There hasn’t been a good Vancouver Canucks playoff rival in over a decade. Which is fair enough, as they haven’t had any home playoff games in over a decade, either. It’s time to change that.
Canucks Need Playoffs to Make Rivals
The whole point of changing the NHL playoff format is to create rivalries. There’s nothing in the regular season that can recreate a best-of-seven series. Even when teams played each other a half-dozen times or more, there were often months between games.
Heck, depending on what happens at the trade deadline, teams could change dramatically between meetings. The Battle of Alberta is great to talk about, but if the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames aren’t both in the playoffs the stakes are modest at best. Bragging rights? For what?
Nah, you need the playoffs to get a good hate on. Knowing one team is going to continue while the other goes golfing really adds an edge to the play. We go for the Cup, you go home.
The league has tried – a LOT – to force rivalries in the regular season. It never quite works out because ever since the league expanded beyond 21 teams, they just don’t play each other enough. Of course, only five teams missed the playoffs back then, so meetings in the second season were common.
Memories and Misery
There has been more than one Canucks playoff rival, of course. Any team that’s been in one league for over 50 years should! If you ask fans of the team what moments they remember, as often as not it’s from a playoff game.
There have been great battles with Calgary, but the two teams weren’t at the same place in the standings all that often. It’s hard to be a true rival with a team 30 points away. Watching Matthias Ohlund go head-to-head against Jerome Iginla was worth the price of admission, though.
Arguably the best moment in Canucks history during gameplay might have been in 1994. It’s odd to say, but that run to the Stanley Cup Final may have peaked in the first round. Down in the series 1-3, Vancouver won three overtime games to take the series, capped by one of the best players in their history, Pavel Bure.
For the younger crowd, maybe it was getting past the Chicago Blackhawks in 2011. After being stopped by them in the previous two years, they finally beat Chicago to move on. It took stopping the Blackhawks from a series comeback of their own, but they did it.
How to Win Fans and Influence Paycheques
The Stanley Cup Playoffs are a perfect answer to people who say hockey players “only play for the money.” They don’t get paid for the playoffs, getting biweekly cheques throughout the year instead. Yes, there is prize money, just like other professional leagues have. But it ain’t much.
The NHL has around $22 million total for playoff bonuses and for whichever team wins the President’s Trophy. It’s up to the teams how they want to divide the dosh, but few players notice. Winning the Stanley Cup brings the players around $4 million. Just kept to the players, that’s around $160,000 each.
If you can find a motivated buyer, that might be a down payment for a house in Vancouver. It would be nice if they added their support staff to the list, but again, that’s up to the team. The rings they get, on the other hand, are worth millions. Every team wants to add winners and they’re willing to pay for it.
Who To Hate?
There are approximately ten games left in the regular season, and only a few things have been decided. Any of the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, or Canucks can finish atop the Western Conference. As for who will be waiting for them, there are four, maybe five possibilities.
The next Great Canucks playoff rival is still very much up in the air, even this close to season’s end. You’d think some would be scarier than others, but in reality, it’s been so long that who knows? More to the point, Vancouver isn’t likely to frighten anyone. Not yet, anyways.
No one’s scared of the new kid until they have reason to be. And the Canucks are very much the new kid to the playoffs. So, who’s likely to come to their turf to bully them?
Vegas Golden Knights
Well, at least there’s SOME history between these teams. Granted, it was in the “Bubble Season” of 2020, but it counts. Vegas was heading up the Pacific Division before the regular season was cancelled. They split the season 1-1 and were very close in goals for and against.
As suits a good rivalry, one team was expected to dominate and got punched in the nose instead. Robin Lehner was the surprise playoff starter over Marc-André Fleury on one side. On the other, Jacob Markstrom lost his position to his backup, Thatcher Demko.
A 5-0 first game gave way to a series made of counterpunches and caution. The Canucks eventually fell in seven, but they made a good impression in their playoff return. If this is Vancouver’s first-round match, Demko is their not-very-secret weapon. Vegas’ shooter may still have flashbacks of his allowing two goals on 130 shots.
St. Louis Blues
The last time these two teams played was back in… Oh. The “Bubble Season” of 2020 again. Huh.
Well, the Canucks can take more than one measure of confidence from that year. The Blues were coming off their first Stanley Cup win in team history. The two had met three times in the regular season, all three games being close, hard-fought matches.
“Close, hard-fought matches” was pretty much St. Louis’ calling card, and it was a wake-up call for the Canucks. Markstrom was in for all six games and had an excellent .930 save percentage by the end. It went somewhat worse for Jordan Binnington, getting replaced by Jake Allen.
Prior to that, they met in 2009 when Vancouver swept in four games. Then in 2003, when the Canucks came back from a 1-3 deficit to take the series. They also won their first playoff meeting in 1995. Okay, if the Blues make the playoffs this season, they might be up to win their first set against Vancouver.
Minnesota Wild
Despite what some may think, Vancouver is a rival of the Wild! The question is whether Minnesota is a Canucks playoff rival.
The last time these two teams met in the playoffs was in – of course – 2020. Kind of. It was a play-in round that the league had decided to initiate to compensate for the uneven number of games played when the season was cancelled. It was an elimination set, so it counts.
Vancouver took the best-of-five in four games, but that’s not really what Wild fans remember. What they mostly remember is 2003. They came from behind to beat both the Colorado Avalanche and then the Canucks in their very first playoff appearance.
Booing Todd Bertuzzi – having a playoff villain of their very own – was an added bonus.
That Conference Finals appearance remains the team’s post-season highlight. They’ll have a harder time cheering against local boy Brock Boeser, but they’d love to give it a try.
Nashville Predators
Hey! A team the Canucks DIDN’T face in 2020! It doesn’t look like one they’d want to face in 2024, either. But that’s true of most teams right now: the Predators are currently on a 15-0-2 run. They aren’t likely to be on such a pace a dozen games from now, but…
Nashville and Vancouver have only met once in the playoffs, in the Canucks 2011 Stanley Cup Final run. They met in the second round, and while the Canucks prevailed, the Preds were the very definition of a “hard out.”
Vancouver outscored Nashville 14-11 over six games. Pekka Rinne finished with a .932 save percentage, Roberto Luongo with a .933. The Pred’s top two regular season scorers would have tied for sixth on Vancouver. It was a tense, hard-fought series, rescued by the Canucks’ depth.
Given Nashville’s predilections – that “Smashville” nickname is no lie – there’s every reason to think they’ll be just as hard this season. Yes, Vancouver’s beaten them handily in their three matches. But the last time they played was mid-December. Things have changed since then.
Los Angeles Kings
LA has been just as big a rollercoaster as Nashville this season. The Kings started with the all-time record for consecutive road wins, undermined slightly by a 5-4-3 home record. Still, the old maxim of “you’ll make the playoffs if you’re a .500 road team” was looking good!
Unfortunately, that was followed by a 6-11-6 run that included eight losses in a row. That cushion they built early has saved the year if not Todd McLellan‘s job. They’ve managed to get their hodge-podge team to balance out around the two Immortals (Anže Kopitar and Drew Doughty) and fingers-crossed goaltending.
The Canucks and Kings have played each other a few times in the playoffs, but not for a while. The hazards of a large league and some mediocre play by one or the other. Vancouver’s down 2-3 in overall series, but the last one stung.
In what was, on paper, an easy match saw the Canucks lose 4-1 to the eighth-place team. The Kings used that as a springboard to their first Stanley Cup win, a year after Vancouver fell just short.
The Canucks Biggest Playoff Rival Is…
Sorry to disappoint, but we really won’t know until the season ends. There’s no big “Canucks playoff rival” because they’ve played in front of fans ONCE this decade! And who the fans decide to boo is what makes a rivalry.
After so many years, it’s hard to remember a moment that creates a burning hostility. The more often the team returns to the playoffs, though, the sooner we’ll find that big hit, or bad goal, so slightly dirty play that just aggravates you right. Then, after a few more meetings, it’ll catch fire.
For now? Vancouver’s fans will be more than happy to see where the sparks fly and get them to catch. That is, after all, what fans do best.
Main Photo: Simon Fearn-USA TODAY Sports
