With the dust starting to settle after the monumental Quinn Hughes trade Friday night, the Vancouver Canucks set out to play against the New Jersey Devils Sunday morning in what can only be called the ‘Hughe Bowl’ now. With Luke being the lone representative from the Hughes clan, the game no longer held the appeal of watching family members face off, along with the existential dread in the air that Quinn was counting down the hours until he could join them on the other side. No, mercifully, the trade ended all of that, as it’s Minnesota’s problem now, and the Canucks can now look forward to a season of seeing what kind of rebuild they have on their hands.

And on Sunday morning, there was No Doubt who the winner was, as Vancouver held on for dear life to ride out a 2-1 victory over the Devils.

Which on one hand, yes, you are correct to be terrified of a mid-season surge from the Canucks. A run fueled off of the optimism and naivety of youth, the cliche of “they don’t know any better!’ used to describe a team that is winning when they shouldn’t be. The idea that the Canucks will be just close enough to the playoff hunt that management/ownership will refuse to sell off assets at the trade deadline because they owe it to Tyler Myers to win him a Cup or something isn’t something you can just laugh off as fiction.

But on the other hand, life has been so miserable around this team that sometimes it’s just fun to sit back and see what the kids can do, you know? You can’t control the Canucks ruining their draft position with late-season winning streaks, you just have to accept it as part of the curse that was afflicted upon you when you chose this team and/or a family member chose them for you.

So while we all wait to see if the Canucks learned any lessons from the last two seasons, all you can do now is watch the season play out and try to see some glimmers of hope from the youth of this team. I harken back to the late 90s; come harken with me, as we remember the dark years of the Mark Messier era. Back then, there was little hope to be found, as contracts written on bar napkins and the bloated corpse of the 1994 Cup run team had long since soured the mood around the Canucks. The Trevor Linden trade, much like the Quinn Hughes deal, signalled the end of an era. It was hard to see where the future was headed with the team, and optimism was nary to be found around town.

But as you watched the new roster come together, you found joy in watching the young bucks like Ed Jovanovski, Markus Naslund, Greg Hawgood, and Todd Bertuzzi find their way. There was something freeing about watching a new group of kids play hockey without any of the emotional baggage and scars of the group that was before them. If anything, it felt like a fresh start, a type of situation where you could allow yourself to believe that maybe life wasn’t all just credit card debt and virus-filled LimeWire files.

And while it remains to be seen if this team will hit the same sort of upward momentum the West Coast Express and ensuing Sedin era ever did, Zeev Buium at least gave you a glimpse of that with a goal and assist in his debut for the Canucks. Nobody will replace Quinn Hughes, and I imagine many of us got a little too complacent in terms of accepting his brilliance on ice as being a normal way of life in hockey, but Zeev showed promise. He did all you can ask of a young player by displaying the kind of skills that got him ranked as one of the best defensive prospects in all of hockey.

There is still a long way to go, of course. We are most likely years away from knowing if Buium can efficiently eat up to 25-30 minutes a game like Quinn Hughes did. But at least there’s a bit of hope there that this team might have a big piece of the puzzle for the next wave. And hope is something this team hasn’t had in a long time, if we’re being honest with each other. Instead of running away from a closing window, at least the Canucks are set up to run towards a promising future.

Now we just have to wait and see if the team has the patience to see it out properly.

Let’s dive into the game.

It didn’t take long for Zeev to get his first point as a Vancouver Canuck, which was an assist on a powerplay goal thanks to Conor Garland drawing a penalty on what remains one of the dumbest rules in sports:

I have ranted about this before, but with the way sticks break nowadays with the composites (tungsten? are composite sticks made with tungsten? that feels right), I put this penalty right up there with “Oh did that guy bleed slightly from his lip due to a high stick? We must punish you with two penalties now.”

In the old days, sticks were literally just thin trees that players fashioned into whacking sticks. You could drop an anvil on those 100-pound monsters and they still wouldn’t break.

Nowadays, though? You can give a quick glance at a stick and there is a high chance of it snapping in two.

Anyways, shout out to Tyler Myers dumping Dawson Mercer into the creek after that play was dead. The Canucks felt a bit mean in the first period of this game, which I assume was either a cathartic release of the last two years of in-fighting, or anger of having signed deals assuming Quinn Hughes was never going to leave them. Probably both.

Either way, Zeev Buium picked up a secondary assist on Jake DeBrusk’s goal, after Conor Garland found him in his usual spot at Tim Hortons:

November Jake is long dead, but we got a glimpse of January Jake, which was a nice reprieve from December Jake.

I think we’re all mature enough to admit that the Canucks powerplay had descended heavily into “Quinn Hughes skates for eight hours looking off Elias Pettersson before firing a wrister into traffic” as of late, so there was some freshness in seeing the team have no real quarterback on the powerplay. They had to move the puck and try and find open looks on net, and ended up going two for three on the night with the extra man.

Which isn’t to say you don’t want Quinn Hughes running your powerplay, please don’t get me wrong. I am sure he will score like eight points for the Wild in one night on the powerplay, and we will all just sort of nod our heads knowingly while we scroll through Instagram trying to remember the good times we used to have.

I just have a theory that a frustrated Quinn Hughes combined with a low skill hockey team around him led to an environment that probably wasn’t as efficient as it should have been? It just felt like the easy way out for this team was to give Quinn the puck and then sit back and watch, so at least this new world forces everyone to have to up their game.

Will they up their game? Who knows. You don’t just trade a generational player like Hughes and laugh about how easy life will be now. But just in terms of “let’s see what the kids can do?” for the rest of the season, this is where you see who can, and I can’t believe I am saying this, meet pressure with pressure.

I’m so sorry.

The point is, when you lose a major talent on a team, it’s always interesting to see who steps up to try and fill that void.

So the talk about Zeev was twofold:

And while I don’t think there is a better edgework player in the NHL than Quinn Hughes aside from Connor McDavid, you can see the kind of new-age defenceman in Zeev in that he can create room by making moves at the blueline:

Again, it’s not as dynamic as Quinn Hughes, and dangling along the blueline is a far cry from the insanity that Hughes was able to generate on a game to game basis, but you can see the blueprint there. You can see why the Canucks would insist upon Zeev being the crown jewel of the trade.

As for the Canucks second goal of the night, Zeev got a little bit of luck on his side, but I prefer to think he banked it in off of Brendan Dillon’s skate on purpose:

A lot of players probably shoot that puck the second they get it coming into the zone like that, but again it speaks to his confidence that he has no problem holding onto the puck and seeing if a more dangerous passing or shooting option opens up. And in this case banking the puck in off of Dillon’s skate worked out wonderfully.

Thatcher Demko is back, speed running media scrums and doing his annual dragging the Canucks back into victories routine we have all become accustomed to. His biggest test of the game came early on when the Canucks found themselves killing off a five on three thanks in part to a Tyler Myers angry shove:

Followed up by Kiefer Sherwood grabbing the puck and then acting like it was a literal hand grenade, tossing it out of the zone and then still having the audacity to complain about being called for it:

All of which led to Thatcher Demko reminding us that when he’s healthy and on his game, he still has that Bubble Demko in him:

Multiple chances, multiple denials, all I need is Demko staring down Thomas Drance in a petulant manner and I know he’s locked in.

Marco Rossi came off of IR to play his first game with his new team, and although he had a bit of a quiet night, you can see the talent he has. He ended the first period with a shot that almost found it’s way past Jacob Markstrom, but just slid wide:

Just a smart player with a high hockey IQ, another solid player that Judd Brackett has found for the Canucks as he helps rebuild Vancouver from afar.

Luke Hughes scored the lone goal of the night for New Jersey during a shift in which Tyler Myers and Marcus Pettersson briefly united to let you know they still have that unique chemistry to be scored on at all times:

To their credit, this goal was more of the result of a bad line change from Vancouver more than anything else. While Myers and MP3 briefly toy with the idea of swarming one guy with the puck, as is tradition, Myers actually peels off Luke Glendening to close down Jesper Bratt. And while in a perfect world maybe he closes the gap quick enough to get a stick on the pass, the real issue is Luke Hughes walks in with absolutely nobody covering him due to said line change.

Look, you even had Marcus Pettersson attempting to make a pad save on the shot, so I do feel like the duo did their best on this goal. You even had Glendening jumping through the air to help screen Demko, so you also have to give credit to the Devils for doing their best to make life hard for the Canucks goaltender.

Marco Rossi almost restored the two goal lead when he led a counter attack that ended with him hitting the post after trying a slick little short side shot on Markstrom:

That’s the Shake and Jake move DeBrusk loves to use where you skate in hard across the net and chip the puck back from whence you came. I give credit to the Devils defender Colton White for using his stick to take away space from Rossi, so he couldn’t cut in even harder on Markstrom, which probably would have opened up a bit more room for him to shoot at.

That’s Colton White, not to be confused with Colin White. Who isn’t to be confused with the other Colin White.

That post was also notable because it was probably the last moment the Canucks thought to themselves, “hey let’s try and score a goal” ever again in this game. They went firmly into park the bus mode as New Jersey controlled the play the rest of the way. I think the Canucks defended well, mind you, but it was very clearly a team that was just hoping to ride out the 2-1 victory, as seen by the six to two high danger scoring chances edge New Jersey had in the game, coupled with the lone single shot Vancouver would get in the third period.

But that’s the beauty of a healthy Thatcher Demko, as even when New Jersey found a way to get a good look on net, he would calmly turn it aside:

Or when Evander Kane “defended” the neutral zone by way of taking a giant wide turn, allowing Luke Hughes to skate into the Canucks zone with speed, Demko was having none of it:

And even when New Jersey set up shots in the slot when Vancouver crowded too many men down low, Demko made you forget the fear you’ve had this season watching Kevin Lankinen facing that same scenario:

And when Demko didn’t have the answers, the post did:

I like how being able to skate and dangle with the puck is just part of the Hughes family DNA at this point.

Sure, Tyler Myers got another penalty to start the third period, but when is the league going to cut down on this violence from Jesper Bratt?

He straight up broke both of Marcus Pettersson’s ankles and there was no call at all on the play. That man had a family!

The underlying numbers on Liam Öhgren weren’t pretty, but I still like what I saw from the newest Canuck. I think parking the bus for half a game skewed things a bit for some of the lines, so what I will say is I think Öhgren seems like a smart player. It felt like he was constantly surveying the ice and trying to make sure he was covering someone or in the right position. His efforts in the defensive end matched his effort in the offensive end, which is something you always like to see from a young player.

And it felt like he had a bit of that Conor Garland in him in that he would always be looking to make a play on the puck to cause a turnover or start a rush. He just felt like a player that was very involved with the play.

So while this rush wasn’t the prettiest thing you’ll see this season, it was nice to see him generate a zone entry and continue heading to the net to almost finish off the play with a tap in goal:

And like I said, he has a bit of that shark in the water, Conor Garland to his game, in that I think he’s trying to think a step or two ahead so he can make a play on the puck. Here he stays hard on the puck, and then when the play moves away from him, he stays focused and jumps back in to generate a takeaway:

Just one game, and we have a long way to go, but I enjoyed his night.

I could show you that lone shot, or I could show you Kiefer Sherwood missing a shot high, and then Markstrom taking a dive for old times sake:

I have watched his man flop from the World Juniors to now his 35th year on this planet, and while nobody will match Mike Smith for theatrics, in his prime he could go head to head with Mike on any given day.

Thatcher Demko is never healthy for an entire season and never will be, so you can never plan for that. There is no point of wondering if Quinn Hughes would have stayed if a healthy Demko created the illusion of a contending team because it would have never happened. Besides, the window for a Quinn Hughes contending team in Vancouver was essentially over, so while we can bemoan the fact it got to this point, it was absolutely the right move to make the trade and start over.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy watching Demko when he is healthy, as he is quite a talented fellow. However, you know what’s even better? When Tyler Myers and Thatcher Demko combine to make huge saves.

With the net empty, and New Jersey pressing to tie the game up, leave it up to Chaos Giraffe to flop to the ice and make the game saving stop:

This was then followed up by Demko, who had lost his stick at this point, making a massive save on Bratt in the slot:

And for good measure, here is the hockey IQ of Marco Rossi on display, as he breaks up an offensive zone shift from New Jersey by reading the play and snaking the puck away along the boards, before making the rookie mistake of giving the puck to David Kampf:

Was it a pretty win? No.

Do you want the Canucks winning a lot of games like this? Of course not.

But as I said earlier, after the way the last few seasons has gone, you might as well take a night off from the depression and enjoy what the kids did on this night.