Expectations are a hell of a drug. Which is where we found ourselves last year, with the Canucks coming off of their hottest playoff run in over a decade, taking the Edmonton Oilers to the brink of defeat before bowing out in Game 7 of the second round. There are few highs in life as intense as snorting the swagger and vibes of Nikita Zadorov and JT Miller winning big hockey games, so you’d be excused if you bought too much stock in the “we have arrived” confidence heading into 2024/25.
It was supposed to be a season of, well, maybe not Stanley Cup aspirations, but certainly a club that was looking to get back into the playoffs at the very least. Somewhere along the way, though, everything fell apart.
We all learned what a popliteus was when Thatcher Demko struggled to deal with the ramifications of rehabbing that injury, an injury that was talked about in hushed tones, with a mixture of disbelief and reverence normally reserved for discovering the afterlife actually exists. At one point, I assumed Demko’s leg had fallen off and had to be re-attached with a variety of duct tape and glue with the way people spoke about it.
We all learned that Rick Tocchet’s system might have some severe offensive limitations, as getting over 20 shots in a game was met with the defeated celebration you usually bust out when you find out your credit card wasn’t declined on that $8.38 charge.
We all learned that even if Quinn Hughes has multiple broken limbs and a ligament tear, he will probably still finish top 3 in Norris voting.
And we, of course, all learned that hockey divorces can be as painful as real-life ones when we saw the impact and consequent fallout of the JT Miller and Elias Pettersson relationship. Dubbed a season where everything went wrong, the truth is, last year probably would have survived anything but the EP40 and JT Miller fallout. We might never know all the details, and we don’t need to go over it, but suffice to say that never have I seen a locker room more miserable than it was last year.
You know when you know someone really well, and you can tell when their mood shifts? Like nobody else sees it, but you know they’ve gone from happy to absolutely miserable? That was what it was like in the locker room during media scrums. Players walking in with a 1,000-yard stare in their eyes, answer questions while looking at the ground, mumbling their way through what looked to be a delightful balance of physical and mental anguish.
All of which is to say what a difference a year makes. This year, while the expectations have been adjusted to “I hope the Canucks play watchable hockey”, the players themselves have transformed. Like anyone who has escaped a toxic relationship will tell you, you don’t quite realize how bad it has truly gotten until you are fully removed from it.
Heading to the rink no longer seems like a journey better suited for Hobbits with a penchant for potato recipes. Now going to the rink seems fun again, with players cracking jokes and heck, I think I even saw Quinn Hughes let slip a small smile at one point.
And while happy vibes can only carry you so far in the NHL, it was nice to see the Canucks ride this renewed sense of optimism to a 5-1 thrashing of the Calgary Flames on Thursday night. And make no mistake about it, this is a game the Canucks should have won handily. Calgary had just played the night before in Edmonton, and on paper, the Canucks are icing a better roster.
But the funny thing about winning the easy ones is you actually have to, well, win them. Last year, it would have been all too easy for the dark cloud following the Canucks around to drag them into the swamp of sadness, screaming for Artax to keep moving, pleading with him to take one more step as they lost to the Flames.
This season, the Canucks did what any team looking to make the playoffs would want to do, and that was win their home opener against a tired opponent. A win that didn’t involve constant dump and chase hockey. A win that Filip Chytil showcased the joys of East to West puck movement. A win that saw a renewed, lethal power play that…ok, well, you can’t have everything.
The point is, it was a very good first game. And hell, for all we know, this season will go off the rails and the Canucks might fail in their quest to make the playoffs. But at the very least, it finally feels like you’re watching a hockey team again, and not a TV drama that wins Emmys under a comedy label.
And after last season? That feels like a massive improvement.
I’m broke from the offseason, so let’s make some gif money, shall we?
The Canucks celebrated 30 years of playing hockey at Rogers Arena by bringing out our version of the Thunderbolts, local dudes who used to play for the team back in 1995.
And while Trevor Linden got the biggest cheer, as is tradition, let’s give a shout-out to Dana Murzyn for making an appearance in Canucks colours.
Also, those white jerseys look pretty slick. It would be interesting to see those on the current players.
The opening game of the season for Vancouver, and the first scoring chance went to the Chaos Giraffe:
Did part of me think Tyler Myers was gonna bounce that puck in off of three players before riding off into the sunset in a car with Sandy Olsson riding shotgun? Of course I did. But I also realize I might still be suffering from fever dreams of watching the Canucks dump the puck into the corner and going for a line change on 95% of their plays last year.
Blake Coleman responded with a much better high-danger chance on the Canucks with a shot from the slot:
You know how you know Thatcher Demko is locked in? He makes tough saves look boring. He makes the save, but it’s almost like he’s disgusted with you for wasting his time. He barely moves because he’s already in position, and he looks at you with disdain, as if you dropped out of your Puppetry Arts degree because it was too hands-on for your liking.
And then, perhaps inspired by the jerseys once used to nickname a man after a space vehicle, Conor Garland decided to go end-to-end and beat four Calgary Flames:
Did Corolla go full Pavel Bure? No, he failed in his mission. But the point is, at no point did any teammates scream at each other on the bench, nor did anyone break down any office doors. These are what we call marginal gains. Small, but important.
If Thatcher Demko were a character on iCarly, I imagine he would end up brushing his teeth with mustard for many minutes. Why, you ask? I don’t know, but it feels right.
The point is, this was a Demko who looked very solid in net on the night. Now, I will preface that by saying this wasn’t a game in which Demko had to stand on his head. He merely had to make movements in net that didn’t bring to mind an Australian trying to win gold in a breakdancing competition.
And when Calgary did get their good looks on net? Demko was there, sliding from post to post, getting his right Khabi on it:
Or maybe it was his left Bhulin.
Either way, Demko made sure his team wasn’t down early, which allowed the Canucks to slowly get their feel for the game.
One such chance was a nice setup by Quinn Hughes, who got the puck to Elias Pettersson high in the slot:
I fully admit, part of me just assumes Elias Pettersson will score on every wrist shot he takes on the Flames, because that’s how he got his first NHL goal. It, in fact, confuses me when he doesn’t score like this on the Flames on every shot, much like how I am still bewildered about the Easter Bunny forgetting about my house every year now.
And while I know that is silly thinking better suited for the halls of Camelot, I also don’t want to get to the point where we’re like “wow, that was some good velocity on that shot from Elias Pettersson!” as we all wait to see if he can rebound this season. I think we can all take some time off from the micro-analysis of every single thing he does.
Until game 10, that is.
Then all bets are off.
For game one, however, he had a perfectly cromulent game?
The Canucks opened the scoring when Drew O’Connor and Kiefer Sherwood made sweet, sweet love on the ice, turning a bobble on the blueline from Joel Hanley into a successful counterattack:
Does Dustin Wolf want that one back? I have to assume so, yes. When I fall down the stairs in public, I will often smile and laugh it off. Maybe I’ll make a comment about how I “must have taken a shortcut” as I implore people not to pity me. Is my elbow bleeding? That’s ok, it will help balance my humours.
But deep down? The self-loathing courses through my veins as I run the events through my head over and over again into the middle of the night, self-flagellating myself for being so stupid.
So I imagine it is much the same here for Dustin.
In the end, Kiefer picked his spot and scored the goal, which is what gives him the right to furiously chop at the air as he celebrates. Last year, he punched back and forth for a celly, but this year, he did an up-and-down motion.
I don’t know what this means, but I am always up for a new way to punch the air to celebrate goals.
Not since the Boeser vs. Kuzmenko days have we seen such a spirited debate about the PP1 break out so quickly. And while it has only been one game and a handful of preseason games, something tells me this debate won’t be nearly as close for Evander Kane vs. Jonathan Lekkerimäki.
To be clear, the Canucks power play was solidly awful on the night. It went 0/4, and it rarely seemed dangerous. The best it looked was honestly when the second unit with Prime Time was on the ice.
As for the first unit, this was the best look Evander Kane got on it, a shot generated off of Quinn Hughes being a zone entry animal:
Aside from that shot, it just felt like Evander Kane was slow in most aspects of the game. Slow to react, slow to pass, slow on the forecheck. He just wasn’t clicking with anything.
In his defence, the man is coming off of surgery just last January, in which they repaired two torn hip adductor muscles, two hernias, and two torn abdominal muscles. If I saw someone getting surgery for all this, I would just naturally assume they had been run over by a car. Sure, he played in the playoffs for the Oilers, but it will probably take some time for him to round into his final form.
That being said, I don’t know if you need him to round into form on the first unit power play?
Again, it’s only one game, but I think as the Simpsons taught us, we’d much rather watch Lekkerimäki hit some dingers?
At times, it just felt like Evander was making passes based purely on vibes. That’s all I’m saying.
The big highlight from the first period, aside from Kiefer Sherwood milking a cow to celebrate a goal, was Elias Pettersson’s collision with MacKenzie Weegar:
Now, I know hockey is back when I watch a video clip of a Canuck player getting hurt and I don’t think it was done maliciously, and people start screaming at me.
“HE TOOK ELIAS’ HEAD IN HIS HANDS AND BANGED IT OFF THE BOARDS LIKE HE WAS PLAYING THE BONGOS, WYATT. THE BONGOS!”
Initially called a major penalty on the ice, this was merely so the officials could get together to discuss the play. In the end, a two-minute minor was handed out, and I honestly wouldn’t have called a penalty at all. If this happened to any player, from any team, I would see it as a guy bracing himself for a hit and ending up taking the worst of it.
Did Weegar do the ol’ “whoops, I fell down on top of you” trick? Probably. But EP40 braces for the hit, then stumbles awkwardly into the boards, hits the boards with his head, and then Weegar falls down on him.
I also don’t care if you think it should have been a five-minute major, though? Like if to you, you think we should reconsider the death penalty for this hit, have at it? I just don’t want to yell about it online with you?
All I know is the hit had an ugly ending to it, but I didn’t feel Weegar did anything egregious on it. But don’t just listen to my opinion, even Elias Pettersson himself echoed the same sentiment postgame:
“Those hits happen all the time,” Pettersson said. “I dropped it to Boes; it was a bad drop. I think I reached for it, and then Weegar hit me. I don’t think it’s a bad hit at all. It’s just bad timing.”
But as mentioned earlier, the Canucks power play is kind of doo doo right now, so Evander Kane would promptly turn the puck over to Blake Coleman for the best scoring chance during the Weegar penalty:
That is a power play pass right out of JT Miller in his unhappiest prime right there. But also notice how bored Demko looks making that save. I haven’t seen disdain like that since Elizabeth Bennett was first proposed to.
Defensively oriented Elias Pettersson would then take centre stage, as he would get a five-minute major downgraded to a minor on a similar situation to the Weegar hit, when he ran Connor Zary into the boards from behind:
I have two theories on this.
One, there are many, many Elias Petterssons in the world, and much like the Borg, they all share one mind. If you hit one Elias Pettersson, you hit them all. You will be assimilated in response to create even more Elias Petterssons. In a couple of years, the Canucks entire top two lines will be filled with nothing but Elias Petterssons.
Or two, Junior has a long memory, and revenge is a dish best served cold, and he was simply handing out a receipt to Zary.
In the end, the officials (surprisingly, I may add) chose to hand out a two-minute penalty, which led to Arshdeep Bains getting the Tortorella Shot Block of the Night Award on the ensuing penalty kill:
I will admit I am not a fan of Bains in the top six, and smarter men than I have told me to give him time, and that his NHL game will round into form.
And I will say I have full confidence in him being a bottom-six guy this year who can pitch in defensively and give you that solid, reliable relationship on defence that you can introduce to your mother on Thanksgiving dinner.
I’m just not sold on Top Six Bains yet, I’m not. You have to rise above the Aaron Volpatti bar for me to think “hey maybe this kid should get a shot on the top lines” before I can buy into your game.
That being said, I have been wrong many times in my life, so I will happily own up to being incorrect on this should he take off this year.
The benefits of giving up breakaways and forcing Demko to make exceptional saves is that you get to see his very decidedly non-Ian Clark-approved pads in action:
It is not often Quinn Hughes skates into a situation that results in a semi-breakaway against, so enjoy it while you can. This is about as rusty as Quinn Hughes gets before he locks it down.
Speaking of the Canucks captain, we had our very first “Quinn Hughes doing Quinn Hughes things” moment of the season in the middle of the second period:
What I like about Quinn Hughes is that he makes the EA Sports over-the-top deke moves look real.
Like Hughes is out here pulling out spins left and right, and you’re like “Oh yeah ok, maybe EA isn’t as arcadey as I thought, my bad.”
Mere seconds later, Quinn Hughes was out there on the power play, faking a shot and once again busting out a spin move:
Sometimes, there is nothing you can do about Quinn Hughes. He is the Thanos of the NHL. He is inevitable.
Like you know, the other team is all “ok Hughes can probably skate right by me, but what the hell am I going to do about it?” so they’re basically playing it from a “How can I avoid breaking my ankles and getting put on YouTube” angle, and not a “how can I stop Quinn Hughes” angle:
Calgary’s best chance to score in the second period came near the end of the frame when they got a point shot off, followed up by a quick shot in the slot, but it didn’t matter:
Demko already knew where they were going to shoot the puck three hours ago.
This is a tricky one, because I am in no way laughing at head shots, nor do I want to make light of a puck hitting Kevin Bahl in the head, but there is something…ironic about Filip Chytil using a head shot to score a goal?
For a man who knows the suffering a concussion can bring, we can reasonably say Chytil wasn’t pleased with beaming a guy in the head, but he also had a job to do: play to the whistle, which he did. He saw a loose puck, and while Calgary assumed the ref would call the play dead, Filip put the puck in the net.
It’s certainly one of the odder goals of the season so far, and you can see why Calgary would be upset. But also, yeah, play to the whistle?
What shouldn’t get lost in this is just how good Chytil’s skating looked on the night.
Remember those first four games with Vancouver last year, where he was carrying the puck in with aplomb? Before the Rick Tocchet GOTI System strangled all the creativity and joy out of him?
Well, on this night, Filip was every bit a second line centre you could want to have. Offensively dangerous, responsible defensively, if you take concussion worries out of the equation, it’s easy to see why the Canucks wanted Chytil in the JT Miller trade.
And while I tend to take the hockey stat graphs with a grain of salt, they at the very least paint a picture of who was involved in the offence and defence on the night to some degree, and on that level, it was no surprise that Chytil led the charge:
Again, it’s only been one game. There will be many tougher challenges ahead. But for one night, Chytil looked like the second line centre the Canucks have been looking for all offseason. The call was coming from inside the house the entire time, damn it.
The good news is his puck control was just as bad on this night, it wasn’t just the passing!
I would say he might need to get used to Quinn Hughes dancing his way into setting up his linemates with incredible gifts in the form of high danger scoring chances, but he just came from a team with McDavid and Draisaitl, so I don’t think that’s the issue.
Again, I think he needs time to round into form, but I also don’t think it needs to round on the first unit power play.
And while the team did go scoreless on the night with the extra man, Prime Time and the second unit looked far more efficient in their limited time:
Better puck movement and better player movement; the second unit just felt more fluid than the top one.
The Flames ran into the joys of the Hockey Gods as they went from having what looked like a sure goal in the slot at one end, into a Chytil breakaway goal at the other:
That’s the kind of goal in beer league where I just settle in because I know the game is over. We all have to work tomorrow, let’s just try and finish this one with no fights.
And again, it wasn’t just the goals. Chytil looked GOOD out there on the ice, throwing off the shackles of the GOTI system, and playing give and go with Quinn Hughes:
How many times did we see a stagnant team last year? How many times did Rick Tocchet come out in a hot dog suit, accusing his team of not doing what he wanted, which at times was to simply skate and get open?
For whatever reason, the team forgot how to do the fundamentals of offensive hockey, but on opening night, the Canucks looked good in the offensive zone.
One game, I know, but at least we got a fun game right out of the gate.
After a spirited zone entry by Corolla, Evander Kane picked up his first point as a Canuck when he got the assist on Prime Time’s goal:
Calgary was pretty much dead inside by this point, so you don’t want to get overly excited about racking up the goals, but it was still nice to see Lekkerimäki slide into a soft spot on the ice to get his lethal shot off.
For whatever warts Lekkerimäki has in his game, we at least know the kid can shoot the lights out.
Remember when the Canucks drafted Patrick White and Dave Nonis raved about his shot?
Anyways, it’s nice when the players come as advertised, that’s all I’m saying.
Bains ran into a little bit of trouble on the lone Flames goal of the night, when he sent a pass into the middle of the ice to an unsuspecting Kiefer Sherwood:
It wasn’t the greatest play, and the safe move was probably glass and out or keep skating with the puck. However, this mistake allows us to argue and yell at each other online about it, so maybe it’s serving the greater good.
What else do you do in a game that’s all but over? You get Brock Boeser to score a goal:
Again, the Flames at this point are exhausted and simply want the pain to stop, so even they’re like “sure ok Brock, have at it” on this play.
The nice thing is, Vancouver entered the zone with puck possession and didn’t dump it into the corner. At this point, I hope the Canucks dummy their opponent every chance they get because we’re owed it after whatever it was last season.
And that was the ball game. The Canucks won a game they should have, and nobody got sad in the media scrums. That’s about as win/win as it gets right now.
The next test on Saturday will be the bigger one, as the Canucks take on the Edmonton Oilers, but for a home opener, this one went about as good as you could have hoped for.
I honestly don’t think Silovs was like “welp, time to bury the Canucks!” He just seems like a kid who discovered how rich people live. Like, he legit gives off the aura of someone who just got to visit their rich friend’s house and is blown away that they have three bathrooms. “Wait, we get a locker? I don’t have to head down to UBC and wait for the Thunderbirds player to get their gear out of my spot?”
@TheStanchion oh boy do I have a good jersey for you. pic.twitter.com/d2jY5KOVA3
— Teddy Wong III(@Tee3ree) October 10, 2025
Sponsored by bet365
A lot of ink has been spilled about ‘bounce backs’ and the need for them if the Vancouver Canucks are going to succeed in the 2025-26 season. Whether we’re talking about bouncing back from injury or poor performance – or both – it’s by now been well-established that the Canucks’ fortunes this year rely on rebounds from the likes of Filip Chytil, Thatcher Demko, and especially Elias Pettersson (you know which one).
But there’s another bounce back season in the making that no one is really talking about, and that’s the one that is almost certainly about to be delivered by captain Quinn Hughes.
Now, we’ve got to couch this concept in a whole lot of caveats. By no means are we, or anyone reasonable, suggesting that Hughes had a bad season in 2024-25. But by his own, incredibly lofty standards, he did have a worse season in 2024-25 than he did in 2023-24 – and we have to imagine that Hughes is both aware of that fact and prepared to do something about it in the present day.
If we run the most basic numerical comparison, the drop-off can be hard to see. Here’s a quick Hughes head-to-head:
Games Goals Assists Points PPG TOI 2023-24 82 17 75 92 1.12 24:41 2024-25 68 16 60 76 1.12 25:44
From NHL.com
In comparing last season to the season prior, Hughes obviously played fewer games, but that’s the only visually apparent difference. He scored goals at a higher rate, earned assists at a lower rate, but wound up with the exact same points-per-game. The 2024-25 Hughes actually played a full 1:03 more per night on average than the previous edition.
In other words, Hughes scored as much and took on even more responsibility.
Once we get into the fancier stats, a slight difference begins to emerge, but with emphasis on the ‘slight.’ Take a look:
Corsi Expected Goals Shot Control Scoring Chance Control High-Danger Chance Control 2023-24 57.15% 54.64% 53.24% 57.66% 53.92% 2024-25 55.71% 54.19% 54.51% 55.33% 51.94%
From NaturalStatTrick.com, representing 5v5 play
Here we have some perceptible, roughly 2% drops in things like Corsi, control of scoring chances, and control of high-danger scoring chances in particular. Hughes’ rate of Expected Goals stayed roughly the same, and his shot control actually increased.
You can see why we felt the need for all those caveats. Both statlines listed above are elite. One is just slightly more elite than the other.
Where Hughes’ ‘room for improvement’ – if we can call it that – is most clearly shown is in his direct on-ice results. To some extent, that includes the Canucks’ overall record. But we’re talking more about goals for and goals against here:
On-Ice Goals For On-Ice Goals Against Difference 2023-24 92 55 +27 2024-25 65 57 +8
From NaturalStatTrick.com, representing 5v5 play
The 2023-24 Hughes played in 14 fewer games, and somehow allowed two more goals against at evens, to go along with 27 more goals for. It’s an enormous difference. And, yes, this is more of a team result than something that can be laid at the feet of any individual.
But we have to think that Hughes himself takes personal responsibility for it, and is personally dedicated to turning that result around in 2025-26.
We haven’t said the word ‘Norris’ yet, and that’s with intention. Hughes went from Norris Trophy winner in 2023-24 to Norris Trophy nominee (and third-place finisher) in 2024-25, which, again, cannot be called much of a drop-off. But the lack of any pushback from the Canucks faithful about Hughes losing out to both Cale Makar and Zach Werenski last year should speak volumes.
There would have been an uproar had Hughes lost the Norris race in 2023-24. That’s what a true bounce back for Hughes means – getting back to the point where he’s very much in the running as the best overall defender in the sport of hockey.
And here’s how we really know that Hughes had a worse season in 2024-25 than he did in 2023-24: we all saw it. The eye-test has its strengths and weaknesses, but the Hughes of last season just did not look as complete out there as did the Hughes of the previous year. And, as we eventually learned, that was with good reason.
Hughes tore a ligament in his hand in December 2024, missed minimal time, and played through until January with that odd, web-shooter-esque cast on his hand. That’s something that will obviously impact the game of someone who handles the puck so frequently and so deftly.
Then in late January, Hughes suffered an oblique tear. That forced him to miss the 4 Nations Face-Off, much to his disappointment. He returned in late February, but another injury in early March, possibly related to the oblique again, knocked him out for ten days again.
To call it an injury-plagued season might be a touch dramatic. But it was a season in which injuries impacted Hughes performances essentially throughout.
Hughes now enters the 2025-26 season healthy, happy, and fully aware that he can do better this year than he did last year. Of all the ‘bounce backs’ we’re counting on, this one seems the most certain to happen. And while the other potential bounce backs, like those we’re waiting on from Pettersson and Demko, will make a discernable difference, we can’t discount the difference made by a Hughes returning back to his old Norris Trophy standards.
Hughes is, and will remain, the Canucks’ most important player. Even a slight uptick in his individual performance should translate very directly into team success. And if Hughes can take it one step further, and improve not just on his 2024-25 campaign, but even upon his 2023-24 campaign?
Well, that’s just an exciting notion to think about.
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Welcome back to Instant Reaction, the series here at CanucksArmy where we give you our instant reaction to tonight’s Vancouver Canucks game and ask our readers to do the same in the comments section below!
The Canucks’ hit the road for their first of four on the season against the Edmonton Oilers. Unlike their season opener, the Canucks did not face a 24-year-old sophomore goalie playing on back-to-back nights. No, the Canucks faced an Oilers team looking for their first win of the season, and looking for blood.
Poor Thatcher Demko did everything he could to give Vancouver a chance at a win streak. Outside of a handful of crushing hits from Tyler Myers and Evander Kane, this was a horrendous performance.
Let’s get into it.
Starting Lineup
Projected #Canucks lines vs. @EdmontonOilers
DeBrusk. EP40. Boeser.
Bains. Chytil. Garland.
Kane. Cootes. Lekkerimäki.
O’Connor. Räty. Sherwood.
Hughes. Hronek.
MP29. Myers.
Forbort. EP25.
#DemkoTime
7pm on @Sportsnet650 https://t.co/J6DNM1E8Qt pic.twitter.com/s46bwrNnt8
— Brendan Batchelor (@BatchHockey) October 12, 2025
First Period
Picking up where he left off against Calgary, Filip Chytil worked toward earning an obscure nickname from the Stanchies with an early setup for Conor Garland.
Filip Chytil kicks things off with a scoring chance set up by Conor Garland
: Sportsnet | #Canucks pic.twitter.com/N6bMlHsRW2
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Some heavy hits and a stretch of back-and-forth inaction later, Demko was tasked with making his first five-alarm save of the evening.
Thatcher Demko makes a great save early in the 1st period!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
The Canucks’ did well establishing their cycle in the offensive zone early and often, but struggled connecting on the pass for meaningful shots.
A scary shift pinned inside the d-zone against the McDrai line soon gave way to a meaty and impressive shift from Quinn Hughes, Fil Hronek, and the youth movement featuring Braeden Cootes, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, and (relatively young) Drew O’Connor.
What a shift by Quinn Hughes
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
For whatever reason, the Canucks’ puck-handling left a lot to be desired. While the zone time was stifling and heavily in their favour, the puck appeared to be treated like a hand grenade by most of the roster, resulting in very little to show for their work.
Midway through the period, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins appeared to draw first blood. Fortunately for Vancouver, the refs (correctly) waved the goal off due to Darnell Nurse having deflected the puck past Demko with a high stick.
Not long after, Connor McDavid—a pretty good player—drew a holding penalty against Derek Forbort, sending Edmonton to the power play.
Thatcher Demko stops a Trent Frederic shot from the slot!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Adam Foote & Company, still without Teddy Bleuger as their primary PK faceoff guy, began their PK with a forward duo of Aatu Räty and Garland. Räty was huge for Vancouver on the faceoff, and Demko was huge for Vancouver between the pipes. Additionally, Edmonton’s David Tomasek had two tap-in opportunities turned aside by the tie-up efforts of Marcus Pettersson.
Though they killed Forbort’s penalty, it was more of the same for the final ten minutes: Vancouver generating nothing off of their o-zone cycle, and Demko making critical saves.
Thatcher Demko makes ANOTHER great save in this 1st period!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Like, seriously. This could have been ugly.
Thatcher Demko is keeping the Vancouver Canucks in this game.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Edmonton’s Tomasek drew a high-sticking minor against Evander Kane, sending Edmonton to their second straight power play. Though Vancouver’s PK went two for two in the period, it required a highlight reel save from Demko and a penalty drawn by Räty against Trent Frederic to accomplish.
Might as well just give Demko the Vezina now
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
The Canucks best scoring chance of the period came shorthanded, when Andrew Mangiapane fumbled the puck on a d-zone regroup, nearly throwing the puck past Calvin Pickard’s left skate.
First period takeaways:
- In Demko we trust
- Some impressive o-zone time and some deeply uninspiring results of that o-zone time.
- Elias Pettersson drew the McDavid matchup, yes. Still, not liking how quiet he’s been at 5-on-5 four periods into the season.
- Adam Foote’s first job as “bad cop” should be to tell Evander Kane that he doesn’t have what it takes to stay out for extra-long shifts. In a period where Vancouver spent 3.5 minutes on the PK, in no world should this iteration of Kane finish the frame with the 2nd-highest ice time.
Second Period
The Canucks power play saw a few looks generated by Garland, but little else.
It was pretty well all-Edmonton for the first ten minutes of the middle frame. Nearing the midway point, Lekkerimäki bowled over his check inside the o-zone, which was neat. Lekkerimäki’s efforts sprang the puck out to Cootes, who set up Tyler Myers with a pass from behind the goal line for a one-timer.
Speaking of, Myers kept up his semi-annual tradition of annihilating an Oiler with a body check. This time, Myers stepped up on Trent Frederic at the Canucks’ blue line, flattening the Oiler forward with gusto.
Tyler Myers crushes Trent Frederic with a HUGE open ice hit
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Moments later, Leon Draisaitl drew an interference penalty against Kiefer Sherwood, leading to two minutes of Demko making an early case for the Vezina.
Thatcher Demko robs Evan Bouchard! What a save!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Demko’s otherworldly performance appeared to be getting the goat of the Oilers’ best players. Unfortunately, Edmonton’s Noah Philp broke the shutout streak with the first NHL goal of his career, assisted by Kasperi Kapanen and Vasili Podkolzin.
1-0 Oilers
The Oilers open the scoring.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
With 2:30 left in the period, Kane threw a hard hit on Alec Regula from behind, drawing the ire of Darnell Nurse against his former teammate. Both were sent to the box for unsportsmanlike conduct, putting the game at 4-on-4.
If you’re wondering why there is so little “instant reaction” in the second period coverage of this edition of Instant Reaction. Well, it’s because the Canucks didn’t do anything of note. It was the Thatcher Demko show featuring no one.
Sadly, with 22 seconds left in the 4-on-4 and 50 seconds left in the period, Demko gave up his second of the period. Though who could blame him? Absolute no-shows in front of him.
What can Demko do about this giveaway from Chytil?
2-0 Oilers
Filip Chytil turns the puck over to Andrew Mangiapane and he makes the Canucks pay.
It's 2-0 Edmonton.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
There aren’t any takeaways from that period beyond Demko doing his best to buoy the lifeless corpse that was this team. Canucks finish the first 40 minutes, outshot 28 to 9.
Third Period
As if Adam Foote spent the entire intermission reading Twitter reactions to the team about their pathetic play through 40 minutes, the Canucks top line of Jake Debrusk, Brock Boeser, and Elias Pettersson responded early with a goal from Boeser to halve Edmonton’s lead.
2-1 Oilers: Brock Boeser from Quinn Hughes and Jake DeBrusk
CANUCKS GOAL
Brock Boeser gets the Canucks back in this game!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
The primary assist on Boeser’s goal gave Hughes 410 career points, the most by a defenceman in team history.
For the next four or five minutes, the Canucks’ struggled immensely to break the puck out of the d-zone without icing the puck.
By the midway point, Myers threw the puck over the glass in one of those failed attempts to break the puck out of the d-zone, giving Edmonton a third power play opportunity.
As you can probably guess, the highlight of that power play opportunity was a genuinely sensational save from Thatcher Demko on Leon Draisaitl.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? WHAT A SAVE BY THATCHER DEMKO!!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
With six minutes remaining, Frederic drew a tripping penalty against Chytil, putting Vancouver back on the PK.
Mercifully, Demko was not tasked with stretching his popliteus’s to their physical limits just to keep the Oilers’ lead in check.
With three minutes left in the game, Kane caught Regula with his head down behind Pickard’s net, levelling the defenceman for the second time of the game. The clean hit drew a cross-checking penalty from Noah Philp, putting Vancouver on the power play for just the second time in the game.
EVANDER KANE DROPS ALEC REGULAWHAT A HIT!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Following a brief stoppage, Foote pulled Demko for the 6-on-4. Unfortunately, for the min-maxers watching, Foote rolled out his usual PP1 rotation, and Fil Hronek for the 6-on-4.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. Empty netter for Draisaitl later, and this one was over.
3-1 Oilers
3-1 Oilers.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
A time out later, and the Canucks fail to make it a win streak, wasting an otherwise immaculate performance from their starting netminder.
Yeesh.
What’s your instant reaction to tonight’s game? Let us know in the comments section below!
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“One more drink, ” she said
I think I’m losing my head now
Tonight we’ll make bad memories
We’re two games into the 2025-26 regular season, and already we’ve gotten the full Vancouver Canucks experience.
On one side, we have Thursday’s 5-1 stomping of the Calgary Flames. It took some time, but everything was clicking by the third period. Scoring from four lines, no passengers and a night of fast-paced fun hockey for Adam Foote’s first win.
Saturday’s game against the Edmonton Oilers, on the other hand, was the antithesis. The Canucks got absolutely taken to task by the back-to-back Western Conference champions. They just watched as their ‘numbers’ game plan got matched and turned back on them at every turn, and an abysmal 15 shots on goal thanks to a lot of no-shows across the roster.
For all the talk Adam Foote had about playing a different brand of hockey before the season started, this game looked a whole lot like the game plan from last season, for all the wrong reasons. The only thing more frustrating than this game has been listening to people argue about which baseball team is the right one to cheer for in the ALCS. (Don’t worry, I agree with the exact team you’re cheering for.)
Taking all that into consideration, you’d probably expect the final score to be a blowout, right? But no, it was actually just a 3-1 Oilers win. The only bright spot in an otherwise bleak game was Thatcher Demko, who turned aside 34 Edmonton shots, including 13 of the Oilers’ 14 high-danger shots. His teammates rewarded him with only four of their own on Calvin Pickard, who had far too easy a night.
It’s early enough in the season that this is a game the Canucks can learn from and improve on, and that’s great to know. But it’s our job to critique them anyway, we’re not in the business of free passes here at Stanchies Inc.
Strap yourselves in, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
We’d all need a stiff drink by the end of this game — especially Thatcher Demko.
This broadcast was a tough one to get through. Not just because John Shorthouse’s incredible voice was missing, but because he and the other national play-by-play men were passed over by the Oilers’ regulars instead.
To be fair, they really tried. Jack Michaels did his best to not come off as an Oilers homer, but he was pronouncing Canucks’ names like some of them flew in from Tatooine next to Babu Frick and Sy Snoodles. Between that and Louie DeBrusk being a professional and not giving his son special treatment, it’s hard not to feel like we’re watching an Oilers broadcast masquerading as Hockey Night in Canada.
Matthew’s tweet tells the whole story of what we’re in for over the next 12 years of the Rogers’ monopoly on NHL hockey. Saturday night used to be special; now it’s just another in a slate of 82.
Oh, I’m sorry, did I bum you out too early? Well, let’s get to something fun first.
With the Canucks back in their blue, green and white Orca getups, Thatcher Demko got to debut a new mask tonight. And boy, do we love that kind of stuff in these parts.
Similar to his past Zombie Johnny Canuck motifs, this lid takes the lumberjack down the skeleton route for the first time. In an era where goalie masks often get bogged down by cramming too many team logos and references, this one reminds me of the classic, simple ‘Johnny C’ themed buckets that Roberto Luongo and Ryan Miller donned in seasons past.
And if that wasn’t enough, the backplate has a portrait of legendary Canuck equipment manager Patty O’Neill, who retired at the end of last season. Demko has always understood what goes into a great Canucks mask, and this one is an instant classic if he wears it all season.
The skull’s deathly vibe turned out to be very apt tonight, considering Demko snatched a few Oilers’ souls before this night was out. We got a preview of the game to come just two minutes in, when the Oilers put together their first scoring chance.
Facing a 3-on-2, DePetey pinches to try and cover Andrew Mangiapane carrying the puck at the blue line, but he finds an open Ryan Nugent-Hopkins skating through the middle. Derek Forbort slides out to try and take away RNH’s passing lane, but Nuge manages to get the puck around him to Matthew Savoie, who’s a little too open in the slot.
Luckily, Thatcher Demko’s already checked his side mirrors and effortlessly shuts Savoie down in close.
Demko’s play was going to be a theme of the evening, for all the right reasons on his part and the wrong ones on his team’s part.
Quinn Hughes seemed to be the only Canucks who didn’t get in on the scoring in the opener against Calgary, so he was on a mission pretty darn early.
Hughes was putting Oilers in the rinse cycle as soon as the Canucks got their first lick of sustained pressure. His mind was moving at a speed that even his body couldn’t entirely keep up with, which is how he managed to blow a tire in the middle of getting a perfect pass across to Filip Hronek.
The Oilers dominated the scoring chances throughout the night, and the Canucks were hanging on for dear life through most of it. Every Oilers venture into the Canucks’ zone had slight variants, but were essentially identical, like Taylor Swift trying to sell you 50 versions of the same (very mid) album.
The one person selling anything worth buying was Thatcher Demko.
The play would go like this: Canucks attempt to start a rush to the Oilers zone, get stuffed or give the puck away, Oilers flip the rush the other way and hem a now gassed quintet of Canucks in the defensive end until Demko could bail them out.
Here he is robbing Trent Frederic on a scoring attempt that Hronek and Filip Chytil realize is wide open farrr too late.
A penalty kill later, and Demko shuts down former teammate Vasily Podkolzin right on the doorstep.
Then during a late penalty kill, Demko robs David Tomasek with a save so powerful that it puts him on his rear end.
Demko was moving and tracking the puck at a speed that only prime Lightning McQueen could rival. The score could’ve easily been 10-zip for Edmonton at the end of the first period if not for him. Instead, the Canucks had the lifeline of a scoreless game.
On a night where he returned to Edmonton, the city where he’d had the most success of his career and was beloved by fans, Evander Kane didn’t exactly make the best impression on his new fanbase in this one.
Kane will come up a lot tonight, largely for not great reasons. Remember that Frederic chance from before? The Canucks had tried to get out of the zone after an extended shift ten seconds earlier, but Kane had been easily stripped at centre ice, so no one could even change.
Then, with three minutes to go in the first, the Canucks finally seemed to be stringing together some shifts with sustained pressure. Then Kane takes an ill-timed high stick on Tomasek in the offensive end, killing their momentum.
Despite his error, Kane got the chance to redeem himself on Power Play 1. Instead, we got this.
Tyler Myers doesn’t get knocked over often, so when Leon Draisaitl caught him behind the net with a bone rattler, it was an eye-opener.
But the Chaos Giraffe doesn’t take a number when he gets hit. He just finds a new target.
In this case, it was poor, unsuspecting Trent Frederic, laying him out with a big open ice hit.
Frederic got right back up, but the message was clear: don’t wake the giant.
I don’t really know what to say about this Kiefer Sherwood penalty, but he sure gave the ref a mouthful about it.
Thanks to Draisaitl’s… er, theatrics… this was called a trip when it was, at best, interference. But even that call is questionable with how quickly the play is moving.
I don’t blame Sherwood for blowing up at all.
You knew the Oilers were going to break through eventually.
Sherwood’s penalty was another fruitless man-advantage for the Oilers, but they didn’t end up needing it.
Instead, the Oilers’ third line gets a rush going with Conor Garland, Filip Chytil and Sherwood all caught below the hashmarks. Podkolzin carries the puck over the blue line before Kasperi Kapanen and Noah Philp play keep away from Myers and Hughes. Right as they cross into the Canucks’ end and Hughes tries to seal off Kapanen, he finds Philp streaking down the middle, who manages to get a quick shot away that Demko can’t snag.
There are three guarantees in life: death, taxes, and players scoring their first NHL goal against the Canucks. Tonight it was Philp’s turn.
Tonight was always going to be a test for these Canucks in terms of challenging an incredibly speedy Oilers team. Kris Knoblauch’s team plays the type of game Adam Foote wants his Canucks to imitate, with speed through the neutral zone and physicality on defence. But copying someone else’s homework is hard to do successfully in this league, especially when you’re facing the team you’re replicating.
It looked like a team afraid of making mistakes or trying anything, because they knew how badly the Oilers could burn them the other way. It says a lot that the Canucks’ best chance in the second period was when Calvin Pickard shot the puck at himself.
Evander Kane would find a way to make Alec Regula’s life miserable twice in this game. This hit was the first.
The hit itself wasn’t that hard, and Regula seemed more focused on making a meal out of it rather than tending to any wounds, but that didn’t stop Darnell Nurse from tangling up with his former teammate.
Both Kane and Nurse got penalties for jawing at each other, creating a lot of open ice late in the period.
Ohhhh, Chytil. You were bigger than the whole sky.
If the first game of the season against the Flames was Filip Chytil at his best, tonight was him at his worst.
Out on the 4-on-4, Chytil was backing up Tyler Myers in the corner near the goal line when he collected the puck. Rather than try to skate it out, Chytil made the infinitely worse choice to try a cross-ice breakout pass attempt.
Andrew Eats Bread gobbled the puck up in his skates and rifled it past Demko for a deflating late goal.
The way this game was going, that 2-0 lead was looking damn near insurmountable.
God, am I happy that Brock Boeser is still a Vancouver Canuck.
The Canucks had nine shots through two periods, which doesn’t exactly send the right message about their skillset. So they decided they needed to come out firing in the third, and immediately put the Oilers on their heels.
Quinn Hughes took the puck from Jake DeBrusk near the blue line, walked the line and saucered a pass to Boeser under pressure in the net front. Brock calmly collected it, spun and shot the puck through the wickets of Calvin Pickard.
One of the only Canucks that truly loves playing the Oilers is Boeser.
It took him a couple of games longer than everyone expected, but Quinn Hughes is finally alone on top of the Canucks’ list of points by a defenceman, surpassing Alex Edler.
Two hundred twenty-two other men have suited up on the blue line in 55 years of Canucks hockey. It took Hughes just 435 games – 490 fewer than the Eagle – to pass every single one of them. He’s done it through double coverage from opponents, the pressure of a hockey-mad market and even an assortment of broken limbs. He’s levels of superhuman the likes of which we’ve never, ever seen (with all due respect to Erik Johnson’s opinion about the best defender in hockey).
There aren’t enough words to describe the talent Hughes possesses, what he means to the Canucks organization as a whole, and how we’ll likely never see a Canuck like him again. The best thing I can offer is to enjoy and savour these highlights as they happen, as best you can – not just because they’ll end someday (hopefully a long, long time from now). But because every point from here on out is a record breaker.
Tyler Myers was called for a penalty. That penalty was puck over glass.
It probably should’ve been for this stick straight to Connor’s McJewels.
Gotta give McDavid credit, not many people would’ve have gotten up that fast after taking a Chaos Giraffe two hander straight to the stick and pucks. Or this is a great endorsement for the company that made his jock strap.
Thatcher Demko might’ve ended up with the loss, but he was the absolute star of the hockey game. And he saved his best for last.
The Canucks had just killed off Myers’ penalty when a scramble led to a Conor Garland turnover in close. Evan Bouchard finds Leon Draisaitl, locked and loaded, starting at a wide-open net. Or so he and everyone else thought, until the outstretched arm of Demko’s glove found a way.
Do you hear that sound? It’s probably the sirens of police cars, cause this was highway ROBBERY.
Look at Draisaitl’s teammates! They ALL thought he had a sure goal. It’s a save so nice, we have to show it twice.
It’s early to crown a save of the year, but we might have to call the race already. Take notes, NHL goalies. This is the one to beat.
The Canucks might’ve been able to mount a stronger comeback after the Demko save, but once again penalties killed their momentum. This time it was Chytil getting into Frederic’s kitchen too much and chopping him down.
There’s never a good time to take an O-zone penalty, but five minutes left in a one-goal game is among the worst.
Now with accidental parking the bus!
Here’s the second time Regula was on the wrong end of a EK91 hit, and THIS one was a doozy.
This was Kane’s best play of the game, and probably what the Canucks had in mind when they traded for him. Thunderous hits that piss off the opponent enough to take a late crucial penalty.
Here’s where Adam Foote’s inexperience came back to haunt the Canucks.
The Canucks have a power play with just over three minutes to go, and pulling Demko for a 6-on-4 makes sense. But who do you put out there? Here are your options:
A) Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Conor Garland, giving you five forwards – including a good one timer option – plus a defender?
or B) 34 year-old Evander Kane and a second defenceman in Fil Hronek?
If you chose Option A, you’re not Adam Foote. Instead, the Canucks make Hronek the extra man; they nearly scored if not for Boeser, who couldn’t properly corral a DeBrusk centring pass, and Draisaitl ends up sailing the puck into the back of the empty net.
That Quinn Hughes stick smash at the end tells you all you need to know.
Evander Kane played the most minutes of any Canucks player
That is all
— MajorMoose(@MajorMoose_) October 12, 2025
I get that it was Kane’s homecoming, but man, this is a bad look. If you’re the head coach, you cannot let Kane keep taking these minute-long shifts where the offence simply dies when you have far better weapons on the bench. Yes, Elias Pettersson had a frustratingly quiet game. But he also played nearly four minutes less at even strength than Kane, ice time allocation that absolutely will not win you hockey games.
I hope Foote is prepared to be the bad guy and rein in that discrepancy. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long a$$ year.
This comes courtesy of one of the watch parties happening around the Lower Mainland tonight.
A jersey so stunning, you probably didn’t even notice the wearer is talking to Kirk McLean!
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Welcome back to Stars of the Week at CanucksArmy! Every week, we’ll be bringing you our Top Three best and brightest performers on the Vancouver Canucks that week. Disagree with our picks or have your own stars to nominate? Let us know in the comments below!
It’s another year, another autumn, and another season of Canucks hockey has arrived. If you’re along for season two of 3 Canucks Stars of the Week, welcome back. If you’re new here, welcome aboard.
The burning question that seems to be on everyone’s mind going into this season is “Will the Canucks be better than last year?” If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same question every year, and probably will be forever, ad infinitum.
The short answer is “Hopefully!”. The long answer is “Two regular season games are not exactly a scientifically sound sample size to address this with, there are a lot of variables and quotients to assess, and hey, wait a second, I’m starting to think this study didn’t even get ethics approval.”
All-and-all, their roster is relatively the same as last year, but newly anointed head coach Adam Foote is the primary litmus test for what this group will look like this year. In their 5-1 home opener against the Calgary Flames, they looked reinvigorated. Granted, the Flames were on the second game of a back-to-back where they took the Oilers to a shootout and promptly showed them the door. The Canucks would have no such luck with Edmonton and dropped their second game of the year, 3-1. They showed flashes of last year’s team – disorganization, inability to generate offence, and wasted a phenomenal performance from Thatcher Demko in net. Am I missing something? Were the currently-sidelined Nils Höglander and Teddy Blueger actually the driving force behind this Canucks team the whole time?
No, they weren’t. It’s just that it’s the first week of the season. I will not be too quick to say that nothing has changed. They looked great in one game, and resilient in the other, if just a little shaky, making careless mistakes here and there, and failing to convert on their o-zone chances. By resilient, I mean they looked slightly more resilient than they would have been in the past. Again, it’s early. The hockey season is long and full of terrors.
With only two games of the season thus far, the book of this season has barely been cracked open. Let’s turn the page to that first chapter, shall we?
Thatcher Demko
It only took two games for the team in front of Thatcher Demko to hang him out to dry like it’s laundry day. I sincerely hope he gets apologies for the games where he keeps the team afloat, or some kind of compensation beyond salary – even a Tim Horton’s gift card could even suffice, honestly.
By the numbers, he put up a .944 SV% in both games, respectively, with 1.1 GAA against Calgary and 2.08. To put it in perspective, he faced a total of 18 shots against Calgary and twice that with 36 against Edmonton. Again, I am not exaggerating when I say it was basically Demko versus the Oilers.
That said, it’s more than the stats. It’s that he looks like himself again, playing with an outward confidence that has waxed and waned ever since his knee injury during the 2024 Playoffs. Take these two saves alone. There’s no trepidation here, especially with lateral movement.
Thatcher Demko has been outstanding in the first two periods!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 10, 2025
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? WHAT A SAVE BY THATCHER DEMKO!!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 12, 2025
Thatcher Demko has always had that dog in him, and that dog has now returned from the vet with his booster shots and a clean bill of health.
Demko has a big year in front of him. He’s got nothing to prove to Vancouver fans, but to the rest of the league, re-establishing himself as an elite Vezina-calibre goalie after receiving the “chronically injured” label is essential. He was not named to the preliminary Team USA Olympic roster longlist, nor invited to their orientation camp this past summer, which I think is an oversight.
Brock Boeser
Where we last left off in the spring, I was convinced that Brock Boeser had played his final game as a Vancouver Canuck. Most Canucks fans were convinced Boeser was moving on, Brock Boeser himself was convinced he was moving on, and if the squirrels in Stanley Park could talk, even they probably would have been convinced that Boeser was moving on.
Well, to quote Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.”
Or, rather, “Life is when a player takes a significant discount to stay with the team that drafted him instead of getting his full market value elsewhere.” That’s not nearly as quotable as the movie, but I’ll take it. Boeser signed a 7x$7.25 million deal at the eleventh hour on July 1st to stay a Canuck.
There’s nothing that will appease a fanbase more than a homecoming narrative, and he didn’t even really have to leave first. Boeser has been ringing in Brocktober well, with a goal in each game so far, and the lone goal in the team’s lacklustre showing on Saturday night.
Brock Boeser rips a shot past Dustin Wolf! The flood gates are open at Rogers Arena!
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 10, 2025
With his future with the team secure and an emotional re-commitment on both ends, of sorts, this is going to be an interesting year for Boeser and his role in Vancouver’s leadership core. Take his showing on the penalty kill this week – rare territory for a goal-scorer like Boeser. With Teddy Blueger injured and Pius Suter no longer with the team, the penalty kill units are not exactly in their final form for the year, but Boeser stepped up when asked. It’s out of necessity, but it’s also a sign of trust on either side.
As much as players say that they’re just “Focusing on their game” when their contract status is hanging in the balance, that’s one of those little white lies we all know aren’t true but all agree to play along with, much like “I’m on my way right now!” text or the Tooth Fairy. It’s impossible not to be distracted by negotiations with a front office, or lack thereof, and the attention that comes with it. I’m looking forward to a distraction-free season from Boeser.
Needless to say, I’m grateful that I still get to name Brock Boeser a Canuck Star of the week. It’s not over until it’s over.
Quinn Hughes
Another season of 3 Stars means another season of being very selective with handing out stars to Quinn Hughes. It’s no secret that he’s in a star category of his own, unless you’re an East Coaster who doesn’t stay up for Pacific games, or Erik Johnson, I guess.
I would say asking Erik Johnson about the best NHL defenceman is like asking Ringo Starr about the musical genius of Paul McCartney, but that feels too disrespectful to Ringo Starr. Of course, Johnson is going to say his former teammate every time – that’s the respectful thing to say, regardless of what he thinks. But it doesn’t mean I have to agree.
We are alive at the same time as Quinn Hughes is playing hockey. Isn’t that great?
Captain Quinn has been his usual self through two games, breaking ankles, breaking records, and looking really happy about it.
quinn hughes after breaking the record for most points by defenseman in franchise history: pic.twitter.com/sw2Db1kUmQ
— tiana(@nuckaround) October 12, 2025
Hughes has taken a slight back seat when it comes to offence, but his 1 assist thus far against Edmonton has cemented him in Canucks history. With 410 points, he became the franchise’s points leader across all defencemen. Not too shabby.
This was bound to come sooner rather than later, after Hughes tied Alex Edler in the number one spot towards the end of last season. It’s still hard to believe that Quinn Hughes started off on a Canucks team that still had Alex Edler on it, and has now surpassed him in less than half of Edler’s total games played as a Canuck. Hughes celebrates his 26th birthday on Tuesday. Let’s hope the team shows up this week so his birthday party doesn’t turn into a pity party.
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Gonna make you wonder why you even try
(Hard times)
Gonna take you down and laugh when you cry
(These lives)
And I still don’t know how I even survive
(Hard times, hard times)
And I gotta get to rock bottom!
(Ooh!)
The Canucks were supposed to bring the turkey to Canadian Thanksgiving. They’ve been bragging to everyone in the offseason about their expert carving skills, and after insisting for weeks that you could trust them, you relent, even though you remember the Christmas ham incident of 2022. Then they showed up hours late, long after the mashed potatoes had already cooled, holding a tray of very burnt bird.
It wasn’t simply that they lost to the St. Louis Blues 5-2 on Monday night. It’s what they did in such listless fashion, straight off the heels of an equally sauceless performance against the Oilers. The 4:30 pm start might not have helped matters, but the Canucks came out flat from the get-go and never looked dialled into the game. Except Kiefer Sherwood, who dragged his teammates kicking and screaming into a two-goal game (the last goal coming courtesy of a Jake Neighbours empty netter).
Once again, nobody came prepared. The top line of Pettersson, Boeser and DeBrusk managed just four shots on goal. The inexperience of Braeden Cootes’ line with Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Drew O’Connor got completely exposed by the Blues, getting hemmed in routinely and for long periods of time. The defence couldn’t win puck battles or handle the waves of odd-man rushes St. Louis threw at them. Even Quinn Hughes, the sturdy anchor he is, looked stressed – well, more than he does usually – and was making uncharacteristically poor choices at both ends.
Adam Foote’s only three games into his coaching tenure, so it’s hard to truly judge the small sample size of his work. But it’s fair to say his work is cut out for him. His biggest expectation of this team was that they would jump up into the rush more. And while they are doing that, it’s opened up a new can of worms; they can’t get back in time when the turns are tabled.
The Canucks talked about positive vibes in the locker room leading up to the season. We’re three games in, and that positivity train already looks like it’s leaving the station without them. They’re going to have to chase it down the tracks on the road, as an already seemingly make-or-break trip East awaits them.
Let’s hope they packed their running shoes.
I’ll say this about the Prime broadcasts, they are a breath of fresh air from the endless number of Sportsnet broadcasts that blend together in your head. I know they’re missing the key ingredient to a perfect broadcast – John Shorthouse – but I’ll take Amazon trying something different for a national stream over listening to an Edmonton regional broadcast on Hockey Night in Canada any day of the week.
The better camera quality is a nice plus. Starting the broadcast with a feature on the current Leafs’ coach Craig Berube was less welcome.
Today was an about face for the Canucks in a couple ways. Firstly, Pius Suter made his grand return to Rogers Arena Monday night.
There was no tribute video for Pew Pew, just an Al Murdoch announcement and a standing ovation. An understated celebration for a player who was probably more important to their team’s success than the Canucks realized.
While the Canucks were busy getting thumped in Edmonton, Suter scored a goal in just his second game with the Blues, reminding us of what we once had.
Tonight, he helped set up the Blues first goal of the game tonight just three minutes in.
Firstly, we have to acknowledge how the puck got into the Canucks zone in the first place. And that was a tragic whiff on a pass by Elias Pettersson that Cam Fowler immediately took away.
Pettersson could clearly tell what kind of Twitter/Bluesky discourse this was going to start, shaking his head in disbelief as he starts to chase down Fowler.
The Blues have four players back and get a chance off the rush that goes wide, before Mathieu Joseph makes a long pass to Suter from the blue line. Pew Pew quickly back passes it to a waiting Jimmy Snuggerud, who buries the shot under Kevin Lankinen’s right arm.
Not sure anyone likes playing the Canucks quite like former Canucks. Hopefully no more are coming to Rogers Arena anytime soon! *checks the calendar* …ah, right.
Pettersson was quick to try and redeem himself for the Snuggerud goal playing out the way it did. And he nearly pulled it off, intercepting Jordan Binnington’s gift of a turnover and feeding a pass to Brock Boeser that the Blues goalie was barely able to get back for.
“But Lachlan, he should’ve shot it!”
No, he shouldn’t have. Nick Bjugstad had already slid into his shooting lane by the time he had the puck on his blade and left him no room to pick a corner. Boeser was the smartest option.
Quinn Hughes doesn’t need any help cooking Thanksgiving dinner. He’d rather you just stay in the living room, watch football and let the chef work.
Pavel Buchnevich tried to enter the kitchen and promptly dropped a spoon. He was exiled to the couch soon after.
Today Jordan Binnington caught the bigger half of the turkey wishbone flying across the room. Usually goalies aren’t so lucky.
A very common theme in this game was the Canucks’ endless struggles to clear the zone. Here’s two different attempts by the Canucks to clear the zone about thirty seconds apart. They are both from the same shift.
The first is a miscommunication between Lankinen and his defender DePetey. The second is due to a pass made by returning People’s Defender Victor Mancini to Evander Kane. Kane’s immediately pressured along the boards and turns the puck over.
Sometimes the opponents make a good point.
Evander Kane might’ve needed more than two preseason games (or zero, if you asked him) to shake off the rust.
Quinn Hughes tried to set him up for a breakout pass three times on the same shift, and they all end in icing calls. The first one Kane completely misreads that the puck is coming his way and cuts away from it.
The second one is right off the ensuing faceoff, when Kane can’t handle the hard pass from Hughes cleanly and the puck speeds to the other end of the ice.
The third one is pretty much the same, just along the wall instead of through the middle of the ice, and Kane’s only reached the St. Louis blue line by the time the whistle blows.
All three of these icing calls were coming off a TV timeout too, so it wasn’t for a lack of gas in the tank.
Maybe time will solve this! But right now it’s really gumming up the works and the Canucks’ ability to muster any extra offence.
The Blues second goal, and the Canucks’ inability to prevent it, was a car crash you couldn’t look away from.
Vancouver’s inability to prevent shots in transition was already on display earlier, when Mathieu Joseph intercepts a missed cross ice pass attempt by Kane and turns into a great shot off the wing that the Canucks wish they could pull off.
Then the dagger, when Philip Broberg finds Jordan Kyrou on a long stretch pass. With Hughes draped all over him, Kyrou wheels back to try to find Brayden Schenn trailing, but Drew O’Connor gets his stick in the way!
O’Connor immediately loses the handle and the puck lands right on Schenn’s tape anyway. Whoops.
As far as early second period goals go, that’s a real deflating one. The writing’s on the wall. The leftover stuffing and mash are going into the Tupperware. Thanks for coming out.
‘Road work ahead’? I Sherwood hope it does.
It’s a little early to be crowning any team MVPs, but Kiefer Sherwood’s playing like he has the trophy case already built. And not just from Ikea, a really nice one from West Elm.
Sherwood had his fingerprints all over this game. His first big impact was the kind that only Sherwood can make; namely, the impact he made into Philip Broberg.
Credit for this goal also goes to Sherwood’s linemates. Arshdeep Bains wins a crucial board battle to force the puck to the net and Aatu Räty gets his stick on it with two Blues all over him. Räty redirects it to the slot, and Sherwood just has to whack it in.
Whatever energy Sherwood is running on, the Canucks need to bottle it like Michael’s Secret Stuff and give it to rest of the Toon Squad.
First of all, this rocks for Bains, who’s absolutely risen to the challenge of playing a bigger role so far.
But John Tortorella once said after a Canucks loss that “our best forward was David Booth, which is good for him but not good for us”. It says a lot more about what’s going on with Bains’ teammates than him.
The refs largely kept their whistles in their pockets for this game, so naturally EP40 would end up in the sin bin first for hooking Buchnevich, sending keyboards everywhere into a tizzy.
The Blues’ power play only needed 28 seconds and one Tyler Myers giveaway behind the net to get the puck in the net.
After Schenn knocked the puck off Myers’ stick, Buchnevich tried to take the puck from the goal line himself, but Lankinen wouldn’t give him the angle. But Snuggerud was off to the side, wide open for the tap in and his second of the night.
For Pettersson to be in the box when that puck went in only added gasoline to the grease fire.
We’re only a third of the way through his tryout, but it’s looking more and more like Braeden Cootes will be heading back to junior when his nine games are up. It’s obvious he needs some time to work up to NHL pace, and right now, more veteran players are able to overwhelm Cootes and the younger players in the defensive end. There was one especially glaring shift in the second period when he, Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Drew O’Connor were run ragged by the Blues defense and ended up out for a 2+ minute(!!) shift.
The problem for the Canucks is that they don’t exactly have a better Plan B right now.
With J.T. Miller gone, someone has to take up the role of being caught in 4K using ‘sentence enhancers’.
Today Fil Hronek took up the mantle, taking issue with the refs over an unjust high-sticking penalty.
I believe that was bad word #11. There’s seven for regular people, but 13 for sailors.
With Jimmy up to a pair of goals for St. Louis, Kiefer Sherwood wasn’t going to stand for that. He’s the heart and soul, and he’s gonna will his team back into this game whether they like it or not.
With Hronek in the box, Sherwood pounces on a pass missed by Cam Fowler and hits the rocket boosters. He breaks in, dekes Binnington out into another galaxy, and tucks the puck in between his pad and the post.
That goal is as close to a bar for bar remake of Pavel Bure’s triple deke as you can get, and it came from Chief Kief. One goal game again, and hope for a Happy Thanksgiving restored.
The joy from Sherwood’s second goal hadn’t even worn off before the Blues slammed the door shut. And it came courtesy of another terrible play by Evander Kane.
Off a Filip Chytil faceoff win and with Hronek pinching down low to keep the puck in, Kane takes his spot at the blue line and narrowly avoids passing it the puck over the line to Hughes, who’s forced to dangle around Alex Texier to keep in onside.
Hughes cuts to the net with his momentum carrying him for a shot, but that’s when Kane makes the galaxy brain decision to head for the net, even though Hughes is still there. When Binnington make the save and the Blues pick up the rebound, they’ve suddenly got three skaters up on the rush and only Hronek back to stop them. Kane hustles back to cut off Nick Bjugstad but he falls, taking out Bjugstad and his own goalie as Texier passes to Nathan Walker for the one timer.
Adam Foote wants his players to play up-tempo hockey, with numbers off the rush and guys going to the net. But the Blues not only showed them how to play that exact way, but how fast of a team you need to be to do it so the other team can’t just play an Uno reverse card on you.
The Canucks, through three games, do not have the wheels. And faster tires aren’t coming anytime soon.
My idea to get Petey going: put a small rat under his helmet who can control all his limbs and help him make a really mean chicken parmesan.
As optimistic as this fellow was, there was no comeback to be found. The Canucks mustered a few more shot opportunities, getting all the way up to 29, but even the quality of those attempts were poor. Natural Stat Trick credited them with nine high danger scoring chances at even strength to the Blues’ 15. As a viewer, I felt even that was being generous.
One announcement during Amazon’s broadcast caught my attention. It was during the warmups when Al Murdoch said something to the tune of, “if the Canucks get 20 shots on goal or more in today’s game, you win a discount from Uber Eats!”
Is that really where the bar is now?
There were a few adjustments made by Adam Foote compared to the last game. For one, Evander Kane’s ice time did drop significantly and his tendency for long shifts were nipped in the bud.
Elias Pettersson did not see a resurgence in ice time because of it. Instead, he played only 15:36 with five forwards playing more minutes than he did, led by 18:37 for Conor Garland.
You can’t keep asking “why is the guy who used to be a superstar struggling?” and then not give him 20 minutes a night to figure it out. Watching on the bench will not help, and neither will doling out ice time like he’s not your #1 centre regardless of his play.
This screenshot out of context looks like a Canucks slot machine you’d find at the Parq Vancouver across the street.
Wait, that’s actually genius. If the Parq makes the “Petters-Spin” real, everyone here needs to remember to tell me.
The Canucks are the house that Springfield built for Flanders.
— Jason Brough(@SadClubCommish) October 14, 2025
This game ended the way many Canucks losses do: with Quinn Hughes ripping one timers from the blue line in vain.
This one gets blocked by Jake Neighbours and deposited all the way into the empty net at the other end.
This was also the moment the fans at Rogers Arena wondered why they told their family they couldn’t make it for Thanksgiving dinner, and ran home to see if all the turkey and gravy was gone.
It wouldn’t be the Stanchies if we didn’t have opinions about the brand new seats.
For years, Canucks fans and concert goers alike have been asking the team to replace the arena’s 30-year-old maroon seats, installed when the building opened in 1995. It’s a promise the Canucks made as many as six years ago – and teased many times since – but this offseason the shift from maroon to black finally arrived.
Section by section, the old chairs were ripped out and given to season ticket holders as the new seats took their places. While some Vancouverites were able to check them out early at concerts and sporting events throughout the summer, Friday’s preseason game against the Seattle Kraken was the majority of fans’ first time experiencing the new upgrades. And considering the team pulled out all the stops advertising the, during the offseason, a lot was riding on the first impressions of these new seats.
Back in September, I asked fans about the new seats. And as the Canucks would hope for in brand new chairs, the earliest reviews from fans seem to have reached the same conclusions: ‘comfortable’ and ‘cushy’ are the leading adjectives.
The Canucks had given us a preview of things to come when they installed the new President’s Club seats behind the benches back in 2023. While the regular seats aren’t as luxurious as the premium ones, they don’t appear to be far off.
One person provided us with a photo from the upper deck, which we’ve gotten a lot less visuals of. The seats are the same, of course, but one under acknowledged aspect of the seat colours changing has been the need for matching upper deck railings.
To accommodate Rogers Arena’s steep sightlines, the upper deck railings prevent fans from tripping over the seat in front of them and taking a long fall. Those railings were originally painted maroon to blend in with the old chairs. Not anymore.
But the real MVPs of the new seating experience? The grand addition of cupholders.
While most of the seats were given standard movie theatre-esque cupholders, the removeable seats on the ends are equipped with thinner, spring-loaded versions, making them easier to store when the sections aren’t being used. Some parts of the glass side row appear to have their cupholders in the armrests, so no more putting $18 beers on top of the boards (a mistake I’ve seen people make far too many times).
enough to make a grown woman cry pic.twitter.com/IgmoY3i8DJ
— sasherwood(@MacScorevat) September 27, 2025
But while the majority of visitors love the changes, the reviews weren’t unanimous. A few fans, particularly those sat in the upper bowl, feel that the new seats have made the rows more cramped, with one person even showing just how close their legs now come to the edge of the row.
Whether this will become the consensus remains to be seen, but there is crucial precedent for such a scenario. In 2019, the Boston Bruins angered fans when they replaced TD Garden’s iconic yellow seats with similar cushy black ones that limited leg room in the balcony and added a chair in each row. After a number of public complaints, the Bruins changed them in 2020.
And sadly, not everyone has been able to experience the new chairs. Ten rows from 120 to 103 remain red, with Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston reporting that season ticket holders in those sections were told not to expect replacements until February.
It’s obviously hard to imagine a world where the Canucks wouldn’t get a resounding thumbs up from the fanbase for saying goodbye to the maroon chairs well past their expiry date. But it wasn’t a total guarantee they would be a success; just ask the Detroit Red Wings, who changed all the chairs at Little Caesars Arena from red to black just over a year after opening the building.
A lot of Canucks fans have yet to try the new seats out, and those complaints about leg room in the upper deck and cramped quarters might prove to be a bigger issue in the long run. Time will tell what the final public opinion will be, but for now, the fans seem happy.
Is this rush in the room with now?
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Another Vancouver Canucks season, another set of Vancouver Canucks-related minutiae to master.
It’s been a year and a half now since the hockey world lost CapFriendly, but our friends at PuckPedia have stepped into that gap ably ever since, if we do say so ourselves. And good thing they have, for the world of hockey salaries have only grown more complicated in the wake of the end of the flat cap era and a brand-new CBA.
Right now, at the outset of the 2025-26 campaign – before anything gets any more complicated – is probably the best time to check in with the Canucks’ own PuckPedia page for a refresher on how to read it, what information is contained within, and what changes have taken place since the last time we talked about all this.
To follow along, you may want to open up said PuckPedia page in another tab.
(Cap-related numbers can change daily, but this article was written on the morning of Tuesday, October 14, 2025 and should be as up-to-date as possible.)
(The Canucks sent Braeden Cootes down a couple hours after this article was written on Tuesday morning, so it’s been rewritten and should now be as up-to-date as possible until the Canucks inevitably recall Max Sasson on Wednesday or Thursday and mess with the numbers again!)
The first thing you might notice is that the Canucks are listed as having the 13th-highest projected cap hit in the NHL with $94.09 million. That number, as we’ll come to find, is not the be-all and end-all of measuring cap space, but it does at least provide some good context as to where the Canucks rank among the league as a whole.
The Vancouver roster, as of right now and following the re-assignment of Braeden Cootes to the WHL, includes 24 players. That’s 22 active players (of a maximum 23) and two on Injured Reserve for the moment in Nils Höglander and Pierre-Olivier Joseph. While on IR, Höglander and Joseph do not take up one of the 23 maximum active roster spots, but they do count against the daily cap accounting.
The Canucks also have a handful of players not on the roster that are incurring cap-related costs. That’s Guillaume Brisebois and his $88,802 of “Season-Opening Injured Reserve” cap hit (which will disappear as soon as Brisebois is healthy again and can be demoted), Oliver Ekman-Lrasson’s $4,766,667 in buyout penalty, and Ilya Mikheyev’s $712,500 of retained salary.
As we mentioned earlier, this leaves the Canucks with a projected total cap expenditure for the year of $94,057,135, or $1,407,318 under the 2025-26 cap ceiling of $95.5 million.
Which doesn’t sound like a lot of money. It’s enough for any one call-up from Abbotsford, but not two. Thankfully, it’s only the most basic, and least relevant, measure of what we call ‘cap space.’
From PuckPedia
What “Projected Cap Space” really amounts to is how much in total the Canucks are projected to dole out in daily cap spending over the course of the entire season, were nothing to change with the roster from here on out, and how far away from the cap ceiling that would leave them. How they’re able to use that space, however, comes down to a set of different numbers.
It’s important now to understand how cap ‘accrual’ works. We put ‘accrual’ in scare-quotes there, because no one ever gains any actual cap space through the process. It’s more like saving for later.
See, the cap is accounted daily, and teams are truly limited in their spending by that daily cap limit – the maximum cap ceiling, divided by the number of days in the season. As long as your daily cap spending never reaches an amount that, were it to continue for the rest of the season unabated, would eventually climb over that cap ceiling of $95.5 million, you’re ‘under the cap,’ and thus good.
We tend to think of cap as ‘accruing’ because the longer one saves some of that $95.5 million, the more one can do with it.
Think of it this way. A team who has a player on their roster with a cap hit of $10 million for the entire season will have to incur that full $10 million in cap hit, split up by all the days in the season.
But if a team were to acquire that player exactly halfway through the season, they’d only be paying them that daily cap amount for half the days in the season. Thus, it would only cost them $5 million against that $95.5 million total.
The NHL Trade Deadline typically takes place about three-quarters of the way through the regular season. If that same $10 million AAV player were to be acquired at the deadline, the team acquiring them would only be responsible for about $2.5 million of that cap hit.
So, all a team needs to do to have $10 million in effective spending ability at the Trade Deadline is to maintain a Projected Cap Hit some $2.5 million under the cap ceiling for the entirety of the season. This multiplier in purchasing power is what we tend to refer to as ‘accrual.’
Let’s navigate back to that PuckPedia page. As you can see, the Canucks have already effectively accrued a little cap space by being under the projected cap ceiling for the first week of the season. That’s why their Current Cap Space is listed at $1,460,568, a slightly higher number than their Projected Cap Space of $1,407,318. Because a week has passed, all league contracts now have a week’s fewer daily cap hits attached to them. As such, the Canucks could add an annual cap hit of $1,460,568 to their roster right now. Now that’s getting closer to the territory of having space for two call-ups. What luxury!
Were the Canucks able to maintain this exact cap picture from now unto the March 6, 2026 Trade Deadline, however, that’s when the effective accrual could really count. Look to the right of the page, and you’ll see the Canucks’ “Deadline Cap Space” listed at $6,433,454. This is the ‘real number,’ so to speak. Keep this same roster configuration until the deadline, and the Canucks would be able to add a little more than $6 million in annual cap hits to their roster.
Keeping the same roster configuration until the deadline is impossible, what with the reality of injuries. But the Canucks are set up to accrue under most scenarios, and potentially in great amounts whenever healthy. In fact, by sending Cootes down on Tuesday and waiting to recall Max Sasson until later in the week, they’ve reduced their daily spend and effectively saved more for later. (When this article was first written pre-demotion, that Deadline Cap Space was a little over $2 million.)
Last year, the Canucks were able to accrue enough to have nearly $10 million in spending space by the 2025 Trade Deadline. They just didn’t ever end up spending any of it.
Could the 2025-26 Canucks get to such a lofty total? Probably not. But they should be able to, at the very least, accrue enough millions to be useful closer to Deadline Day.
Right now, as we said earlier, Höglander and Joseph’s full daily cap hits are counting against the cap, as are those of their roster replacements. Let’s imagine an unlikely scenario in which Höglander and Joseph return to health before any other injuries occur. At that point, for them to be activated, two roster spots might have to be opened up. For now, let’s imaginarily re-demote the recently recalled Victor Mancini and the not-yet-recalled Sasson to get the roster back to 23 active players and none on the IR.
Following those demotion’s, Mancini’s annual cap hit of $870,000 and Sasson’s of $775,000 disappear from the daily accounting. Each day they’re off the books, more spending space is effectively accrued, and that Deadline Cap Space number will grow.
Further injuries delay, but do not stop the process – not until the team incurs so many injuries that it needs to consider using Long-Term Injured Reserve (but that’s a topic for another day).
These numbers will all be updated on PuckPedia on a daily basis, so there’s no real need to track it ourselves. Instead, you just need to know that the numbers will change. That Deadline Cap Space measure remains the most important, and it will grow in times of health and grow slower in times of injury.
There’s one more number worth talking about on the PuckPedia page, and it’s a new one this year: Projected Playoff Cap Space. In a bid to stop teams like the Vegas Golden Knights from essentially circumventing the cap, the league has instituted a new rule that means a team’s 20-player roster for any given playoff game (plus all their dead cap) can never hold annual cap hits that would exceed the $95.5 million ceiling.
Right now, the Canucks are listed as having some $9,106,667 in Playoff Cap Space, and that number is based on the last 20-player roster they iced. That seems like plenty, and they have a long ways to go before they even consider the postseason, anyway, so we’ll deem this number nothing to worry about for now and perhaps return to it at a later date.
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Welcome back to NHL Notebook — the series here at CanucksArmy where we deliver you news and notes from around the National Hockey League — oftentimes through a Vancouver Canucks-tinted lens!
The Canucks are off to an underwhelming start to the 2025-26 campaign. It’s only three games in, so it’s far too early to hit the panic button on anything.
However, teams around the league are suffering through injuries and embarrassing NHL records, just one week into the season.
Jacob Markstrom out a couple weeks
Former Canuck and current New Jersey Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom will be out for a couple of weeks, according to Head Coach Sheldon Keefe.
Devils reporter Amanda Stein reported that it was a lower-body injury for Markstrom. It appears he suffered this injury at the tail end of Monday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets:
The most unfortunate part of this injury is that it occurred during a game Markstrom did not start. Backup Jake Allen started the contest, but was forced to leave after two periods due to cramps. Allen felt terrible after learning about Markstrom’s injury.
Markstrom, 35, started the first two games of the Devils’ season, finishing with a disappointing 4.07 goals against average and a .834 save percentage. The Calgary Flames traded Markstrom last offseason. In the Swedish netminder’s Devils debut season, Markstrom finished with a 26-16-6 record, a 2.50 goals against average, a .900 save percentage and four shutouts.
The Devils will now move forward with Allen and Nico Daws – who was called up on Wednesday morning – as their goaltending tandem until Markstrom makes his return.
Rangers set an embarrassing NHL record
The New York Rangers were in the headlines for all the wrong reasons on Tuesday night.
After their shutout loss to the Edmonton Oilers, the Rangers became the first team in NHL history to open the season with three straight shutout losses on home ice.
The Rangers have become the first team in NHL history to open the season with three straight shutout losses at homepic.twitter.com/ejfeyVo9UH
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) October 15, 2025
JT Miller and the Rangers welcomed Arturs Silovs and the Pittsburgh Penguins to Madison Square Garden on opening night. Igor Shesterkin allowed just one goal, but the Penguins added two empty-net goals to take the contest 3-0.
Five days later, the Washington Capitals came to town. It was a low-event game, as Anthony Beauvillier’s second period tally stood as the only goal in the game, and the Rangers lost 1-0. Then on Tuesday, Stuart Skinner and the rest of the Oilers held the Rangers off the scoresheet in a 2-0 win.
Unfortunately for the Rangers’ goaltenders, they have allowed just one goal in each of their home games this season. But they’ve yet to get even one goal of support and are thus the first team in NHL history to get shutout in the opening three home games.
Rangers fans will have to wait until October 20 against the Minnesota Wild in hopes of seeing their first goal of the season.
Brady Tkachuk to miss at least a month
The Ottawa Senators may have lost their captain for the foreseeable future.
According to Head Coach Travis Green, Brady Tkachuk will miss at least four weeks with a hand injury.
Tkachuk was injured halfway through the first period against the Nashville Predators on Monday. Predators captain Roman Josi cross-checked Tkachuk in the back and landed awkwardly into the boards. Here is the play.
The power forward stayed in the game for the following two periods before exiting halfway through the third period.
A day after the initial report, Senators owner informed the press that Tkachuk is getting a second opinion, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.
According to the four-week timeline, Tkachuk will miss the Senators’ next 13 games. If surgery is required, Ottawa could see its captain sidelined even longer.
Through three games this season, Brady had yet to find the back of the net, but managed to tally three assists. Last season, Tkachuk’s 29 goals and 55 points in 72 games helped lead the Senators to their first Stanley Cup playoff appearance since the 2016-2017 season, when they lost in double overtime to the Penguins in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final.
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They had us in the first half, I’m not gonna lie.
Through one period, the Dallas Stars led your Vancouver Canucks to the tune of 2-0. Which isn’t a terrible score. We’ve certainly seen worse in our times here. 2-0 is but a mere flesh wound around these parts, no worse than having a spirited debate on the bus about why they didn’t extend the Skytrain all the way to UBC.
But it was the way the game was playing out that was the issue. It felt a lot like the dark parts of last season, to be honest. A team that seemingly took pride in finding various ways to not score any goals, and a team that defensively looked about as solid as the logic behind Grandpa telling you rum in your coffee doesn’t count as day drinking.
Now, I will admit, I have given myself a 20-game minimum before I make any grand sweeping statements about this team. But I won’t lie, I was tempted to write an article about Adam Foote not being ready and being in over his head, or Elias Pettersson needing to take up a different sport, or ‘Quinn Hughes: Why does he hate Vancouver so much?’ article after the first period.
Luckily, self-restraint won the day, and after a quick swig of coffee, I settled myself down and watched what the Canucks do so often when they’re in trouble: Turn to Conor Garland.
Yes, Thatcher Demko was once again that top-level talent we have come to expect from him. He has played so well that I haven’t once had to fully figure out a word that rhymes with popliteus (syphilis was the closest I got).
Quinn Hughes played 25+ of sublime hockey, punctuating the game with the cleanest empty net goal you will ever see, so he deserves plenty of accolades.
But it was ol’ reliable Corolla Garland that stood atop the mountain of impressive performances on the night, helping the Canucks to a 5-3 victory over the Stars.
Now, he only had a goal and an assist against Dallas, but he was instrumental in this victory. Whether it was his endless motor that helped seal the game by helping to draw a penalty, or the multiple offensive chances he generated, or the fact Elias Pettersson had the best game of his season playing with Garland, or the fact the power play looked as fast and efficient as we’ve seen it in years, you have several valid options as to why he was the player of the game.
Could we be cynical and wonder if Elias Pettersson NEEDS Garland to play at a top level? NO! We will not do that now, good sirs and madams; we will save that for after a dreary loss.
Nay, instead, we shall celebrate a game that was actually entertaining to watch! A game in which more than two goals were scored! A game in which somehow Evander Kane played like absolute dog water in the first period, only to start the turnaround with a Josh Allen of a lob pass that led to the team’s first goal of the night!
After last year, we deserve to enjoy random nights like this.
Let’s dive into this and make some gif money.
Thatcher Demko was aware that the Dallas Stars are in a different time zone than Vancouver, but I’m not quite sure his teammates did.
As mentioned earlier, the Canucks in the first period were bad. Like, real bad. The kind of bad where, if it were at a friend’s house and it used the bathroom, it would awkwardly stand outside the door after using it just to give people a heads-up about what they’re getting into. It would mumble an apology and talk about how “it must have been that breakfast sushi, brother” before going silent and praying for a timely death.
But as we’ve talked about before, when Thatcher Demko is locked in, he just looks bored in net. Minimal movement and energy is used in these games, to the point that Carl Andre would be proud to sculpt it.
So even when Adam “Bert and” Erne gets a shot in the slot and Justin Hryckowian jumps all over the rebound, Demko looks nonplussed:
Fun fact, ‘nonplussed’ in fact means perplexed, but because we’ve incorrectly used it to mean unimpressed for so long, we kind of just go with that definition.
Okay, so maybe not a fun fact, but it’s still a fact, damn it.
Oh, don’t you dare act nonplussed with me.
Elias Pettersson, the man who sold the world, opened the scoring in this game for the Dallas Stars:
That’s just bad luck right there, but when you have people calling you “11.6” out of spite, I can tell you they aren’t going to react to this goal lightly. Now, I don’t know what it’s like to be mocked for making too much money, as someone screaming “Hey minimum wage, check the return bin and let me know if that copy of Waiting came back in yet.” hits differently. But I imagine someone sneering “11.6” doesn’t feel great, even if they assure you that you can use all your money to wipe away your tears.
And to be fair, if this game had ended in abject failure and the Stars won 3-0 or whatever, then yes, this would probably be a big talking point. I would listen politely to your thesis on Elias Pettersson and bbno$ swapping bodies in a Freaky Friday type situation a couple of years ago and give it some credence.
But as it stands now, this is but a mere footnote in a game that was full of much more interesting things to talk about.
If there is one thing I know about Rick Tocchet, it’s that he hated himself a fly by. So while he may have quit on Vancouver moved to Philly, I would imagine he would be screaming about the defence Filip Chytil put on display here:
Chytil sort of skates by Thomas Hartley and then releases him, which gives him time and space when he gets the puck back on the point. Brock Boeser then reacts to this by sliding up to try and block Hartley’s shot, which then frees up Jason Robertson down low. They went from man-to-man coverage to Jason Robertson open all alone in front of Thatcher Demko in under five seconds.
And that’s kind of how the first period felt, like the Canucks were chasing the game. And when you chase the game, you blow coverage, and when you blow coverage, all of a sudden sports writers are writing jerky things about your lack of defensive hockey, and now everyone is mad.
In the end, Thatcher Demko made a save that looked ridiculously easy, utilizing the resigned energy of a drive-through worker at Wendy’s taking a drunk order at 2 am, but the entire period just felt like the Canucks couldn’t figure their sh!t out.
Linus Karlsson, Max Sasson and Arshdeep Bains were indeed their best line in the first period, both from the eye test and the underlying numbers. And while their best offensive chance was Max Sasson whacking at a Chaos grenade, it was the start of tilting the ice ever so gently in Vancouver’s direction:
Again, not much there, I get it. If that was your lone shot in your beer league game you’d probably have a buddy tell you that you were really close to scoring, even though you both know that’s not true.
The point is, it did start a push back of sorts from Vancouver.
Was it an impressive push back? Of course not. But at least Elias Pettersson got a shot on net?
Nothing wrong with doming the keeper to let them know. Casey DeSmith is the enemy now and he needs to understand that.
The best chance for the Canucks was probably Jake DeBrusk finally discovering there’s a turbo button in the game, as he generated a breakaway out of pure spite and willpower, with Brock Boeser almost slamming in the rebound:
And then you had Marcus Pettersson dropping the ultimate veteran move of recognizing “oh sh!t, I am not that guy, pal” when he saw a 50/50 loose puck.
What does he do instead of pinching up for the puck? He backs off and plays solid defence on Tyler Seguin, shutting him down easily:
We saw OEL attempt this during his time with Vancouver, but he tended to back up on 90/10 pucks as well, so it just made for sort of a weird vibe? Like you want to support him for realizing he doesn’t have the speed, but when he’s already skating back to his own end when his team has the puck, that mirrors my beer league strategies a little too much for comfort.
But overall? The Canucks had stopped the bleeding to an extent. Well, at least they stopped the bleeding anytime Evander Kane wasn’t on the ice.
The problem is, they still weren’t scoring any goals, which leads right into…
With the Canucks on the penalty kill, Mikko Rantanen scored on the rush quicker than he was taken off of Amazon FaceOff:
This is probably the worst goal Thatcher Demko has let in on the season, and I don’t mean that in a “Oh my god, that reminded me of Dan Cloutier, that’s the worst goal he’s ever let in” kind of way, I mean it in the that’s the worst goal he’s let in, which is pretty damn good because he didn’t do anything too terrible there. Perfect shot from Mikko, plus Demko being a bit too deep in his crease, meant that the Dallas Stars were up 2-0. Certainly not Demko’s fault, as the score could have been far worse had he not been playing so well.
A good summary of how this first period went is this clip of Chytil ending the period:
Turns over the puck with a bad pass, then proceeds to get beaten cleanly at the blue line, all leading to one final shot for the Stars.
It was an ugly period and you can see why people were perhaps nervous about the outcome of this game fresh off the heels of the previous two losses.
That seems bad. Is it bad? It feels bad.
The Canucks, perhaps inspired by a rousing speech from a fellow teammate during the intermission, or perhaps they just had some really good orange slices, came out looking like a much better team for the rest of the game.
They didn’t make it easy, mind you, as “hypothetical goals” were scored just as often as the real ones.
Your first fake goal was when Elias Pettersson made an absolutely sublime between the legs pass to Conor Garland, who took a shot that was about a centimeter away from EP40 banging it over the goal line:
Now, Elias Pettersson had a really good game, he did. He in fact was second amongst forward in ice time, coming in just a handful of seconds behind Garland at 20:33.
And that pass? Henrik Sedin would give that chefs kiss emoji. In another world, Elias Pettersson probably ends this night with three points.
But I still want to see him shoot more. We still need that killer instinct from him. That shot that made Mike Smith flail to the ground like he’d been shot, scared of how someone so young could have so much power.
EP40 ended up only registering the one shot on the night, and it’s just something I think the team needs to see more of from him.
Evander Kane at times felt like he was just there at the construction site because Tony Soprano was worried the feds were looking into the union jobs a little too closely. He just didn’t seem engaged is what I’m saying.
To his credit, he had a much stronger finish to the game compared to the start. He drew several penalties, he stopped bleeding offensive chances against, and he also dropped this beauty of a lob pass everyone in beer league has attempted but never pulled off:
He got a bit of a lucky bounce, but sometimes you have to be lucky to be good. The important thing is Chytil took control of that puck and absolutely cleaned DeSmith out of all of his money, giving a little dingle dangle, what’s your angle to the former Canucks netminder.
This goal was important because it was one of the five goals the Canucks used to defeat the Dallas Stars.
The more you know.
The Canucks power play has not been great over the last year? If it was a friend, it would be lower on my list of people I would invite over to a BBQ is all I am saying. I’d probably run through the rolodex of third cousins I haven’t seen in eight years before I turned to the Canucks powerplay.
But on this night? It looked good. Slick puck movement leading to dangerous shots, ending with a ton of zone time and a tired opponent stuck on the ice? That’s what leads to you going 2/3 with the extra man on the night.
And while Garland certainly looked fantastic on the powerplay, it was the entire unit that kind of came together to give themselves a chance on the powerplay.
Initially it only led to missed nets:
Again, I wish EP40 would shoot more, but he’s fully in Hank mode I guess, but it did lead to Brock Boeser almost tipping a puck in behind DeSmith, and DeBrusk followed that up just missing a shot wide from the slot.
They were getting chances, though, they were looking more dangerous than a emotional collapse after seeing Sandy, that girl you spent the summer with at the beach, almost ruin your cool factor in front of your friends by showing that you actually have feelings.
All of which led to Brock Boeser tipping in a Quinn Hughes shot to tie the game up for Vancouver:
Quinn Hughes, as he does so well, skates himself into an open shooting lane which lets him throw the puck on net for Boeser to tip pass DeSmith.
This goal was also important because it was one of the five goals the Canucks used to outpace the Stars.
I very much understood Braeden Cootes getting the start on the team to begin the season, as I am a fan of meritocracy. I got it, I understood it, I felt it in my thalamus.
But I also felt that it was only a matter of time before Max Sasson was back with the team, as I truly think he’s NHL ready. I don’t mean to say he’s a stud and he’s going to be dominating the league, etc, but I do think he can be a valuable bottom six player for the Canucks over the next several seasons.
And the main reason for that? That smile, that damn smile.
And speed, sorry yes, his speed:
Max breaks up the ice the second he sees Tyler Myers heading to retrieve it with all that time and space on his hands. And if there is one thing you don’t have to tell the Chaos Giraffe twice it’s “Hey why not try this random bank pass?”
A few seconds later and The Assasson is racing in all alone on DeSmith, giving him the ol’ fackle fickle, how’s my pickle.
3-2 good guys.
So the game is 3-2, it could very easily slip away from Vancouver, we all know that. Conor Garland knows that too, which is why he decides to single handedly score a goal to give his team the two goal cushion.
At first he tries a little bit of Hobbit trickery by banking the puck in off the back of DeSmith:
DeSmith feels something funny happening in his pants, he panics and clutches at his bottom, and he manages to keep the puck out of his net.
Garland then says fine, I won’t back it in off of you, I’ll just do the Alex Burrows wraparound and tuck it in the open net:
Unfortunately he forgot the part where Burrows leapt forward to give himself enough of an angle to push the puck over the goal line, and instead the puck goes post to post and refuses to enter the net.
So now Garland has had enough of this garbage, no more trickery, no more magic, instead he’s going to make the pick six and take the ball all the way into the house himself:
That is about as nice as a goal as you will see this season. Dude looks like a pre-season Daniel Sprong out there.
First off, kudos to Elias Pettersson for his pursuit of the puck. That hurries Jalen Hurts Colin Blackwell into making the hurried pass that Garland intercepts. I know this veers a little close to “little things” praise, but EP40 will be fine if he continues to play like this and/or gets to keep playing with Garland.
Secondly, kudos to Conor Garland for taking Alex Petrovic for a walk and leaving him with an existential crisis about life choices that led him to this moment. Petrovic is 100% going to be the last guy out of the showers as he’s going to be in there for a long time thinking about that goal.
Thirdly, kudos to Evander Kane for shoving a despondent Petrovic out of the way to get to the goal celebration. Every little bit of self esteem you can destroy in an opponent is a step closer to victory.
With the Canucks up a couple of goals, they settled into defending said lead through timely Demko saves and Hronek shot blocks:
As well as giggling while Jason Robertson hit the crossbar:
You might notice a lack of scoreboard in the clips and that’s because yes, as you’ve always feared, Sportsnet hates you. And will charge you extra for said hatred.
Despite such negative energy, the Canucks were doing a decent job of defending the lead.
The Canucks didn’t score on this powerplay, but again, it’s worth noting the puck movement and shot selection:
It wasn’t stagnant, there was good shot selection, there was solid east/west puck movement, there was no coach asking after the game why nobody was doing what he asked, it was just a really solid night of hockey.
And it wasn’t just the powerplay, the Canucks were strong on the puck after the first period. They forced the Dallas Stars into turnovers, they won puck battles, all of which led to more moments where Quinn Hughes could try and score on slick backhanders:
If you’re winning a hockey game, it’s always a good idea to be annoying. Not annoying enough to get a penalty, but be annoying enough like Aatu Räty to get in Rantanen’s way for no good reason:
That’s some Jarko Ruutu level of trolling right there, and I am here for it.
With the Canucks trying to close out the game, who was out there blocking shots and tipping pucks over the net?
Elias Pettersson and Tyler Myers:
That’s a fantastic block from EP40, so yeah, put that up there with the “little things” and we will talk about it later. Preferably after a loss so we can all argue about it.
But for now, let’s just bask in the shot block, and give credit to Tyler Myers for keeping his inner Chaos Giraffe at bay while closing out this game.
Well, almost.
Tyler Myers got a penalty for interference on Rantanen on this play:
And while I don’t doubt that the Stars superstar sold that for all he was worth, it was also a very highly visible amount of soft interference from Tyler Myers, something he does an incredible amount of during games. So you kind of live by the interference die by the interference with the Chaos Giraffe, all of which led to a Wyatt Johnston goal on the ensuing powerplay:
It’s not often you get two powerplay goals off the rush, but that’s where we found ourselves on this one. It’s a nice play from Seguin and Johnston, and if there was any criticism to hand out I would say Hronek probably went all in on that body check a little too much as it took him out of the play afterwards. If I think Noah Juulsen would be proudly watching you throw a hit, that’s when I’m going to wonder if you chased a hit a little too much.
Third penalty drawn for Evander Kane. #Canucks going to the power play with a one-goal lead with a minute to go.
— Izzy(@izzycheung37) October 17, 2025
So with the game on the line and the home team riding that sweet sweet momentum, how do you close out a game?
You put out Corolla Garland, ol’ reliable:
Garland beats two Dallas Stars players to that puck and feeds Evander Kane in front, who gets taken down and draws a penalty. This happens because Garland’s motor just doesn’t quit, because Toyota makes a good product.
This play basically ended the game, as the Dallas Stars momentum was now gone. Fans were booing, players were sad, all of which led to the greatest empty net goal of the season:
This is amazing for a couple of reasons?
The first is that’s just an amazing shot. That’s Steph Curry dropping back and draining a half court three right there. Just lines it up and hits it right in the center of the net and the skates off like he has to go finish his homework. No excitement, just resignation of the next task at hand.
The second is that Casey DeSmith, a man who played with Quinn Hughes during his Norris winning campaign, sees that Quinn has the puck and is like “yeah, now’s the time to go the bench for the extra man.”
Don’t get me wrong, it makes for an amazing visual. DeSmith just sort of casually skates off in the background while Hughes lines up his shot. But it does make me question his decision making on the night?
Of all the players you might cheat out of your net when your team doesn’t have possession of the puck, Quinn Hughes is the last player to try that on.
And that was the ball game. Canucks win and are 2-2 on the season, which feels calm and normal and not the end of the world like a 1-3 record would. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them my friends.
Next game is Friday against Chicago, so we shall see which team shows up for that one I guess?
Not enough friends go to games as a line, and it shows.
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The Vancouver Canucks continued to make Connor Bedard’s life miserable on Friday night, pushing the North Van product’s career record against Vancouver to 0-5, this time in the form of a 3-2 win in the shootout. There was just something about the visible frustration on his face in this game that made you wonder if beating his hometown team is a special milestone in his life he thought he would have completed by now. A victory he could have perhaps secured if the DJ hadn’t played Where the Streets Have No Name just before the shootout.
Live by the troll, die by the troll.
But instead, Connor had to sit back as the Canucks grinded out their third victory of the year. Not a pretty victory, mind you. Not even a pleasant one if I’m being honest. You certainly wouldn’t bring this victory to meet your family; you’d probably just get a coffee at Starbucks with it and then call it a day. Maybe if you had literally nothing else to do on the weekend, you’d see a movie with it, but on a purely platonic level.
Two points is two points, however, and while I don’t think the Canucks are playing particularly well to start this season, I will always give credit to any team that walks away with four points in back-to-back games. It was a game of back and forth with Chicago controlling the play for the first and third periods, while the Canucks took over in the second period and in overtime. There was very clearly a point in the third period where you could see the Canucks kind of settle in to at least secure a single point, but anytime they made a mistake, Kevin Lankinen was there to shut shit down.
Lankinen finished the night with 31 saves on 33 shots, 14 of which were of the high-danger variety. It was the kind of solid game you get from your backup, where you go, “that’s a solid game from our backup.”
In other news, Elias Pettersson continues to be snake bitten, Conor Garland continues to stake his claim as the Canucks best forward, and Quinn Hughes was back to playing 30 minutes in a hockey game. All of which is to say it felt like coming home, really; comforting to know that Quinn Hughes will still play 85% of the overtime if you need him to.
The schedule doesn’t get any easier for Vancouver, as they play an early game on Sunday, playing every other day until November 5, a stretch of almost three weeks.
Which is why it’s even more important for them to snake out points in games like these. They are going to have to get used to playing tired/watching Quinn Hughes play for three hours a night over the next little while, so what better time than now to start getting used to extended hours?
Speaking of which, this is a back-to-back game for me as well, so let’s get this started.
Which Canuck decided to dispense street justice on Jason Dickinson for the hit that concussed Filip Chytil last year? Kiefer Sherwood had the juiciest sound byte about revenge, surely he would be the one to step up and fight off the draw!
Or Ilya Mikheyev can get a scoring chance instead:
To Dickinson’s credit, he lined up for the opening faceoff, so he gave the Canucks their chance to hand out their street justice should they want it. But nothing happened.
And I’m not saying they had to fight him. I think we all remember the worst revenge fight of all time when Vinnie Desharnais “fought” Tanner Jeannot to take the Canucks pound of flesh for the hit that injured Brock Boeser. I felt bad watching both men walk through that jersey-pulling contest play out.
But it would have been nice if someone had thrown one really solid hit on the former Canuck.
All I’m saying is if Raffi Torres was on the Canucks we would probably be planning a Netflix documentary on the hit he would have thrown.
During the start of the game, it looked like Quinn Hughes fell and hit his knee in that Family Guy way where you have to sit and hold your leg for five minutes due to the pain:
Quinn Hughes would be fine, but I am including this because this is Vancouver. For all we know Quinn Hughes will announce he has an injury never suffered before by a human being three months from now, and it happened on this play.
“His knee actually separated and his body fused brand new bones and ligaments. But now the new ligaments have become sentient so we need to figure that out.”
Tyler Bertuzzi was a key player in this game, both in terms of being a pest in the crease, and with sneaky little slashes that required Kiefer Sherwood to punch him just once with a fist of justice:
Honestly, I liked Bertuzzi’s game on the night. It was the kind of night where if he’s not on your team, you are 100% swearing at your TV and texting your group chat that this guy is the absolute worst person in the world. His moustache just adds to the whole effect, to be honest.
But when he’s on your team? You’re all in on this type of player.
The end result of the one-punch combo, however, was 4-on-4 hockey, a Kelly Sutherland favourite. And who likes open space on the ice? Quinn Hughes!
Please enjoy this offensive highlight of Quinn Hughes dancing through the offensive zone to get a shot on net because that was the last time the Canucks looked threatening in the first period.
Instead, we saw Chicago carry the play for the opening frame, which again isn’t too surprising considering the Canucks are probably tired, and because they’ve made a tradition of starting off slow each game this year.
So instead of the Canucks leading the charge, we saw Tyler Myers chuckle to himself and realize he’s in danger when a puck came around the boards, putting him in a 3-on-1 situation:
Andre Burakovsky feeds Connor Bedard with a nice pass, but he heels his shot, so no damage was done.
But then Wyatt Kaiser got a breakaway after a bad pass attempt from Filip Hronek over to Marcus Pettersson was picked off, forcing Evander Kane to back-check. Something that, whenever it happens, makes me say out loud, “Well I guess we’re doing this, eh?”:
I will say that Kane was skating the entire way, but it’s safe to say he hasn’t exactly been blowing anyone away with his speed this season.
All I’m saying is that at times, he makes a JT Miller backcheck look like Pavel Datsyuk on ice.
Chicago scored the first goal of the game on a power play, when Burakovsky made a brilliant pass to Ryan Donato, one of those “don’t write Ted Donato, don’t write Ted Donato” moments where I very clearly end up writing Ted Donato at first:
The Canucks penalty kill just kind of wilted away like that basil plant you bought from Safeway that you promised yourself you’d take better care of this time. But did you water it? Nope. You said you’d get to it later. But there never was a later, was there? You let it whither away and die just like your promises to yourself to people please less in life, and make your happiness a priority. And now we’re standing here, looking at a dead plant, trying to come to terms with the fact you can’t even take care of a basic herb, so what gives you the right to think you could ever raise a child?
1-0 Blackhawks.
Speaking of Tyler Bertuzzi, he was a constant thorn in Kevin Lankinen’s side, setting up shop in the crease, creating several moments where you wondered if goalie interference was going to be called.
And again, it’s awesome having a player like that. Jake DeBrusk kind of does the same role, except not as greasy. He’s more of a lovable step brother compared to Tyler Bertuzzi’s drunk uncle that calls you up out of nowhere to ask if he can borrow a hundred bucks.
But both are effective with their blue paint game, as Tyler Bertuzzi used his to not only get Lankinen to drop his stick, but then moments later to make it 2-0 Chicago:
Drew O’Connor and Filip Hronek sort of snip snap snip snap with their coverage, which lets Bertuzzi go to the net all alone to tap in the rebound.
When Ilya Mikheyev was a Vancouver Canuck, he never had a functional knee. So the one trademark of his game, elite speed, was never really there. He would just sort of throw a puck in Elias Pettersson’s general direction and hoped it would sort of take care of itself.
Well he appears to be fully healed now, and while he will never really burn you tons of points, he did get five shots on the night for Chicago and looked a hell of a lot better than he ever did for Vancouver. Heck, he even set up shop in front of the Canucks while they politely moved out of the way to let him get a couple of whacks at a rebound:
At his best, he’s most likely going to put up 15-20 goals a year, and you can at least see some of that player the Canucks oddly bought high on and sold low on.
With the Canucks shorthanded, leave it to MP3 to walk in and almost go bar in in a floating wrister:
I can only assume this inspired Elias Pettersson to get out there and hit a post as well:
Conor Garland was the Canucks best skater for me, but Elias Pettersson was right behind him. He didn’t get any points on the night, but once again this was one of those games where it felt like he should have had at least a couple.
I still think he needs to shoot more, less Hank, more Dank, but he’s generating scoring chances. He’s making plays. It does feel like once he gets a goal he might go on a bit of a streak here.
The Canucks then took their turn getting a greasy goal in the crease when Jake DeBrusk smashed home a rebound on the power play:
It was Vancouver’s lone power play goal of the night, as they went 1/6 on the evening, but at least it looked decent? There were a couple of stinkers in there, but for the most part, it appears they have a functional first unit. At the very least, they don’t have a unit where you worry they might show up on TMZ the next day for fighting at Costco after the game.
This is a perfect example of Elias Pettersson making high-level plays while also showing why Conor Garland drives the line:
This play doesn’t happen without Conor making that pick-six to force the puck back into Chicago’s zone. It’s no coincidence that Garland loves sharks because he clearly models his game after them. He’s always circling the water, waiting for a chance to catch his prey unawares, and on this play, you see him cut over and make the poke check, which gets the puck to EP40 along the boards.
And Elias? He makes a great pass on that play. He shows patience with the puck and waits for a passing lane to open up so he can find Victor Mancini in the slot. And like a young Christopher Moltisanti, he falls short of his goals, but you can see the promise there.
On the opposite end of the Garland scale is Evander Kane. Which look, I’ve already said he probably needs time to get his game back in gear after surgery last January, I get that. But in the meantime, his back-checking is going to end up frustrating fans, as this was a game where three times Kane was chasing down a breakaway:
That’s the kind of back-check you use at Minoru, damn it.
The Castle Fun Park line continues to be a fun storyline for the Canucks this season. And while we don’t know how long they’ll last, and they might not get a ton of minutes (they averaged around eight on the night), they are certainly making the most of it. Whether it’s winning their matchups or simply scoring goals, the Calder Cup bros are making it hard for the Canucks to break them up:
Arshdeep Bains uses great board work to let Linus Karlsson sneak in and take the puck, who then feeds Fil Hronek, who finds the hard-skating Sasson for the tap-in.
Hey, the Canucks might not have hit Jason Dickinson, but Max Sasson outplayed him and scored a goal on him.
And again, who knows how long this trio will stick around for. All I know is I enjoy the hell out of their game, especially Max Sasson. That high-end speed is something the Canucks have lacked for years, even if we don’t know if he will ever surpass the Tyler Motte bar.
i feel like i have heard ilya mikheyev’s name more times on this broadcast then i ever have in my entire life #Canucks
— tiana
Fun fact #1: Mikheyev got the first shot of every period on the night, aside from overtime:
Fun fact #2: Connor Bedard’s shot is much much more dangerous:
That’s the literal definition of fighting off a shot. With Mikheyev, Lankinen was all “oh look at me and my fancy glove, let’s lift it high in the sky for everyone to see!”
With Bedard, Kevin was like “Oh my god that was the fastest shot I’ve ever seen, oh god oh god, where’s the puck, I can’t feel my hand.”
Once again we find ourselves watching Evander Kane back-check:
It’s not often you let a 6″8 defenceman get a breakaway, yet here we are. Louis Crevier somehow finds a way to get in all alone on Lankinen and was a post away from scoring.
Kane’s back-checking got progressively worse on the night as it started with him skating back the entire way, then it transitioned into the JT Miller coast for the last few strides. Then it turned into Kane taking a ludicrous angle to try and stop said breakaway, before just sort of watching and going “I’m sure Kevin’s got this, what are the odds this giant man scores.”
Which, hey, give credit to Kevin. The Canucks could have easily lost this game if Lankinen let in a soft goal, but every time Chicago pushed for the go-ahead goal, he either let the puck hit the post, let the referee call it off due to goalie interference, or he made a good save:
When the game is on the line and you need a goal, you find yourself wanting Conor Garland on the ice. That’s something I used to feel about Elias Pettersson, but that trophy is with Garland for now. That can change, of course, and I know Elias Pettersson can still be “the guy”. But for my money, Garland has been the best forward on this team this season. When you need a forward to control the puck, or settle things down, or make a big play, it’s Garland doing it the majority of the time. He drives any line he’s on, he really does.
I also just really enjoy watching him make pick-sixes. You want to try and make a pass against the Canucks, odds are, Garland will intercept half of them:
Garland not only steals the puck but then throws a filthy saucer of a backhand pass that ends up right on Hronek’s stick.
Corolla just has a very high hockey IQ. He is constantly scanning the ice and making plays by anticipating where the puck is going to end up, which lets him get the puck back like this.
Our old friend Tyler Bertuzzi looked to have put his team up a goal in the dying minutes of the game, but it was called off due to goalie interference:
If this had stood as a goal, I would have been fine with it. If they called it off, I would have been fine with it. But either way, the video evidence wouldn’t be enough to overturn either decision. So essentially, whatever was called on the ice, I didn’t see how you could overturn it:
Nothing in that video screams proof that would overturn any call.
Sure, if this were 2009, Chicago could have pitchforked the goalie in the net while Dustin Byfuglien power bombed a confused and frightened Roberto Luongo into the glass.
But not in today’s NHL, damn it.
I think it was a bit wild of Chicago to challenge that goal, because for the majority of the third period, Vancouver looked TIRED. And Chicago had all the momentum. But because they failed their challenge, Vancouver got a power play. And while they didn’t score on it, it helped slow down Chicago and got Vancouver to overtime.
If hypothetical goals were a thing, Elias Pettersson had three goals on the night, easy. Here yet again is Elias Pettersson having a wide open net and just putting it wide:
He’s doing the right things, he’s going to the right parts of the ice, it’s just the Hockey Gods hate him right now. We’ve all been there. You will use your best stuff and get zero goals for a week, then next month you’re watching pucks go in off of your legs and players putting pucks in their own net but you touched the puck last so you get credited for the goal.
You can’t mess with the Chaos Giraffe and expect to not get penalized for holding on this play:
The Canucks power play didn’t score, but once again, Garland felt like the team’s most important forward. It’s not just his hockey IQ; he just has an endless motor. He’s that guy who tries so hard in beer league, and you’re like “relax buddy, geezus,” even though you’re secretly jealous of his ability to never tire out.
A good example of this was late in the game, where a point shot ended up behind the net, but look who appears on the scene to get the puck back? Conor Garland:
His ability to extend plays and keep lines pinned in their own zone is invaluable to the Canucks.
The one thing lacking in his game is, of course, his shot, which happens when you use a one-foot stick meant more for board battles and sneaky little puck stealing.
But the fact remains that when the game is on the line, Garland has stepped up in JT Miller’s absence to fill a role of not letting moments get too big for him and being a player they can rely on.
The Canucks won in the shootout, but several highlights came from overtime.
First up, we had Conor Garland once again making a big defensive play and re-establishing puck possession for the Canucks:
Again, he is literally circling the ice like a shark, waiting for his next victim.
Up next, we had Brock Boeser get the second-best chance of overtime after Garland and Quinn Hughes pushed the puck up the ice:
Garland drives to the net, and because sharks are scary, Chicago has to follow him, which gives an open lane for Boeser to skate into.
Then we had Jake DeBrusk set up Elias Pettersson for another tap-in attempt, but due to the Hockey Gods straight up hating on the Swedish forward, he can’t quite connect on the puck:
And then, in the biggest “bro, do your dekes” moment of the night, perhaps frustrated by his inability to score a goal, EP40 decides to try and skate through everyone to simply walk into Mordor:
Again, if he keeps playing like this, the points WILL come.
Alas, overtime ended, so it had to go to a shootout, even if we all know it should go to a 2-on-2 overtime, then a 1-on-1 overtime, before finally settling into a shootout. The math works.
You did this to yourselves, Chicago.
Only one player scored in the shootout, but before we get to that, here is Elias Pettersson enjoying almost scoring yet again:
I think he was skating backwards at the end there, so I think his lack of forward-moving momentum would have made that goal null and void, but damn it, the man is trying.
But when it comes to a shootout, I do admit I prefer the Trevor Linden School of Shootouts, in which you come in with speed, pick your spot, and shoot.
Brock Boeser understood the assignment:
Good guys win.
We’re still pretty early into the season, so we don’t dive too deep into a five-game breakdown of this team quite yet. I will say it’s clear they can play much better, and if they want to keep winning, they need to fix their slow starts to a game.
But sometimes you win ugly and just hope you can keep stealing points until you put it all together.
See you Sunday morning, bright and early.
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So nice, they had to do it twice.
The Vancouver Canucks came back from 2-0 down again, securing a 3-2 shootout win against the Chicago Blackhawks. Seriously, this team made it a lot more difficult than it had to be, and it wasn’t as if Chicago was in the same stratosphere as a team like Dallas. But, they were able to get the job done on the back half of a back-to-back on the road, which is never an easy task. That much about this win should be commended, as the Canucks have spurred themselves back above .500.
Here’s the win, by the numbers.
As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.
Game Flow
There wasn’t a single period where the Canucks were convincingly the better team. Across the board, Chicago held the majority of the puck, never dropping below 53.oo CF% in any period. That also translated into the expected goals trendline, where their lowest period was the first at 54.88 xGF%. The second and third saw the Blackhawks over 60.00 xGF%, meaning that the Canucks very much scored their goals against the flow of the game. It isn’t the worst thing in the world, but at the same time, you’d expect Vancouver to be a little more convincing against a team like Chicago.
Heat Map
For how the possession and expected goals numbers went, the heat map makes a good amount of sense. The Blackhawks tallied up a 20-17 edge in scoring chances at 5v5, with a further 14-10 high-danger chance lead. That is reflected in their larger and darker hot spot right in the crease area, definitely more significant than the Canucks’ own mark. At the very least, Vancouver was able to get the high-danger chances to trend downwards as the game went on, giving up less and less with each period. Hopefully though, they’ll be on the right side of this probability battle in the future.
Individual Advanced Stats
Corsi Champ: The Abby line continues to impress, as last night Linus Karlsson led the Canucks with a 62.50 CF%. Yes, they saw limited deployment, coming in with the least ice time seen by any forward line, but the player that went up against Karlsson the most last night was none other than Connor Bedard – not bad competition, to say the least. During his TOI, Karlsson saw even 1-1 splits in scoring chances and high-danger chances, managing to pick up an assist on Max Sasson’s goal.
Max Sasson again!
He's got goals in both games he's played in this season since being recalled.#NHLStats: https://t.co/1DHUCCs4eA pic.twitter.com/aIGjaOP9PQ
— NHL (@NHL) October 18, 2025
Corsi Chump: It’s rare for someone like Kiefer Sherwood to have two bad games in a row, yet that was exactly what happened last night. Against the Blackhawks, the winger posted a team-worst 11.76 CF%, enough to put him at -40.62 CF% rel. The misery didn’t stop there for Sherwood as he produced the team’s lowest xGF (0.01) and xGF% (1.15), on ice for the third-most xGA (1.02) despite only playing 11:03. His line bled chances, put into an 0-11 scoring chance hole with 7 of those being high-danger.
xGF: Jake DeBrusk was all over the ice last night, making his presence felt on and off the scoresheet. He was threatening offensively, managing to post a team-best 77.98 xGF%, on ice for a 6-2 scoring chance difference and 5-1 high-danger chance advantage. That led DeBrusk to record the second-best xGF on the team with 0.86, topped only by Marcus Pettersson’s (!!) 0.90. The forward was also on ice for the least xGA on the team with 0.24, getting it done at both ends of the ice.
Jake DeBrusk scores on the power play to make it a one-goal gamepic.twitter.com/aHvrirZ8Rb
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) October 18, 2025
GSAx: Kevin Lankinen had a much better outing against the Blackhawks than his first start of the season. With Chicago accumulating a 2.76 xGF last night, the Finnish netminder tallied a 0.76 GSAx, only allowing 2 high-danger goals against. Other than those two blemishes (which are understandable given the quality), he was rock solid to help the Canucks stay in this game and secure the shootout victory.
Statistical Musings
Figuring out the bottom 6: Teddy Blueger drew back into the lineup last night after being injured to start the year. Coming in for Aatu Raty, the Latvian didn’t look quite himself, as the line of him, Drew O’Connor, and Kiefer Sherwood struggled mightily all of last night. The former Minnesota State Maverick centered a line that posted the team’s worst CF% (16.67) and xGF% (1.89), barely managing 0.01 xGF while giving up a team-worst 0.62 xGA. It wasn’t as if they were playing particularly tough opponents, but it is worth noting that they were thrown out there for pretty much all defensive zone starts. It’s not an advantageous position, but they should be a lot better than what those numbers suggest.
Where Hughes-Hronek looked replacement level: Something that might’ve flown a little under the radar was how poorly Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek played with each other last night. They would only spend 6:06 TOI together, with Hughes splitting to play with Victor Mancini for 8:58, but the top defensive pairing for the Canucks had some awful analytics. Hughes-Hronek recorded 15:38 CF% and 0.50 xGF% – yes, that’s half a percent of the expected goals share – with a 0-6 deficit in scoring chances and 0-5 high-danger chances given up. Those are numbers that these two simply don’t post together, and continue to highlight the rocky start that Hughes has had this season.
Quinn Hughes was shaken up after being taken down on this play.
He has had multiple shifts since the fall. But it's something to monitor.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 18, 2025
Split up, the defencemen had slightly better numbers. Hughes-Mancini had a 45.45 CF% and 46.36 xGF%, while Hronek, with Elias Pettersson, posted 45.45 CF% as well with 43.40 xGF%. Still, it’s far cry from the usual standard that these two produce and could be something to keep an eye on for the next couple of games.
As a team
CF% – 53.72% HDCF% – 60.00% xGF% – 65.51%
Should this game have been as close as it was? Probably not, but the Canucks were able to find a way to dig themselves out of the 2-0 hole they found themselves in early. Factoring in the travel and the back-to-back nature of this game, it’s not a bad result by any means. The Canucks won this game and were able to turn it on when it mattered. Hopefully, they can avoid putting themselves into that situation going forward.
Vancouver heads into Washington, DC for a Sunday matinee matchup against the Capitals next.
Stats provided by naturalstattrick.com
While the vibes are certainly high following the Vancouver Canucks‘ 4-3 win over the Washington Capitals — Vancouver’s third straight victory — it wasn’t all good news for the road team.
Already without Brock Boeser, who was unavailable due to personal reasons, the Canucks lost three forwards during the game. Teddy Blueger, Filip Chytil, and Jonathan Lekkerimäki are all being evaluated for various ailments suffered during the win in Washington.
Chytil suffered the most obvious injury of the three, as the Canucks’ centre found himself on the receiving end of a booming Tom Wilson hit late in the first period.
Tom Wilson makes a late hit on Filip Chytil. There was no penalty on the play.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 19, 2025
Chytil exited the game with help from his teammates and did not return. The concern level for Chytil is obviously high, given the 26-year-old centre’s extensive and well-documented concussion history. Canucks head coach Adam Foote spoke about the hit post game:
“Well, I saw it once after on the bench. Didn’t look at it in intermission. I mean, it looked like, from my first view, that it was a clean hit. I’m gonna look at it again. I mean, he’s [Wilson] a big guy… I like the way our players didn’t get caught in, with a lead like that, getting caught in the trap of a hit like that, running after him and trying to get him. I mean, we have to get the two points first and that other stuff takes care of itself later down the road if it needs to be taken care of, which, we’ll view it. I don’t know if it was a clean hit or just bad timing for Chyts there… It’s an awful feeling, right? I think we’re all human, and whether it’s a guy on their team or our team, I think everyone feels that. He’s being evaluated, and we’ll see where he’s at.”
The Canucks also shared that Jonathan Lekkerimäki wouldn’t return to Sunday’s game at the same time as when they announced Chytil wouldn’t return for the rest of the contest. Post game, head coach Adam Foote said he didn’t yet have an update on Lekkerimäki. It’s not exactly clear what’s ailing the young forward, but he did seem to make awkward contact with a Washington player on his final shift of the first period.
Finally, Foote said he didn’t believe Brock Boeser’s absence would be “not long at all.” Post game, Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy reported that Blueger was also being evaluated following the game.
The Canucks’ next game is Tuesday night in Pittsburgh, when they take on the Penguins.
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A win, but at what cost?
The Vancouver Canucks struck fast and early, riding their 4-0 lead all the way to a 4-3 win against the Washington Capitals. They came out of the gates hot, an oddity given how these games usually start for them, and really put the heat on the home team early. Two key injuries deflated some of that moment, but the Canucks did well to secure a win with the margin they had built up. Would it have been nice to have a little more breathing room? Sure, but the result was the big piece on the road.
Here’s the win, by the numbers.
As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.
Game Flow
It felt like the Canucks continued exactly where they left off, putting together a very solid first frame that got them a commanding lead. They finished the opening period with a slight deficit in CF% at 47.06, but were able to rack up 1.34 xGF through just 4 high-danger chances at 5v5. That gave them a big 72.18 xGF% share in the frame, and they struck twice even strength to score over their expected goals total.
After that, it was one-way traffic from the part of the Caps. Washington would finish both the second and third with CF% shares over 80.00, outchancing the Canucks by a 23-5 margin in that span. Now, the slight silver lining is that the high-danger chances were only 7-2, meaning it could’ve been a lot worse. At the same time, there aren’t many teams that Vancouver can afford to be outchanced by like that.
Heat Map
The difference in sheer amount of scoring chances can be seen from this heat map. The Capitals had an expansive area where their scoring chances came from, green littering the offensive zone. At the same time though, their high-danger chances weren’t as concentrated as the Canucks’ were, leading to a more spread-out patch in front of the crease. At 5v5, the total scoring chances stood at 31-17 for Washington, but that gap shrank down significantly to 10-6 in high-danger chances. Vancouver did a solid enough job to limit the truly dangerous looks that their opponents got, and that’s never a bad thing.
Individual Advanced Stats
Corsi Champ: In the limited time that he had before his injury, Filip Chytil was absolutely flying. His 50.00 CF% might not have seemed like much, but that was enough to be 25.38 CF% rel to team average, meaning that the Canucks were able to possess the puck just over 25% more during the Czech’s TOI. In just 5:01 TOI at 5v5 play, Chytil was on ice for 7 shots and 8 scoring chances, which were 4th and 3rd on the team respectively. He was just getting into a groove too as the Canucks’ 2C, and one hopes he was removed only for precautionary reasons after taking a late hit from Tom Wilson.
Corsi Chump: This might be a surprise, but there’s a perfectly valid explanation for this one. Elias Pettersson, the forward, brought up the rear of the Corsi department with an 18.18 CF%, which definitely doesn’t seem like a good thing at first. The Swede was deployed by Adam Foote primarily in defensive roles, thrown out there with only 14.29% of his shift starts being in the offensive zone and just 20.00% of his faceoff starts in the attacking end as well. Naturally, that’ll lead to some tilted statistics against him, which was the case here. Pettersson was on ice for 12 scoring chances against, five of which came at high danger. But, none of them converted at 5v5, and EP40 found himself contributing in big ways at the end of the game to secure the win.
Elias Pettersson stacks the pads to block two Alex Ovechkin shots late in the third period.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 19, 2025
xGF: It was Chytil who led the Canucks with an 86.09 xGF%, again making the most of his time on ice. The Czech forward already had an 8-3 scoring chance edge and a 4-2 high-danger chance lead, which is pretty significant when looking at the proportion of those stats that he was on ice for. Vancouver didn’t get a whole much out of the rest of the team when he was gone (and understandably so), but one has to wonder the impact it’ll leave on the rest of the team. Linus Karlsson posted the best raw xGF at 0.48 at 5v5 play.
karlsson going after wilson after a hit on chytil pic.twitter.com/iojgmtc9HL
— daily linus karlsson(@dailykarlsson) October 19, 2025
GSAx: Thatcher Demko had his work cut out for him after the first period. With Washington dominating puck possession en route to a total 4.06 xGF, the netminder turned aside all but three chances for a 1.06 GSAx. Now, two of the goals were registered as low-danger, which Demko would probably have to like back. That was what probably made his numbers look a little bit worse off than they probably should’ve been. However, not giving up a high-danger goal against is always a plus.
Thatcher Demko makes a big save to keep the Canucks two-goal lead.
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 19, 2025
Statistical Musings
PP1 Sherwood: With Brock Boeser missing this contest, it raised some eyebrows to see Kiefer Sherwood slot in on that top power play unit for the Canucks. But, considering that Sherwood went into the game tied for the team lead in goals, it isn’t all that far-fetched. Certainly, this was a better performance than his previous two contests, leading the team with a 0.93 xGF across all situations, striking on the power play early to put the Canucks up by 3. Sherwood saw a lot of ice time with the injuries through the lineup, playing 23:16 and managing a respectable 10-12 scoring chance split across all situations. Really tidy work for being thrust up the lineup.
Kiefer Sherwood crashes the net for the power-play goal
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) October 19, 2025
Hughes answering the bell: Last couple of games, the Canucks captain didn’t look like his dominant self that had been his standard. But, Quinn Hughes put in some impressive numbers against the Capitals in 25:00 TOI, where he led all defencemen in CF% (46.00, also the second-best on the team) and managed to split a 15-15 scoring chance battle with an 8-8 deadlock in high-danger chances. It might not sound like a lot, but given how shorthanded the Canucks’ roster was when it came to firepower, these contributions can’t be overlooked. It was nice to see Hughes towards the top end of the roster too after some more lackadaisical numbers recently.
As a team
CF% – 30.51% HDCF% – 36.00% xGF% – 43.78%
With this being their third game in four days, the Canucks performed admirably. The compression in their schedule and the early start time to this game seemed like the classic recipe for them to get absolutely blown out of the water, and yet it was Vancouver who came out of the gates hot. Now, they did post some pretty atrocious numbers through the second and third, but with the context of their schedule and two big losses in their lineup early in the game, it was a pretty gutsy effort to ride out the lead to a win.
Vancouver gets a little breather before heading into Pittsburgh to face the Penguins on Tuesday.
Stats provided by naturalstattrick.com
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