VANCOUVER — Trailing significantly as the clock wound down on a tremendous season for the hockey club on Monday night, the finally began to play in the Edmonton end of the rink late in Game 7.
They just couldn’t score enough, or early enough. They didn’t generate enough scoring chances.
This time the magic that powered this incredible playoff run over the past month wore off. This time that final bounce to tie the game eluded them. Instead, it bounced harmlessly off of ’s skate.
You wouldn’t say Vancouver got goalie’d in Game 7. Not by , the netminder the Canucks had previously chased from this series.
They were outplayed in the first half. They couldn’t score on the power play late in the first. Brock Boeser’s absence was too much to overcome, both in terms of his impact as this team’s leading scorer, and in terms of the emotional toll of losing a long-tenured member of this club.
Ultimately the Canucks fell short because as solid as they were defensively, as deep as they were in goal, as large as they were on the back end, as clutch as they were throughout the postseason, this Canucks team didn’t have enough offensive pop.
Without Boeser and with several star players appearing to be limited physically, the Canucks ran out of bounces and ran out of answers offensively in Game 7 against the . And in Game 6. And more often than not in this 13-game playoff run, in truth, until the endgame stage of contests.
After the game concluded, Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet was able to reflect on what the club accomplished. On the buy-in, and the progress that this team made.
“They put respect back into this city and into this jersey,” Tocchet said of what this team accomplished.
He’s right, of course. Why wouldn’t the Canucks feel that way?
This isn’t a team that snuck into the playoffs and was fortunate to win a round. This version of the Canucks crushed all reasonable expectations this season.
They won 50 games, for just the third time in franchise history. They won the Pacific Division, for the first time in franchise history.
They were heavily favoured in their first-round series and managed to advance. They had home ice against the Oilers — a preseason Stanley Cup favourite — and lost by a single goal in Game 7, even if the game wasn’t quite as close as the scoreline indicates.
Regardless of how this Canucks team’s season ended — scoring just three goals with two opportunities to advance to the Conference Final in a pair of losses in Game 6 and Game 7 — what this Canucks team achieved this season was nothing short of incredible.
A dream campaign from nose to tail, bookended by a shocking victory over the Oilers in the regular season opener and a disappointing loss on Monday night to end their season.
The way this campaign ended shouldn’t obscure the magnitude of what this team accomplished.
This is a team that forged a clear identity, levelled up defensively, learned how to win games as a collective and in so doing — as Tocchet rightly pointed out — renewed public faith in the Canucks brand in one of the most eccentric, madcap hockey markets on the planet.
What we saw during the playoffs, the unique passion and atmosphere at Rogers Arena that noted pregame is “different” from what’s common around the league, is part of this Canucks team’s legacy now.
They’re the group that bought it back. That turned things the other way.
We have to recognize and appreciate that accomplishment, and note the magic of this playoff run prominently.
The clutch victories. The sacrifice. The resilience. The completely bought-in, cult-like determination with which this team played.
We can acknowledge that while also noting that where a Game 7 loss on Monday would’ve been uniquely devastating for an Oilers team locked into a win-now posture, when the final buzzer sounded on Monday, it still felt like Vancouver was playing with house money.
The postgame reception, the cheers from the fans even in defeat at Rogers Arena, made for a wonderful moment. A fitting capstone on an entire season that felt like a dream.
The still widespread and justified sense that this team has accomplished more than what was reasonable hints at the reality that there’s another level for the Canucks to get to.
This Canucks team was built to make the playoffs if everything goes right, and over the course of this postseason run, they shed that level. Surpassed it.
This is a team that showed that they could win big games even with key injuries mounting, and star players underperforming, and a sputtering power play.
There’s a start in that, a platform off which to build something grander and greater. And more ambitious.
The sort of team that can control play and take leads, as opposed to clawing back from them.
This really has to be the start. The start of a sustained run of contention. The start of a project to build a team capable of being considered an inner circle Stanley Cup contender, as opposed to a plucky try-hard with the gumption to upset the big dogs.
If this team gets to where it wants to be, after all, the next time they lose in the second round it will be considered the sort of disappointment that Edmonton fans are exhaling to have only somewhat narrowly avoided.
The work to get the Canucks to that point won’t be easy. It will be hard enough to simply run in place and keep this team together, much less improve it to the point of taking that next step.
That effort will be complicated, too, by the sharp way that Canucks management hedged their bets going into this season.
Even as Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin and president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford went about relentlessly lifting this club’s floor, improving their penalty-killing options and depth and overall talent level following the buyout last summer, they were very careful about committing term to all but this club’s most important, core-level pieces.
If this season had gone the other way, that discipline would’ve given Vancouver the flexibility to rapidly shift course. Given the team’s inconsistency in previous seasons, the conservatism with which this club was built was both well thought out and justified.
There is a cost, however, to the effective and prudent approach Canucks management took.
While the team has significant flexibility going into this offseason and a relatively untangled salary cap situation with which to continue to tweak and upgrade this roster, the lack of long-term commitments also means that some of the upside that the Canucks netted from depth contributors this season and throughout the playoffs isn’t locked in.
Key contributors throughout this campaign, from , to , to , to , to Nikita Zadorov, to , to Ian Cole and Myers are on expiring contracts. To a man, they’ve all set themselves up to be in-demand players on the open market, or to increase their compensation sharply in the event that they’re retained by the Canucks.
The rising tide of this hockey team will float the boats of the individuals who contributed to that winning, especially those poised to cash in this offseason. That’s how the salary cap works against good teams. It’s a sort of natural gravity that is going to make this group difficult to maintain, much less upgrade this offseason.
Canucks management has a long to-do list as this season winds down. They will surely have to renovate — or even outright rebuild — Vancouver’s defence corps.
They’ll have to maintain or replace, at potentially significant expense, the size advantage that players like Zadorov, Myers and Joshua brought to the Vancouver lineup, which made such a difference in heavier games this spring. And the defensive acuity and two-way value that Lindholm brought to the lineup.
They’ll have to work through handling Hronek’s next contract. That’s a sticky one given his robust arbitration case, inconsistent playoff performance and the significant futures the club parted with to acquire him. Finding an agreeable resolution with Hronek will be a major test of the club’s resolve and ingenuity.
Canucks management will even face some gut-wrenching, fascinating decisions in net. Silovs is a pending restricted free agent who has made a strong case to be a full-time option next season, and yet he remains waiver exempt.
Silovs’ precocious development and solid playoff performance mean that he’d make a ton of sense on the surface as a high-usage backup to Thatcher Demko next season. On the other hand, his unique waiver status — it’s rare for an obvious NHL-level netminder to be waiver exempt — also gives Vancouver an opportunity to load up on depth at a decisive position where rest, and wear and tear can so significantly shape outcomes.
And all of those decisions would be made simply in the service of maintaining this current Canucks group, which, truthfully, needs an offensive upgrade. It’s clear that this team is going to need to generate shots and scoring chances at a far higher rate before they’re considered among the handful of Stanley Cup favourites for next season.
Some of that might come internally. The club is surely going to need to count on internal replacements, with players like Vasili Podkolzin, and even, perhaps, options to contribute and offset the probable departure of at least some key depth pieces this summer. Even if those players are ready to contribute, the Canucks will still need even more firepower at the top of their lineup.
To break into that next tier of contending teams, to make sure that the next time the Canucks meet the Oilers in the playoffs they defeat them, this team is going to need more dynamic and creative options for and to play with than , Phil Di Giuseppe and Lafferty.
And given all of the futures that the Canucks parted with over the past 12 months to build this team, they won’t be playing with a full hand in attempting to identify and acquire more potential difference makers in the top six.
This is really where the rubber will meet the road for Vancouver this summer. This is a team with an elite and still mostly young-enough core group that showed that they can combine to win games in bunches at the NHL level this season, provided that their supporting cast is robust enough.
To take that next step, to push deeper into the postseason next time, and to be expected too, Vancouver’s stars are going to need more than just quality glue guys supporting them. This team will also need more high-wattage offensive weaponry to get to that next level.
Over four weeks in the Stanley Cup playoffs, this Canucks team made magicvancouver canucks fans. In Vancouver and in the NHL, the Canucks franchise matters again.
Now our attention turns to this summer, and what comes next. There are pieces in place to get to that next level. Meaningful cap flexibility heading into the offseason for the first time in what feels like forever for this hockey club.
For all of the progress and promise of this dream-like Canucks season, the reality is that maintaining this group’s current level will be a significant task. Doing more than that is outright daunting.
That has to be the expectation though. The logic behind what this season represents. This has to be just the start.
For a fan base that has endured any number of false dawns over the past decade, this season felt special.
The task at hand for the Canucks now is to take the success of this season, and make it something durable too.
(Photo: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)fake leafs jersey
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