to train around that knee injury, which he described as “nagging” and not wanting to go away.
Seemingly remembering the hell-storm that followed after he admitted to being injured at all, Pettersson quickly told reporters that his knee was fine now, though.
Lingering knee injury or not, Pettersson is still playing in games, and he’s nowhere near a player worth $11.6 million in his current form. His lack of speed — his NHL Edge page shows this is the slowest he’s ever been in his NHL career — certainly gives some validity to the nagging knee injury theory, but it’s hard to believe that’s all it is.
If you told me Pettersson’s knee has led to a lack of confidence, and that now he’s dealing with both, I’d believe you.
If you told me Pettersson’s knee is not even a factor physically but that Pettersson now has the yips, I’d believe you.
But those are all theories until someone with any sort of authority to talk about the situation says otherwise.
What’s a fact is that Pettersson is on pace to come up short of the 20-goal mark for the first time in his career. That Pettersson, in the first year of an eight-year deal worth nearly $100 million, is on pace for just over 50 points.
Yes, it was another great defensive performance from Pettersson tonight, with some flashes of offence thrown in too. That’s awesome. But that’s not what the Canucks are paying him to be.
Knee, mental, a mix of both, or something we somehow haven’t heard anything about — the Canucks need to see more from Pettersson, and soon.
Best decisions, decsisions
Here’s one to close out tonight.
The Canucks play in Utah tomorrow.
Do you think Arturs Silovs should start that game? Or should the Canucks go right back to Kevin Lankinen? Conventional wisdom says never start a goaltender for back-to-back games. But that’s a short flight. Does the 5 PM start sway you?
It seems like Rick Tocchet has already made up his mind.
“We’ve got to take a look, but I’m not a big fan of playing a guy [back-to-back] when he [has] a big workload. We’ve got to play long ball on this one.”
Best more of this please
This is the opposite of chipping pucks, and I like it.
Do you see how by just playing with some speed and urgency, the Canucks managed to create an odd man rush?
Do you? No seriously, I’m asking any Canuck who might be reading this if they saw what happened in that clip. Do more of that.
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