Vancouver Canucks gameday: 3 keys to victory over Oilers

A Saturday night matchup with the Edmonton Oilers is usually marked on every calendar in Vancouver Canucks fandom. But these days, the rivalry doesn’t have much energy.

For a generation, the Wayne Gretzky-era Oilers were Goliath to the Vancouver Canucks David. Eventually, the pendulum swung the other way and, during the height of the Sedinery days, the Canucks would decimate the Oilers on a regularly basis. All signs pointed to a reversal of that trend as Connor McDavid promised to put the Oilers on his shoulders and carry them to the Stanley Cup.

And yet. Here we are at the midway point of the season and there is no Stanley Cup in either team’s immediate future. There is no Goliath here, just a couple of sadsack Davids trying to figure out where the heck they are going.

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So as this Clash of the anything-but-Titans looms, let’s take a look at three storylines to follow on Saturday night.

Let’s Shake Some Dust

Fans of early 00’s late night TV will recognize the above line from the eerie HBO series Carnivale. The story followed the trials and tribulations of a travelling carnival, replete with chaos, disaster, and dark magic. Both the Oilers and Canucks could probably screen the series for a reflection of their own seasons, albeit for different reasons.

The carnival’s story centered around the arrival of a young man who was plainly the ‘chosen one’ and for whom the rest of the troupe had to endure many sacrifices. All was undertaken to allow the boy to fulfill his destiny, on the belief that all would benefit so long as the boy blossomed into the savior he was expected to become. I don’t remember the boy’s name, but for our purposes let’s call him Connor McDavid.

Yes, the Oilers have bet the house on McDavid, and made some questionable decisions based on that decision. McDavid’s contract is a mammoth, but the kid is good enough to probably justify it. Leon Draisaitl‘s contract, however, looks a little less like wisdom. Milan Lucic‘s contract is an uproariously funny bungle, leaving the Oilers weighed down for big money and big years by a well-past-his-prime power forward.

Other roster moves (from Taylor Hall to Jordan Eberle and everywhere in between) have left some to conclude that Peter Chiarelli is the worst general manager in the National Hockey League.

Yes, the Vancouver Canucks are one of the only teams whose hapless efforts at rebuilding might look as bleak as the Oilers’ do.

The Canucks’ media and fanbase is tearing itself apart in an effort to fairly assess this mess, with Benning’s defenders claiming that he has re-stocked the prospect pool and gradually turned around a mess inherited from the previous regime. His critics contend that four seasons of hopeless hockey should have been used to make that rebuild happen, instead of trying to squeak into the playoffs with expensive but mediocre players like Brandon Sutter and Loui Eriksson.

Whichever way you slice it, these are two of the worst teams in the NHL right now, and both must be feeling a bit like HBO’s unfortunate travelling carnival. For the Oilers, their situation is a shock – they were supposed to be a powerhouse this season – and both the team and its followers seem to be unable to process the disaster. For the Canucks, it feels like death by a thousand cuts, the stench of mediocrity that just cannot be shaken despite the emergence of rookie sensation Brock Boeser.

Bye Bye Bye

When NSync released “Bye Bye Bye,” Brock Boeser was a three year old and the NHL bye week did not exist. Nearly two decades later, the song still sucks, but the NHL has introduced the one-week hiatus for each team in the midwinter. It’s still new, and sorta weird, like Justin Timberlake’s first steps into his solo career. But the players like it, and fans certainly enjoy speculating about whether so-and-so should be doing such-and-such at some sunny place.

Yes, Jake Virtanen and McDavid were in Vegas. Twitter naysayers insist that they shouldn’t have been partying it up mid-season but I contend that they were just trying to soak up some of whatever has the Knights crushing the Western Conference.

After Saturday’s game, one fanbase will get to claim “you see, our boys know how to let off some steam and then get back into game shape” and the other fanbase will say “you see, this is exactly why they shouldn’t have been off partying” and everyone will go home feeling like they’ve made their point.

The reality is, both teams are likely to be rusty after the holiday, just as most teams tend to be after the Christmas and All-Star breaks.

It isn’t always easy to offer a fair assessment of the role of a head coach, but one could make the claim that this game, following the bye week, is a bit of a test of the head coach. Will Travis Green be able to get his players ready to play? Whose legs will be fresh and who will be recovering from the Vegas Flu? The answer to that question will almost certainly be the team that comes away with two points.

The Injury Bug and It’s Inscrutable Effects

You know what I tire of hearing? That the Vancouver Canucks have struggled this season because of injuries. You know why I tire of hearing it? Because I have heard it for three years running.

It can’t always be injuries.

Losing Bo Horvat for several weeks has been tough, of course, because he’s a good young player who works hard and is emerging as a leader for the younger generation. And the Canucks had to face stretches of time without Chris Tanev and Alex Edler, their two best defenders. Beyond that, let’s be sober in our assessment of the injury bug.

Sven Baertschi? Good young player but by no means essential. Brandon Sutter? Overhyped bottom-six defensive centre who can chew minutes but is no game breaker. Derek Dorsett? He was a great story in the early part of this season and I don’t want to take anything away from that. But if you’re pinning a pitiful season on the loss of Derek Dorsett then you have really lost the plot.

Injuries happen to every team.

The Oilers lost their only real NHL goaltender when Cam Talbot went down with injury in late November. It had a notable effect. Friday, they announced that their leading goal-scorer, centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, will be out for 4-6 weeks with a sternum injury. It’s a loss they will feel.

But it is part of the game, and it happens to every team. Neither of these teams’ failures can be chalked up to injuries, and Canucks fans in particular would be wise to stop accepting this tired excuse.

A Few tank Final tank Thoughts

These are two teams in big trouble. There’s no way around that. Some fans probably don’t mind so much; after all, the big prize in the 2018 draft is a franchise-altering superstar in Rasmus Dahlin. Others in the top ten look like potential elite players.

But even if the draft implications are positive, there is still cause for serious concern in both camps.

For the Oilers, there is an aura of disorientation and confusion. It really wasn’t supposed to be like this. Edmonton is a tough market for players – many have said as much after leaving – and the media can be brutal. It feels increasingly like a toxic relationship where good players face hostility as soon as they struggle, which then feeds and exacerbates their problems, only ramping up the level of criticism they face. The collective crisis in Edmonton hockey is mounting.

Meanwhile in Vancouver there is growing doubt that the rebuild is making real progress at all.

Were we supposed to win this year? No. Losing games is not the problem here. But losing with a roster full of plugs? Losing with Nic Dowd as your high-minute forward? Losing when you’re dressing Alex Biega as a seventh defender? Losing when two of the best players in the AHL are still in the AHL?

The concern for Vancouver Canucks fans is that this team should be developing its young core. We should be seeing the strides, we should be catching glimpses of what is to come.

With one Brocktacular exception, that hasn’t happened.

It doesn’t matter what Sutter or Thomas Vanek or Sam Gagner do because none of these players are part of the rebuild. It matters what Horvat, Virtanen, Ben Hutton and others do. Two have remained steady (Bo and Troy Stecher), two have struggled with their, and their coaches, confidence (Hutton and Derrick Pouliot), two have been given limited minutes and trust (Jake and especially Goldy) and one has only been given six periods in the NHL.

Travis Green’s job this season is not to win games, it’s to finish the season with the above players having made marked steps towards being a new core. I haven’t seen it, and that’s on the organization. I’ve seen one rookie emerge as a phenom – Brock Boeser of course – and I believe he did it in spite of the coach not because of him. This is the cloud of concern that hangs over the Vancouver Canucks going into Saturday’s game.

Next: Stop hating on Olli Juolevi

But hey, it could be worse right? We could be the team that has the best hockey player in the world and still has a losing record. See you on Saturday.