And so, as the Vancouver Canucks lose a game in which they probably deserved better, falling 3-2 to the Edmonton Oilers in regulation, we begin a new season and launch a new version of The Athletic Vancouver’s Canucks postgamer.
The format will feel familiar, but obviously, tragically, the voice behind it will be different.
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The Athletties were Jason Botchford’s singular masterpiece. It was the Vancouver hockey zeitgeist, self-contained and electric.
It can’t be replaced. It can never be recreated.
That’s the thing about a towering achievement of hockey reporting and entertainment like The Athletties — it deserves to be remembered as such.
It also deserves to be retired: to remain Jason’s forevermore.
And yet we’ve committed to carrying on the type of obsessive, unique, irreverent, fun, collectivist postgame content experience the VIPs demand and expect from The Athletic Vancouver.
We’re calling it The Armies, because there’s no one person who can come in and do this job. Like rebuilding an NHL team, it’s going to take an army.
Thankfully in Wyatt Arndt, Harman Dayal, me and you, the VIPs who faithfully read Jason’s work, we believe we have that army.
We’ll be collaborating throughout the season, working together to create something distinct, but recognizable. Something that pays tribute to what came before, but that’s durable enough to pave its own way.
Welcome to The Armies.
Ultimate game breaker, breaks games
Connor McDavid is basically Game Genie. A human cheat code.
Over the past three seasons, McDavid has outscored the second closest NHL player, Nikita Kucherov, by 27 points at even-strength. He’s literally leaps and bounds more lethal than any other hockey-playing human on the planet.
Now, look, Vancouver would want the tail end of the lengthy defensive shift that resulted in McDavid smashing through their defence and scoring the game-winner back. There were several compounding mistakes by a variety of Canucks skaters that lead to the goal. Still, this was a goal that only McDavid could score.
Let’s start with the bad. Brandon Sutter, who otherwise had a pretty decent game, coming out even on the shot clock despite being Vancouver’s preferred matchup for Leon Draisaitl and spending six additional minutes checking McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. After Quinn Hughes blocked a shot, Sutter thought he had an open outlet pass to a streaking — streaking being a relative term here — Loui Eriksson on the left flank.
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He didn’t. Matt Benning squeezed, the puck was quickly turned over and McDavid went the other way.
“We managed to get it at least out of the zone and they made a nice play in the neutral zone,” Sutter said of how he viewed the sequence. “Their (defenceman) quick upped (a pass) to maybe Draisaitl and he bumped it to Connor and he was coming full steam and we just didn’t quite have the close in the middle, but … we were just maybe half a step too late.”
He’s dead on, but still, when you watch this, that neutral zone turnover will drive you crazy:
There’s a bit more to this play than first meets the eye though.
Yes, the Canucks are tired here. Most of the skaters were on the ice for a minute when McDavid scored.
They also, to a man, started to change. Watch it again and you’ll see Josh Leivo jump off the ice while Brock Boeser jumps on to eat the empty dash.
You’ll also see Chris Tanev drift out of position, drift too far wide to get properly back for more than a stick lift against a physics-defying bullet train like McDavid — a man who seems to bend space and time the way you or I put one foot in front of the other.
Hughes told the media postgame that he was also looking toward the bench.
“I think that can happen to you at any level,” Hughes said of him and Tanev both looking to change, once Sutter got the puck out of the zone. “Guys come down on you fast and hard and it’s a pretty routine play off of turnovers. It was kind of a weird play.”
Sutter obviously needs to do better with the pass, and it’s probably worth noting that he didn’t play another shift in the game after this goal.
And even with all of that, Tanev was still able to disrupt McDavid with a stick lift. Hughes even managed to play the puck away from McDavid, before the Oilers captain roofed the puck over Jacob Markstrom.
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“I felt like I got a piece of my stick on the puck there and then I think he got a good bounce there (to retain possession),” Hughes said.
Sometimes errors compound and you get burned, especially when you’re facing the best offensive talent in the world.
Just, wow
“He’s got a lot of speed and you know he’s coming at you and he’s gonna make a play,” Hughes said of how he viewed the McDavid goal. “Honestly I don’t really expect anything else from him.”
“Not anyone else in the world to be honest with you (moves the way he does),” Horvat said. “It’s pretty crazy to see his top-end speed and even how fast he gets there, and there’s a reason why he’s the fastest guy out there and the best player in the league.”
Sometimes video doesn’t even do the pace at which McDavid moves proper justice.
For example, here’s McDavid one stride after receiving the puck in the neutral zone. Tanev is a bit too far out, but Hughes is still back there and he’s level with the centre.
Except another half a stride later, McDavid has already burned that centre and it’s now clear just how much trouble Tanev — a top-end skater in his own right — is in.
Half a stride later, Sutter is completely out of the play, Tanev is cooked and Hughes’ best last-ditch effort to get his stick on the puck seems like an improbable desperation play.
That Hughes actually got as close as he did to knocking the puck away from McDavid is a testament to the quality of his stick.
This is just superhuman stuff:
Best tribute to ‘The Shift’
It almost felt like one of those three-on-three overtimes from last season, the way Hughes & Co. had the puck on a string at the end of the first period.
They put the Oilers’ defence into a Sedin-like torture chambre for 2:04 and saw a partial line change that was enabled while Vancouver’s two most exciting players, Hughes and Elias Pettersson, played catch.
Hughes was dynamic throughout, and drove the entire play by activating down from the point, beating a defender wide and firing a shot attempt from in tight.
Hughes’ ability to keep the puck alive on multiple occasions was pretty stunning, but the real magic began at the tail end of the above video after he batted a clearing attempt out of mid-air to keep the possession alive.
Hughes receives the puck by the half-wall, completes a 180-degree turn, walks the length of the blue line and does another 180-degree turn to fend off Colby Cave before resetting the puck back to the point for Pettersson who whips it across for Tanev with time and space.
“He’s a special player and he does a lot of special things out there,” said Bo Horvat when asked about Hughes’ shift. “Deking guys out, he’s such an efficient skater so it doesn’t take him much to get around guys and it’s encouraging for sure having a young guy lead the charge like that. Having shifts like that and having guys like that to turn the tide and young guys that are gonna push the pace is huge for our group.”
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“We had them on the ropes that shift for sure,” summarized Green.
Moments and shifts like these, where talented players are able to express their offensive creativity is not just exciting for the fans watching, but for the young guns involved too.
“It’s really fun, there was a moment in the third period when I thought to myself ‘this is pretty fun’ and the moment to start the game where the crowd was going crazy, I was saying to myself ‘I haven’t seen anything like this yet’ so it was pretty cool,” said Hughes.
What’s perhaps most exciting though, is that Hughes thinks the Canucks’ core is just getting started.
“There’s gonna be shifts like that throughout the year for sure because there’s a lot of good players on the team, a lot of smart players and I think you’re only going to see us get better. I told someone this morning, I think by game 30 you’re really going to see us be at our best. Not that we’re not (at our best) right now, but I think as the season goes on we’ll get better and better and I think that’s just us making plays and using our creativity in the o-zone.”
Best trolling
There’s simply no way this person is a Canucks fan, and that makes it amazing:
They're runnin wild in Edmonton@TheStanchion pic.twitter.com/wrPR9AMN28
— BabychStache (@mcclain_cody) October 3, 2019
You know you’re committed to trolling when you put on a rival Western Canadian franchise’s sweater for the purpose of mocking fans of that team. True excellence requires sacrifice.
Best stamina
What’s arguably most impressive about that play is Hughes dances the zone with his series of turns and pivots really late into his shift. In fact, he’d been on the ice for well past a minute when he decided to change sides and dipsy doodle around Colby Cave.
“(That’s) probably conditioning from the last month and at the same time, just work and I think it’s pretty easy for me to skate so I think that also plays into it too,” Hughes rationalized.
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He certainly looks like he can play all day. After logging over 23 minutes in the Canucks’ season opener, it seems I may have been too conservative in my prediction that he’d lead the club in ice time over the last 30 games or so.
That might come even sooner.
Best playmaking
It’s the ultimate compliment you can give a player: we expect Horvat to take noticeable steps forward with his game on an annual basis.
There’s been nothing but a linear progression with Horvat’s development. Whether he’s rounding out his offensive game or steadily improving his two-way game, Horvat’s progress as a player marches forward inexorably.
Which is perhaps why we need to look at his vision and playmaking on Wednesday night and wonder if this might be the next area that Horvat really steps it up.
After all, Horvat set up at least four excellent chances that could have all led to goals.
It began with a waist-high saucer pass to spring JT Miller on a breakaway in the first period.
“I had to get it up and get it there quickly and it had to be a hard pass so kudos to him for handling it,” said Horvat.
This sequence was a sweet hook-pass to hit a streaking Tanner Pearson on the weak side. It wasn’t the only example of Horvat’s lateral vision tonight, though.
Horvat’s always been a strong north-south player, particularly when he can use his speed and size in transition, but with space taken away on this occasion, he made a slick feed across the slot to Miller who almost set up Pearson. One is left to wonder if it might’ve been a game-sealing goal had it not been for Mike Smith grabbing Pearson’s stick.
Later, there was a play from Gretzky’s office behind the net where he perfectly saw, timed and executed a pass to Pearson for a one-timer just as he was attacking the slot — Smith making three incredible saves.
You don’t want to read too much into one game, but could this be the first sign of Horvat diversifying his offensive game further?
We know he can take the puck to the net, but the ability to create chances when the middle is well-protected could be a big development for the Canucks second line.
“I think confidence is the best word to use in that situation and just being confident in yourself and confident in your abilities that you’re going to make the plays,” explained Horvat. “I felt more and more comfortable out there, especially with my linemates and knowing each others’ games we were snapping around pretty good and had some really good offensive zone shifts and that’s an encouraging sign.”
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Speaking of his linemates, Miller and Pearson did a great job of finding the right seams and making themselves available in the right positions. After all, a playmaker is only as good as the skaters he’s setting up.
“They know where to be on the ice all the time and so they’re hitting holes and screaming for pucks and making my job a lot easier to try and find them,” Horvat said.
Eight alternate captains??!!?
As we await the announcement of the Canucks’ 80-game captain for the 2019-20 season at the club’s home opener on Wednesday, the delayed captaincy decision has caused confused speculation in the Vancouver market.
Obviously the Canucks tweet on the matter confused people, but all hell really broke loose when Baby Dragon got his wires crossed in a text message exchange with Canucks PR, causing a proper Canucks Twitter meltdown.
Following up on Wednesday morning, in an attempt to clarify the situation, the following amicable exchange resulted
Drance: Travis, some confusion in the Vancouver market after the four As were announced. Not looking for state secrets, but will the captain be picked from that group?
Travis: Guess you’ll have to be at the game on Wednesday night to find out. Might be four As still after that game, there might not be.
Drance: Are you able to do four As?
Travis: Yeah, you can do eight As, you just rotate them around. Whatever you want.
Drance: But you haven’t made a decision on the rotations for home and away?
Travis: I’ve made a decision.
Drance: Who will be wearing As tonight?
Travis: You’ll find out when you get to the game.
P.J.: Did you consider doing eight As?
Travis: No. We done?
Reading the captaincy tea leaves
Now here’s the thing, as we look to get to the bottom of this: we all think we know who the next Canucks captain is. And we may have got a pretty significant indication of how the alternate captains will rotate on Wednesday night too.
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You see NHL rules limit a club with a captain, which the Canucks have said they will have for the latter 80 games of the season, to two alternate captains per game. If you don’t have a captain you can have three alternates for a game.
So on Wednesday night the Canucks had Horvat wearing an A, Edler wearing an A and Tanev wearing an A.
Sutter didn’t have a letter, but perhaps he will at home.
As it stands we have no confirmation about who the captain will be. The Canucks won’t even confirm for us if the players all know — though surely they do.
But from how the Canucks leadership group adorned their sweaters on Wednesday, I’d probably suggest that if Horvat has his letter modified next week, Edler may be a full-time alternate, while Tanev and Sutter rotate between home and away games.
That’s my bet, anyway.
The LTI thing
There’s an important distinction that’s worth noting when discussing the technical state of the Canucks roster, particularly as it pertains to injured forward Antoine Roussel.
Let’s start with what’s simple: as of this writing, the Canucks have 22 men on their active roster: 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, 2 goaltenders.
When they submitted their 23-man roster list ahead of Tuesday’s 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT deadline, their roster was frozen until after they played a game. Now that they’ve done so, they’re able to recall and reassign players again.
On Wednesday, the club placed Tyler Motte on regular injured reserve (IR). He continues to count against the salary cap, but he has to miss at least a week worth of games — which was his timeline anyway, according to Travis Green’s comments on Tuesday.
Which brings us to Roussel. Roussel is, in fact, “on” long-term injured reserve (LTI). The Canucks, however, haven’t replaced his spot on the roster.
And so, as it stands, Roussel is “on” LTI, but the Canucks aren’t “in” LTI – in that they’re below the accruable limit and are still tolling daily space.
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That could change in the days and weeks ahead. It could change in the hours ahead.
That’s simply where it stands at the moment.
The retirement ceremony and the dawn of a new era
Some great memories were shared on Twitter today.
People DM’d me to tell me about all the times they made The Provies or The Athletties. There were people who had stories, how they’d given Botch a nugget of information that he’d run down. How much pride they felt in being part of the incomparable work he did.
We launched some polls after Wyatt announced we were introducing a new gamer tonight. The old heads rode hard once more, insisting loudly that Baby Dragon and Boat Captain are the finest nicknames in the land.
Baby Dragon/Boat Captain should be running away with this…
— MegaNuck (@MegaNuck) October 2, 2019
Excellent feuds were remembered — like the one between Jason and the only guy who’s ever visited Vancouver and come away terrified of the rowdiness at Starbucks:
Botch vs Dejan October 3, 2019
We remembered the days of epic back-patting, and longed for them to return rather than have us be forced to engage in another spat about Tim Schaller:
Write-in vote for the Jannik Hansen wars
— jackson (@failsonmcdonald) October 3, 2019
There were game-appropriate suggestions:
“Sea of Granlunds” for bottom 6. Classic Botch !
— Trevor Cutler (@TrevCutler) October 2, 2019
Granlund played tonight! He PKs for the Oilers! Somehow despite playing his former team today, he wasn’t really around during morning skate. How does that even happen?
Finally, there were indecisive suggestions that actually said something poignant about how plentiful the good times were:
There really should be an all of the above option for these
— Spencer Gillis (@spencergillis) October 3, 2019
And so the puck has dropped on the 2019-20 season and a new era has dawned.
Amid the chaos of those losing seasons, when all we could hear was the thunder of #BenningBros and #TeamTank arguing, and all we could smell was bad takes in the air, we look back and we’re amazed that your thoughts were so clear and true.
That three words went through our mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.
(Matthew Henderson)
— The Athletic’s Harman Dayal contributed to this report.
(Photo of Horvat: Codie McLachlan / Getty Images)