Even before the puck dropped on this game between the
Vancouver Canucks and Los Angeles Kings, you probably could’ve predicted how it was going to go.
The Canucks were fresh off of
setting a franchise record for futility at home against the Ducks, and becoming the
first team eliminated from playoff contention (shocking, I know). The Kings have been freed from the shackles of Jim “1-3-1” Hillier, and are now under the command of DJ “lesser of two evils” Smith. Despite the Kings not having the interest in playing high-flying hockey, that role was thrust upon them thanks to a total lack of dynamicism from their opponents. Darcy Kuemper earned one of the easiest shutouts of his life with 19 saves, and Trevor Moore and Quinton Byfield combined for four points in a 4-0 Kings romp.
If the Kings are representing the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the Canucks efforts were the equivalent of AI-generated slop; nothing of value, just shiny little sequences that deepfake the idea of hockey onto a broadcast. You might as well have Tilly Norwood taking the faceoffs, because no one else was winning them.
But if there was one bright light at the end of this dark tunnel, it was the energy of Zeev Buium and Tom Willander. Sure, neither of them found the back of the net, but it was the emotion they provided that made a difference. The Canucks’ hopes for the future rest on building a group of players that can bring respect and honour back to donning the Canucks uniform, and they may have found a couple of players in Buium and Willander that fit that description perfectly. Players who won’t let the Canucks get pushed around, and aren’t looking for the first ticket out of town. These two truly want to be part of the solution, and they battled to prove it tonight.
The Canucks’ next four games are on the road, and that trip couldn’t come soon enough for a team that’s lost 30 games at Rogers Arena this season. The finish line is within sight, so let’s sprint towards it.
Kevin Lankinen is starting his fifth game in a row, and he did so after becoming a new NHL legend. With Vitek Vanacek allowing a goal to the Great 8, Lankinen stands alone with the most stops on Alex Ovechkin without allowing a goal. Put that on a Budweiser bottle.
Maybe that new status as a hockey legend is why Lanks came ready to play tonight against the Kings. In LA’s first scoring attempt, Lankinen sealed off the post and snagged a puck in close from Artemi Panarin.
The only thing more shocking than that save in close is that it was on Panarin wearing an LA Kings uniform. We definitely all remembered that before today, right?
Panarin got a redux a few minutes later, and there was Lanks again to snag it cleanly. He could easily replace Oneil Cruz in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ outfield.
One thing I’ll note is that Kevin leaned his body away on both shots, only extending his arm towards the puck. This is generally a goalie faux pas, since you should generally be moving your body into the shot as opposed to away from it. It didn’t cause any issues here, but it’s something worth keeping an eye on.
These games down the stretch are about two things: learning and auditioning. The veterans are auditioning to stay part of the team in the long term, while the young guys are learning how to solidify their place in that future.
Zeev Buium is going to have the full range of experiences in this game, but it didn’t start in an ideal way. After a missed attempt at clearing the zone, he holds Panarin’s stick long enough for the ref to blow the whistle and send him to the timeout corner. His defensive partner, Fil Hronek, tried to argue the call on his teammates’ behalf, but it fell on deaf ears. Probably because it was definitely a penalty.
With a power play to kill, the Canucks penalty kill made an odd call. As soon as Quinton Byfield took the puck, the Canucks simply… sat back and let him hold onto it? Masterful gambit, sirs.
With all the time in the world, Byfield found Scott Laughton hanging out in front of Lankinen and banked the puck off his teammates’ shin.
In some ways, it makes sense that the Canucks’ game plan for killing off penalties is to sit back. They don’t have the speed to be aggressive on the puck carrier and force plays without putting themselves out of position quickly. But you gotta be at least a little more aggressive when Byfield’s holding the puck like he’s strolling the Stanley Park seawall. ‘No easy goals’ should be a mantra for this team for the rest of the year. And in general, maybe.
Buium is gonna be here a while, so hopefully he took notes on what not to do on a PK while he was watching in the sin bin. His teammate, Drew O’Connor, didn’t learn much from how Buium challenged the Bread Man when he took his own penalty on Panarin, a trip near the blue line to close out the first period.
I was at the game against the Ducks on Tuesday, which not only meant I got to enjoy a far closer game and
eat a surprisingly good prime rib sandwich. It also means I was in the perfect line of sight to watch Anaheim’s second goal: a puck that lifted into the air over Lankinen’s head and hung there. In that moment, you knew the puck was about to dribble into the net, because these are the 2025-26 Vancouver Canucks. That’s just how it goes.
When Trevor Moore deflected Mikey Anderson’s shot in front of Lankinen in this game, it was deja vu. The puck slowed down, as if to taunt everyone in the arena, before fluttering over the goal line behind Lankinen.
How did Moore get so open in front of the goaltender for that deflection? That’s just how it goes.
Best “We were right there”
The Canucks had shown some fight in the early parts of the first period, but after a couple of late penalties, the ice completely tilted. It took the Canucks until deep into the middle frame to even hit single digits in the shots department, and few of them were real chances. Nils Höglander had a pair of opportunities in the first period, fresh off another healthy scratch, but neither were all that close to beating Darcy Kuemper. Still, the effort is appreciated.
The Canucks best chance of the first 40 minutes (or maybe the entire game) was this second opportunity for Linus Karlsson off a Jake DeBrusk shot from the blue line.
And that was about it!
Zeev Buium tried to bump Trevor Moore off the puck near the boards here. It did not go well for the young defender.
Some day, he’ll make that play with ease. Just give him a year or two.
In a game like this one, you want to see a little emotional investment from the players. Nothing is going right, time to make some noise about it!
The veterans all stayed quiet. The rookies did not.
One of the most pivotal shifts of the entire game came in the back half of the second, when poor Tom Willander got stuck out on a THREE MINUTE long shift. No matter what he and his Canucks teammates did, they just couldn’t clear the zone with the long change, and the Kings kept coming at them in waves. But mercifully, Evander Kane finally got the puck out of the zone and drew a whistle for a penalty.
And the cameras pan over to catch a blow-up on the bench from Willander that would make even J.T. Miller a little scared.
It’s hard to gauge what Sweet Wheels Willy is saying other than the obvious F-bombs he’s dropping, but the message is clear; he’s frustrated he got stuck out as long as he did. Buium and P-O Joseph each give him a loving pat to try and cool him down, but he’s wearing those three minutes out in the open.
After the commercial break, we get the extended edition, where Willander uses the skills he’s been improving in post-practice fights with Buium and DePetey by challenging the Rogers Arena boards to fisticuffs.
Assistant coach Kevin Dean does his best to calm his defender down, because no one wants to see Willander’s season end because he broke his hand punching the dasher. Over time, he’ll figure out how to harness that energy into more constructive solutions. But for now, at least someone is showing some emotion about how this game is going, because it’s been a little quiet everywhere else.
Kevin Lankinen is the only reason this game wasn’t over a lot sooner. Even the Canucks power play opportunities turned into scoring chances for LA, like when Trevor Moore got behind Buium and stuffed a puck into Lankinen’s pads and forced a defensive zone faceoff.
Then late in the second, the Kings’ fourth line got a pair of chances off the sticks of Sam Helenius and Jared Wright that he held out by sheer determination.
This start was a strange one to give Lankinen. Playing your veteran goalie for the fifth straight game is a choice when you’re already eliminated from playoff contention and have a young Nikita Tolopilo gathering dust on the bench. But all things considered, he did a pretty decent job tonight. Though it wouldn’t be a Lankinen start without at least one questionable goal.
This game was signed, sealed and delivered before the second period ended.
Jake DeBrusk did not properly shake n’ bake on this play, giving the puck up far too easily with two Kings around him in the neutral zone. And he handed it to the last King you’d want to face on a quick rush, Artemi Panarin. The Bread Man snapped the puck on the backhand so fast that Lankinen barely batted an eye at it, let alone a pad.
Fast forward to the third period, and Adam Foote elects to pull the goalie with five minutes to go… for some reason. It’s a 3-0 game, and the team’s shown no signs of life. I think you can just wave the white flag, Adam.
But no, instead the Canucks need a little extra embarrassment. Artemi Panarin, who’s been just everywhere in this game, somehow manages a perfect Hail Mary flip shot that perfectly smacks the left post and bounces out.
In some ways, that’s even more impressive than actually hitting the net. And that’s probably why he smirked at the Kings bench after he did it.
Besides, Quinton Byfield would finish the job a couple of minutes later.
This was a very unnecessary and unwarranted goalie pull that simply served to pour salt in the wounds. It’s the kind of move a coach would probably make if they were attempting to save their job, but they’re also really bad at it.
But surely that’s not what’s happening here, right?
If there was one saving grace of this game, it was the scrum in the dying moments. Zeev Buium and Tom Willander had had enough of the Kings and took matters into their own fists.
First, Willander jumps into the scrum to throw down with Jeff Mallott.
The we get the heavyweight fight; Buium vs. Brandt Clarke. These two do not hold back, no matter how much the ref tried to stop them.
This type of pushback from the young guns absolutely rocked. The Canucks have been getting haranged for not having enough players willing to assert themselves and drop the gloves when it’s deemed to be required. So watching Buium and Willander show this level of care and intensity seemed to wipe a lot of the bad taste from this game out of fan’s mouths. If these guys care this much about a meaningless game in March, this team is seemingly in better hands than it was a few months ago.
This clip of Buium smacking the little shelf on the Canucks bench will be making the rounds on social media all offseason long.
These kids care. And this team needs players that care more than ever.
Student rush tickets for $50 rare essentially today’s $10 tickets from Safeway. They’re just more expensive. And less enticing.
This is a shocking development from the same organization that doesn’t post the salary range on their job listings for social media positions, despite that being an illegal practice in BC. And I don’t think hiring more underpaid, overworked young people is going to get them out of this jam.
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