Wednesday October 9 - Vancouver Canucks 8 - Los Angeles Kings 2
The Bo Horvat era is off to a good start!
The Vancouver Canucks celebrated the coronation of the franchise's 14th captain with an 8-2 shellacking of the Los Angeles Kings at their home opener at Rogers Arena on Wednesday night.
Here are your highlights:
The opening ceremonies were well-received, with representatives from the Canucks' 50-year history sprinkled into the player introductions, in the respective uniforms of their eras. Dennis Kearns repped the 70s, Stan Smyl was the man of the 80s, Kirk McLean stood for the 90s, Todd Bertuzzi returned to celebrate the 2000s and Daniel Sedin honoured the 2010s.
Bertuzzi got one of the biggest cheers of the night. Both player and fans seem to have finally made peace.
Next, Henrik Sedin and ageless Orland Kurtenbach handed Horvat his new jersey with the "C". Kurtenbach's now 83, y'all!
My most emotional moment, for sure, was seeing Bo's father Tim wipe his eyes. He has been there every step of the way.
My story about the rise fo the New York-area hockey teams this season
posted this morning over at Forbes SportsMoney. One of the quotes that didn't make it in was from Rangers analyst Dave Maloney, when I asked him if Mika Zibanejad was the team's captain-in-waiting after his eight-point weekend and first star of the week award.
Maloney captained the Rangers himself from 1978 to 1980, starting when he was just 22 years old. With that in mind, I thought his answer was interesting — and also related to the Canucks' situation.
My observation on all that is that a team has to develop a culture. There are still a lot of moving parts in the Ranger culture. A lot of new bodies, a lot of young bodies and it's going to take a little bit of time before everyone in the room can acknowledge who is their, for lack of a better word, spokesman.
At the present point, the most visible entity from that standpoint is David Quinn. And it's still David Quinn and his staff's job or responsibility. He acknowledges that he has to create that culture and then hand it over—hand the room over. But the room needs time to kind of grow organically.
(Zibanejad) would certainly be the leading candidate. What you need from a leader, amongst other things, is if he's a really good player, he's certainly going to have a louder voice in the room. And on a lot of fronts, Mika has the characteristics and the instincts. He's a little quieter. He's not going to be a guy that's going to stand up and take someone to task, and yet if you have a mature room, that type of leadership certainly works.
So, to answer your question, i don't think there's anything impending. I do think it's an important role and it's a traditional role in the sport, but I don't think it's impending that he necessarily or anyone else necessarily will be named captain. But he certainly would be a legitimate choice.
Interesting that he brought up the coach building a culture, then handing it over. David Quinn, of course, is in his second season with the Rangers, while Travis Green is in Year 3 here in Vancouver. I've mostly thought about the captaincy as a process of succeeding Henrik, but I suppose it also makes sense that Bo now takes the torch as the carrier of the culture that Green has built.
For all the challenges that the Canucks have endured in their history, it is pretty cool that the line of succession through the captaincies over the decades has been pretty impressive — ignoring, of course, he who must not be named...and Roberto Luongo.
You never know how a team is going to come out after a lengthy ceremony and with the weight of expectations already heavy on their shoulders after losses in Edmonton in Calgary. But Jacob Markstrom made a couple of early saves, then Tim Schaller drew the first power play of the game after he was tripped by Sean Walker at the 3:36 mark.
PP2 went to work — and Quinn Hughes showed that you don't have to be Shea Weber to score with a slap shot from the point. His first career NHL goal was a beauty.
Brandon Sutter picked up his first of two on the night before the end of the first period. After that, the floodgates opened. Despite being outshot 39-25 on the night, the Canucks torched Jonathan Quick for eight goals for the first time in his career. With his team on a back-to-back, Quick didn't get much help from his defensemen. But after giving up 14 goals in his first two starts, there's no indication yet that he's going to bounce back from his tough season last year, when he finished with a 3.38 goals-against average and .888 save percentage in 46 games played.
When the dust had settled, J.T. Miller finished the night as the game's first star thanks to a goal and three assists — his first career four-point game — plus two hits, two takeaways and a blocked shot. His new assignment on Elias Pettersson's line seems to be suiting him well.
Petey picked up his first goal of the year, and Brock Boeser tallied an assist.
Sounds like Miller is also finding his way in the room. From what I saw at training camp, he seems like an amiable dude, and I like his nickname game.
In university, we had a friend named Hugh who I liked to call "Hug-uh," so I like the way Miller is thinking here.
The other Canucks' goals came from Chris Tanev, Alex Edler and Josh Leivo, all in the third period when the game was broken wide open.
Jeff Paterson uncovered a couple of interesting historical facts on the night:
I was at that game!
And this...
A reminder — last year, the Canucks got 27 goals in 82 games from their defense — 12 percent of their total output of 225. It's definitely early, but right now they're at 4 for 10 in three games — 40 percent of the total output and tracking for 109 if they can maintain that production over an 82-game schedule.
Easy to miss in all the offensive excitement — Jacob Markstrom has picked up where he left off last season. Even though he's 1-2-0 to start the year, Markstrom's .922 save percentage and 2.38 goals-against average are both nice upticks from last season's .912 and 2.77. Markstrom currently sits 16th in the league in both categories, with a number of the goalies above him enjoying inflated stats after just one game of action.
If Markstrom can stay in the top 16 once the sample size grows, and the Canucks can keep the offense rolling after opening the dam on Wednesday night, maybe playoffs are a possibility?
With sunshine and blue skies outside and the Thanksgiving long weekend coming into view, it's a good day to kick back and savour a most satisfying win. The Canucks are off today. I have a feeling everyone will be gripping their sticks a little looser when they get back on the ice for practice on Friday.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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