Wake With Elias- Oct 6, 2021: Fourget About Last Night’s Game

It’s not that they didn’t get chances last night, though to be honest Phillip Grubauer had not a save that could be deemed as spectacular. Spending a big chunk of the game on the penalty kill, combined with a pretty significant portion of their opening night roster in the press box made things even easier for the Seattle Kraken, who cruised to a 4-0 win last night in Vancouver.

Between injuries and the holdouts of Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, we still haven’t seen anything close to what this Canucks team should be operating like this season, but with a back to back against the Edmonton Oilers Thursday and Saturday, we’re going to at least get a better idea of what to expect. What was encouraging was that with this many AHL players in the lineup, the Canucks were better 5 on 5 than Seattle, and an early post by Jack Rathbone that might have changed the complexion of this game had it gone in.

We didn’t get a lot out of the lineup the Canucks iced last night, but there were some pretty noticeable things, most importantly that this was probably the most impactful game from Vasily Podkolzin thus far. While it remains to be seen whether he starts the year with the Canucks or down the highway in Abbotsford, you can see he’s starting to adjust to the pace of the NHL game and his role to begin his career with Vancouver.

Patience will be rewarded here.

Others who had decent nights in spite of the outcome were Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Justin Dowling, as well as Jason Dickinson and Phillip Di Guiseppe (who are really building some chemistry together on that 3rd line). Olli Juolevi was better last night, but he’s getting outplayed consistently by Jack Rathbone, who is just about a lock to start the year with Vancouver at this point.

Will Lockwood may be a victim of the numbers game, but you can count on him to be one of the first callups when injuries strike. The Canucks were downright dominant with Lockwood on the ice against the Kraken, and they probably deserved a better fate.

Here’s a look at some of the other Canucks stories making the rounds this morning:

- Conor Garland is packing a whole lot into his not actually 5’10” frame

- Pucks On Net with a look at the strangely reassuring feeling of (maybe) only having one bad contract to worry about this season...

- And finally, we’d like to officially welcome Davy Jones’ Locker Room to the SBN family. Dan Morse is putting together a crew there that will do a fine job of covering Seattle’s sparkly new NHL franchise (and we’ll be having a chat with him soon to learn more about our new frenemies), so swing by and say hello if you get a chance! And follow them on Twitter, too!