The Canucks go to war in protecting rookie winger Nils Hoglander

The second meeting of the season between the Vancouver Canucks and the Winnipeg Jets ended with full-out chaos ensuing all over the ice. A flurry of Canucks came to the aid of their rookie forward, Nils Hoglander after he was personally mauled by an angry Derek Forbort.

The Canucks — who were shutout by the Jets — were trailing in the later stages of the game. Travis Green had the Canucks in “desperation mode” trying anything and everything to get Vancouver back in it, and it looked like it was working. The pressure was mounting, the Canucks were closing in on the Jets’ netminder until suddenly things got heated in a hurry.

Hoglander was having himself another high-energy, big impact kind of game. The 20-year-old Swede drove himself hard into the boards and into the 6-foot-4 Forbort — turning while he did it, and clipping him in the face with his shoulder before skating away to make another play.

Forbort would soon lose control of his temper, skating over to Hoglander and giving him a handful of hard cross-checks and slashes. Finally, another big cross-check was enough to send the 5-foot-9 forward crashing down to the ice, Hoglander looking at the referee in frustration for the no-call.

Hoglander took the beating and continued on with the play, but things only escalated from there. Forbort went after Hoglander yet again, and this time he did not let up. He slammed Hoglander hard into the boards before the entire Canucks line wasted no time jumping in between the size mismatch to even the score.

All hell broke loose after that. The Jets attacked the Canucks and there were bodies all over the ice. Headlocks, wrestling matches and fist-fights broke out until finally things calmed down and Hoglander was able to pull himself from underneath the carnage.

The Canucks bench boss was surprised that the Canucks didn’t end up on the power play after the sequence of hacks and hits that were aimed at Hoglander, but he wasn’t surprised at all to see how his team responded to the attack.

“I’m not surprised at their response. You’ve got a big guy going after the smallest guy on the team, our team is going to respond like that,” he said post-game. “He’s a hardnosed little player… he’s not a dirty player by any means, he’s very clean, he plays hard.”

The battle between teams should only set the mood for their rematch at Rogers Arena on Sunday. The Canucks will be back in action wearing their reverse retro jerseys once again, and they’ll be hungry for not only a win against the big, bad Jets, but some sweet, sweet revenge as well.

The third contest of nine between the Canucks and Jets goes down at 7 p.m. Pacific time. Can the Canucks find a way to beat a team they’ve struggled against for years? Find out on Sunday!