How many kids got tickets to Saturday afternoon’s Vancouver Canucks game against the Seattle Kraken for Christmas?
The afternoon games are always a popular pick for parents to take their kids, as they avoid the late nights of a normal home game. With this being the first game after Christmas, you have to think that some parents tucked some tickets under the tree for Christmas morning.
They couldn’t have known that this game would be in Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson. With those two missing — especially Hughes — the entertainment value of the Canucks was lower than it might normally have been.
Those kids might have missed out on seeing two of their favourite players but they still got the full Canucks experience, for both good and ill.
They got to watch the Canucks work their tails off to make up for their missing stars. They got to see Brock Boeser score two goals to put himself on pace for 35 goals this season. They got to see Conor Garland get a goal to continue his excellent season and Jake DeBrusk score another in his ongoing efforts to shake himself of his “streaky” reputation, giving the Canucks a 4-1 lead late into the third period.
And they got to watch the Canucks completely collapse in the final five minutes of regulation to lose in historic fashion.
The Canucks are just the third team in NHL history to lose a regular season game after taking a three-goal lead into the final five minutes of regulation. The Kraken scored three goals in a four-minute span to force overtime, then took advantage of an awful turnover to win the game.
“You guys saw it,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “We had control. Couple of mistakes and it’s in our net. We needed a couple of composure plays; we didn’t get them.”
“Honestly, it’s pretty devastating,” said Jake DeBrusk. “You should never be losing that game, let alone letting it get to overtime.”
After the game was over and the arena emptied of fans, a lovingly handcrafted sign reading “MY 1ST CANUCKS GAME” in blue and green could be seen abandoned among the detritus.
That feels sadly symbolic.
But it also feels like this was the best possible game to have as a first Canucks game. Now you know what it’s like to be a Canucks fan. You have the lowered expectations thanks to the players out of the lineup, the rising hopes of a team outperforming those expectations, and finally the crushing disappointment of the team throwing it all away.
It felt like a microcosm of the Canucks as a franchise when I watched this game.
- With Hughes and Pettersson out of the lineup, the Canucks played simple, physical, Rick Tocchet hockey, at least for 55 minutes of the game. The Canucks outhit the Kraken 24-to-8, led by none other than Kiefer Sherwood, who set the tone early when he knocked Vince Dunn to the ice on the forecheck.
- While the shots on goal were close to even in the first period, the Canucks benefited from the Kraken whiffing on a few of their best chances. Kappo Kaako flew past a stumbling Vincent Desharnais on one early rush and set up Matty Beniers for what looked like a sure goal only for Beniers to on the pass.
- The TV cameras almost missed my favourite moment of the first period. The Kraken’s Tye Kartye lost his helmet in a board battle and had to bolt to the bench without it. As the play progressed, Kaapo Kakko accidentally kicked the loose helmet and it slid perfectly between the posts and nestled into the Canucks’ net. If he had tried to kick the helmet into the net, he probably would have missed.
- The Canucks opened the scoring after Max Sasson drew a penalty at 4-on-4 to give the Canucks a 4-on-3 power play. They wasted little time on the man advantage, scoring nine seconds after number nine, J.T. Miller, won the faceoff. He sent the puck backdoor to Jake DeBrusk, who was robbed by Phillipp Grubauer, only to have the rebound pop up into the air, where Brock Boeser gave it a 20% tip before pushing it over the goal line.
- Thatcher Demko looked great in the first period but then he completely whiffed on a glove save a minute into the second period. It looked like an innocent play, as Beniers skated over the blue line and shot the puck from distance. Demko reached up to catch it and just…didn’t. The puck wasn’t deflected and he could see it the whole way; it’s one of the weakest goals he’s given up in his entire career.
- After six starts, Demko has an .879 save percentage and a 3.43 goals against average. I understand he’s coming off a weird injury and the team hasn’t been great in front of him, but at what point should we start getting concerned? According to Tocchet, not yet.
- “It was a scramble goal off our defencemen, another one where we’re scrambling and didn’t protect the guts of the ice,” said Tocchet. “He was fine. Demmer’s the least of our problems.”
- Midway through the second, Conor Garland gave the Canucks the 2-1 lead. He came out of the penalty box looking for a breakaway pass from Noah Juulsen, which never came due to the Noah Juulsen of it all. Instead, it came a moment later from Teddy Blueger, who sent Garland in with a great stretch pass. Garland loaded up the slap shot, then took a little off it at the last second to send the puck skidding through Philipp Grubauer’s five-hole — a carbon copy of .
- Sherwood works hard to get under the skin of his opponents but he didn’t have to work too hard when it came to Yanni Gourde, whose paper-thin skin seems to give way at the slightest prodding.
- In Quinn Hughes’ absence, Carson Soucy did his best Hughes impression. I don't mean he stared into the middle distance as if contemplating the pointlessness of existence. I mean that he jumped up in the play, took a pass from Danton Heinen, then patiently drew in the defender before firing a gorgeous cross-seam pass to Boeser for his second goal of the game.
- J.T. Miller certainly liked the pass, giving Soucy a few playful jabs to the chest as if to say, “Where have you been hiding that?”
- If it seemed like Soucy was stepping up to try to provide some offence with Hughes out of the lineup, you’re right. “I think we all thought that a little bit,” said Soucy. “I think it was just a good play by Heins to find me late. Maybe a little bit of a risky pass for me but it worked out. Boes put himself in a pretty good spot.”
- With four minutes left in the second, Conor Garland managed to steal a puck behind the net despite having less reach than an Instagram account with no followers. I’m honestly still marveling at it but it unfortunately resulted in nothing, as the snakebitten Nils Höglander completely fanned on his shot. Despite Garland’s best efforts to make him feel better, Höglander looked furious at himself on the bench.
- The Canucks seemed to salt the game away early in the third period with a goal from Jake DeBrusk — his team-leading 16th goal of the season. Derek Forbort sent the puck ahead to J.T. Miller, who slipped the puck inside to DeBrusk for a breakaway. Debrusk made it look easy with a quick flick into the top shelf, which is also where I keep my quick flicks, which is what I call my collection of short films.
- “I actually don’t think I’ve had a breakaway yet this year,” said DeBrusk. “I just saw it was open and I didn’t want to mess around. It’s kind of my go-to move when I’m in a shootout or on a breakaway. It’s hard to stop. It’s not a hard shot, it’s moreso placement and where the goalie is — it’s pretty impossible. I knew it was in before I shot it, to be honest with you. It just felt right.”
- At one point, the puck knocked the blade out of Kaapo Kakko’s skate, forcing him to push himself to the bench on one knee. Miller, ever the aggravating presence, accidentally-on-purpose got in Kakko’s way. Definitely not the first time has slowed Kakko’s progress.
- Dakota Joshua appeared to give the Canucks a 5-1 lead 20 seconds later but it was determined that he punched the puck into the net with his glove. It could be debated — it appeared to go off his glove and then off his shoulder, which would seem to be allowed — but because the Canucks were wearing their black skate jerseys, it was hard to see exactly where the black puck hit his jersey.
- Up until the final five minutes, the Canucks were playing solid shutdown hockey in the third period, which is what made the collapse all the more shocking. It started with a bad bounce to make it 4-2, as a Jaden Schwartz shot from below the goal line banked in off Noah Juulsen’s butt. That’s just plain bad luck — or maybe it isn’t, according to Tocchet.
- “He’s got to box out Sprong and, if not, he’s got to get out of the blue,” said Tocchet. “Bad things happen when a defenceman stays in the crease. You’ve got to get out. He should have boxed out earlier. He just stayed in the blue and that’s what happens.”
- “Up until the second or third goal, I thought it was honestly a really good game,” said Soucy. “We found ways to create…everyone was doing their job.”
- The Kraken’s third goal hurt. Under pressure on the boards, Juulsen sent a weak pass into a high-danger area. Soucy, however, was first to the puck but instead of getting a solid clear, he tried to flip the puck up into the air, where it was knocked down by Dunn, who snapped it past Demko.
- “It’s an execution play. It’s a breakout, you hit the pocket,” said Tocchet. “Even when we made the mistake, Soucy had it. It’s got to be a hard play, whatever he does. He kind of flipped it and the guy knocked it down. These are execution plays. I’m sure the guys are upset and pissed about it. You have to execute.”
- The game continued to snowball, as the Kraken scored again at 6-on-5 with the empty net behind them. Schwartz darted by Joshua to get to the puck, then drove to the net as the Canucks all reached in with their sticks instead of moving their feet. His initial shot was stopped, but Schwartz kicked the rebound up to his stick to tuck it in. Suddenly, just like when the water is at its highest point on the beach, it was all tied up.
- “You’ve got to protect the guts of the ice,” said Tocchet. “A couple of guys, if we get to the middle, the push gets pushed away. The guts of the ice were wide open and they get a rebound goal. It can’t happen.”
- It was an unreal five minutes. After 55 minutes of solid play, the Canucks simply handed the Kraken the game. Every goal the Kraken scored was a gift: Demko whiffing on a long shot, Juulsen getting caught standing still in the crease to provide a backboard, Juulsen and Soucy failing to clear the puck, and then everyone reaching in and losing the “guts of the ice” on the tying goal.
- “In that five minutes, you can look at every goal — we had the puck, we could have executed a play,” said Tocchet. “We gave away the puck twice with the empty net.”
- The giveaways wouldn’t have been complete if they didn’t give the game away entirely. In overtime, Tyler Myers knocked his man down to steal the puck and lead the rush back up the ice. Both Brock Boeser and J.T. Miller jumped up the ice with him but Myers’ pass split them both: too far ahead of Boeser and too far behind Miller. Dunn took the breakaway pass from Myers and beat Demko past the blocker for his second unassisted goal of the game, which is known as the Law & Order: .
- Tweet of the night goes to visually-impaired singer Jugpreet Bajwa, a diehard Canucks fan who has frequently performed the anthems at Canucks games:
