The Canucks allowed the first goal against after Mats Zuccarello broke out of the penalty box and helped send Matt Boldy to the promised land. Tale as old as time.

Conor Garland loses the puck in the neutral zone to Zuccarello, which sends Minnesota on a 2-on-1 against poor Marcus Pettersson, while Evander Kane is…also trying to get there, I guess. On his own time.

What was going on with their coverage here? Were they so caught up in the power play that they forgot it was inevitably going to end?

Or, take this nifty pass he makes to Marcus Pettersson down low in the Wild zone that almost results in a cool goal. “Almost” is doing some heavy lifting here, but so is Garland and the minutes he’s been playing lately.

Tolopilo was up against one of the hottest rookie goaltenders in the league, Jesper Wallstedt, but he held his own throughout and was one of the sole reasons the Canucks got away with this game, and ended the first period only one goal down. Take his save here on a Kirill Kaprizov breakaway that most call-up goaltenders would be staring down like a scene from a Final Destination movie, or just one of his handful of saves made off his right pad throughout the night.

Neither team registered another shot on goal for almost a full five minutes of the second period. Still, it looks like the Monster Energy drinks (I’m just assuming, based on the average age of Canucks goal scorers in this game) they chugged over intermission started to kick in.

Filip Hronek launched a beautiful cross-ice pass from the Canucks zone that reached Evander Kane, then to Kiefer Sherwood, then it got its final bounce off of Aatu Räty’s skates at Minnesota’s net– this game was now tied at 1-1…right? 

Aatu Räty’s aforementioned goal was called off upon review. This is the second Räty goal that has been called off in the last week. I am about to launch a #JusticeForRaty campaign.

Kicked in, or not kicked in, does it really matter when the criteria never seem clear for these kinds of goal reviews? This is one of those things we as a society could debate until the end of time: was Kendall Roy’s name underlined or crossed out in Succession? Did Han Solo really shoot first in A New Hope? What will happen at the end of the universe and all things? You know, fun, harmless questions like those.

I respect this gentleman representing his dissent, but have we learned nothing from our tragic history? The Canucks tried to tank for Vancouverite Connor Bedard in 2023, and that didn’t exactly pan out. The Canucks then did…well, the opposite of tank for Vancouver native and certified Canucks fan Macklin Celebrini in 2024, and they didn’t come close in 2025, either. The Canucks may be at the bottom of the league – for now – but if I know them, they will do just good enough to barely miss the playoffs, but not quite bad enough for the draft lottery jackpot. Typical.

Räty would be avenged soon enough, but not without sharing the wealth with his fellow college fraternity brothers in Linus Karlsson, Elias Pettersson The Younger, and Tom Willander.

Tom Willander – not that far off from his actual college days in Boston – finally got his first NHL goal to open the floodgates for the Canucks, and bring some certified smiles to their faces in a very bleak midwinter for the team.

Just over two minutes later, EP25 would get one of his own goals off a faceoff win from Räty – I heard he’s halfway decent at those – and a pass from Willander.

Aatu Räty was offered a perfect redemption – or revenge – opportunity with a goal that counted. I absolutely loved how he hung outside of this board battle at the ready, like a sous chef hovering around the head chef, getting ready to really cook. And cook he did.

If he wasn’t already having himself a night, later in the third period, Räty would show off with a little unassisted wrap-around action for his second (in all of our hearts, third) goal of the game.

This deluge of Gen Z-ers, something that would sound terrifying in every other context, was something the Canucks desperately needed. Still, I definitely did not expect to jump out in this game whatsoever. This year, Vancouver’s central issue has not been generating chances, but actually finishing. The “C” part of “Always Be Closing” has been completely lost to this team in their remake called Glengarry Glen Loss. That said, the kids got it done tonight. Never call my generation lazy again.

What will all the Quinn Hughes Behavioural Analysis Unit body language experts say about the captain visibly laughing on the bench? Or is this one of those maniacal laughter situations like Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight? “Do you wanna know how I got these (emotional, and probably some physical) scars?”

Whoever on the Canucks broadcast team made the call to make this slow zoom-in on the Grinch deserves an Emmy, or a Canadian Screen Award, or something.

Despite the Wild managing to score to make the game 4-2 with just about three minutes to go, the Canucks did a tremendous job protecting their lead in the third period, like they were holding on for dear life.

Tolopilo staged another fantastic save against Jared Spurgeon, who was turned up to 11 against the Canucks all night.

Linus Karlsson pulled a backhander to clear the puck out of the neutral zone. As I said previously, I loved almost every single thing I saw from Karlsson in this game.

To give credit where credit is due, all of these efforts worked. Linus Karlsson took a Hail Mary shot at Minnesota’s empty net, while the Wild already looked increasingly panicked. This culminated in Kaprizov taking a poorly thought-out checking penalty on Linus Karlsson to put the Canucks on the power play in the final seconds of this game, but they already had this win in the bag.