It’s over. It’s finally over.
The 2015-16 season was one of the worst in Canucks history, setting a new franchise low in goals scored and losing a franchise record 51 games. I didn’t think it was possible for the team to get any worse.
I was naive. For the third time in the last four seasons, the Canucks set a new franchise low in goals-per-game. A year after setting a franchise record with 51 losses, they broke it with 52 losses. They scored just 32 power play goals, another ignominious franchise record for a non-lockout year. They had the second-worst power play percentage and second-worst penalty-killing percentage in franchise history.
There were some good moments along the way, don’t get me wrong, but overall the Canucks were so very, very bad.
The Canucks ended the season with an 8-game losing streak, with every regulation loss necessary to drop them below the Arizona Coyotes and New Jersey Devils in the standings. Even a single, solitary point in those final eight games would have bumped them from finishing 29th overall to 27th overall.
The fact that the Canucks are now guaranteed a top-five pick at the upcoming draft is one of the few saving graces of this season. And I watched them meekly accept their reward when I watched this game.
- The Canucks called up Yan-Pavel Laplante from the Alaska Aces as an emergency recall after Troy Stecher (and possibly Griffen Molino) suffered an injury on Saturday. Stecher was good to go, but Molino sat, seemingly giving Laplante the green light to make his NHL debut. Instead, Willie Desjardins elected to go with not one, but two defencemen as forwards: Alex Biega and Philip Larsen. He came all that way just to get laplanted in lapress-box.
- Needing a regulation loss to secure 29th, the Canucks gave fans an early scare when Reid Boucher burst out for a breakaway off a superb pass by Alex Edler. He deked to the backhand and slid the puck between the legs of Laurent Brossoit, then we all breathed a sigh of relief when the puck clanked off the post and was repelled from the cold iron like it was Puck the fairy.
- Midway through the first Ben Hutton sent Michael Chaput a suicide pass that led to Chaput getting rocked with an open ice hit by Eric Gryba. Welling up with protective anger and possibly some guilt, Hutton stepped up for his first ever fight. It wasn’t the smartest thing he’s ever done, as Gryba is 6’4” and a relatively experienced fighter, but on the other hand it negated a 2-on-1 for the Canucks, so it was actually super-smart.
- Henrik Sedin seemed to be in on the tank, setting up Connor McDavid for a breakaway with a giveaway at the Oiler blue line. McDavid, at full-speed, tried to put the puck in between his own legs, for what surely would have been the goal of the season and possibly a career-defining goal like Alex Ovechkin’s behind-the-back wonder-goal or Pavel Bure’s stick-to-skate-to-stick goal, but Richard Bachman decided he didn’t want to show up on McDavid highlight reels for the rest of his life and stuck his blocker out to make the save.
- Another veteran seemingly in on the tank, Alex Edler took a completely needless slashing penalty while shorthanded, gift-wrapping a long 5-on-3 for the Oilers. Luca Sbisa, entirely by accident, got in on the tanking fun, deflecting a Jordan Eberle pass into the net for the opening goal.
- Nikolay Goldobin tied the game early in the third period, finishing off a mid-air pass from Daniel Sedin with some superb hand-eye coordination that also involved all his other body parts, because just a hand and an eye floating down the ice, coordinating together, would be super-creepy. Henrik picked up his 51st point on the goal, tying him with Bo Horvat for the team lead.
- The game wasn’t tied for long, as the Oilers regained the lead off an atrocious turnover by Brock Boeser to Eberle. Pro tip: blindly throwing the puck into the slot in the defensive zone is a bad idea. Actually, that’s not really a pro tip; Boeser should have learned that one in college.
- For a moment, it looked like the Oilers had made it 3-1, but the goal was disallowed when Desjardins (and the quite-animated Sedins) challenged the goal, because Eberle was ruled to be offside as he stepped onto the bench for a line change. Here’s the thing: the officials got the call wrong. Eberle’s skate was still on the ice when the puck was shot in, but he was off the ice before any other Oiler entered the zone. According to the rule, he therefore “cleared” the zone on the delayed offside. It seemed like the refs were so focussed on whether Eberle’s skate was still on the ice when the puck entered the zone that they forgot to ask whether it mattered.
- I couldn’t believe it, but Goldobin wasn’t on the next Sedin shift after he scored: Drew Shore came out instead. It looked like Desjardins had once again benched Goldobin immediately after scoring a goal, but it turned out that he was just rotating Shore and Goldobin on the Sedin line, which is still dumb, but requires less incredulous laughter.
- With Shore and the Sedins on the ice, the Oilers actually made it 3-1: McDavid and Drake Caggiula burst past Daniel and Shore unimpeded off a faceoff. Good thing Goldobin wasn’t on the ice or the Canucks might have been really bad defensively on the play.
- Eberle completed the hattrick early in the third period, finishing off an outstanding backhand pass from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Eberle was wide open in front because Edler had to leave him to check Milan Lucic, who had just badly beaten Bo Horvat off the boards. The hats then rained down onto the ice, prolonging this hockey-god-forsaken season just that little bit longer.
- McDavid tallied his 100th point of the season, setting up Leon Draisaitl on a 3-on-2 after picking off a Goldobin pass at the other end. So maybe Bachman didn’t escape the McDavid highlight reels after all.
- With the final result no longer in doubt, Nikita Tryamkin felt it was safe for the Canucks to score goals again and stepped into a rolling puck off a Horvat faceoff win. Later, on the penalty kill, he rushed the puck end-to-end and put a shot off the outside of the post. These little glimpses from Tryamkin make me wish desperately for a coach that would give the defence the green light to jump up in the play and be more creative offensively.
- For the final faceoff of the Canucks season and possibly the final faceoff of Willie Desjardins’ tenure as head coach of the Canucks, he sent out the line of Jayson Megna, Brandon Sutter, and Michael Chaput. Sticking to his guns to the very last.
- That's it. This Canucks season can't torture us anymore. Now there's an off-season full of intrigue to look forward to: will the Canucks win the draft lottery? Which Canuck will get picked in the expansion draft? How much will the Canucks overpay Erik Gudbranson? How long will it take for Willie Desjardins to get fired? Is anyone else from the coaching staff or management crew going to get the axe? If he's still around, will Jim Benning avoid spending too much in free agency? Will anyone from the Canucks organization actually use the word "rebuild"?
