Let’s just get right at the question I keep getting asked.
Yes, this team is a playoff team. But that’s as much about the rest of the Pacific Division as it is about the team itself.
As we saw Thursday, the Calgary Flames just aren’t that good. Neither are the San Jose Sharks — heck their owner admitted this week that the team is still a year at least away from a return to the post-season.
The Anaheim Ducks remain a perpetual work in progress and the Seattle Kraken keep changing their coach. By default the Canucks are at worst the fourth best squad in the division. There are four playoff spots to be had in the division.
And given they have Quinn Hughes, they can always punch higher. Especially if Elias Pettersson returns to past form and Thatcher Demko does the same.
And that looks likely.
There’s also a lesson from Thursday’s win: Hughes didn’t have to be the best player in the game for the Canucks to win.
Three seasons ago, when the Canucks made a late push under Rick Tocchet, the only reason they remained in the chase was because Pettersson, Hughes and J.T. Miller, plus Demko, were the team’s best players night in, night out.
That was not a sustainable way to play. Over the course of a season you need your stars to be your best but some nights you need depth players to have big nights also.
Two seasons ago they made the playoffs because they got just that. Remember how big Dakota Joshua and Nils Höglander were in 2023-24?
We got a glimpse of how things could be on Thursday. Jonathan Lekkerimäki showed how he could be a big secondary difference maker this year. Filip Chytil was the Canucks’ best player. He was the second line centre this team needs.
If things carry on like this, it will be more than a playoff team by default.
On the other hand, if somehow this team is not in the playoffs, something will have gone badly wrong.
Let’s not think about that if we don’t have to.
A very nice moment
Reviews on Evander Kane’s Canucks debut were mixed, but there’s little doubt that the early returns on how he’s working with his young linemates looks good on him. Braeden Cootes has noted how useful it is having such an experienced NHL’er on the bench with him to offer instant feedback. When you talk with Kane, it’s clear how well he sees and understands the game.
And Kane was an 18 year old rookie once himself.
After Thursday’s game, Cootes met up with his family who were at the game. Kane met up with a small group of friends and family nearby. When the veteran was done, he stopped to speak with Cootes’ family as well, no doubt a thrill for a group who were surely Oilers fans until the NHL draft in June.
Evander Kane of the Vancouver Canucks looks on during warmup prior to their NHL game against the Calgary Flames at Rogers Arena on October 9, in Vancouver.
More FIFA shame
Last week we learned about how FIFA is running its own secondary ticket market.
This week we learned that FIFA has been selling crypto tokens that owners thought got them special access to tickets but really just turned out to be a different ticket buying queue and the tickets available for selection weren’t cheap.
As The Guardian put it, FIFA is openly capitalizing on people’s fear of missing out.
Buyer beware for these people, I suppose, but it’s all bit of a very nasty mentality, one that is seeking to exploit and divide rather than unite.
FIFA loves talking about how football unites but this is not that. This is catering to asocial tech-bros. Some of the technology driving our digital life is really amazing but the nefarious underpinnings of it are horrifying. This is the worst of human nature, not the best. It’s something out of a comic book, a genius being turned to evil.
It’s like we’re letting Scarecrow from Batman take the wheel.
Somehow we need to turn this boat around.
pjohnston@postmedia.com