A Win, a Smile, and a Glimmer of Hope in Vancouver: Canucks Find Light Amid a Tough Season
Let’s be honest - it’s been a rough couple of years for the Vancouver Canucks. The mood around the team has often mirrored the Pacific Northwest weather: grey, heavy, and hard to shake.
From last season into this one, the locker room has felt more like a pressure cooker than a place where athletes live out their dreams. Disappointment, frustration, even sadness - those have been the dominant vibes.
But sometimes, all it takes is one win to shift the energy, even if just a little.
That’s what happened after the Canucks pulled off a strong 2-0 win over the high-flying Anaheim Ducks on Thursday night. It didn’t move the needle in the standings - Vancouver’s still sitting at the bottom of the league - but it did something arguably just as important: it lifted the mood.
The following day, Liam Ohgren gave fans a rare glimpse of levity. Spotting Elias Pettersson - the defenseman, not the forward - surrounded by reporters in the locker room, Ohgren grabbed a goalie stick and jokingly extended it into the scrum like he was a reporter himself.
It was a small moment, but a telling one. For a team that’s spent the better part of the last decade grinding through adversity, a little laughter goes a long way.
Even during their flashes of success in 2024, the Canucks rarely let their guard down. The tone around the team has been serious, often rightfully so.
But as any athlete will tell you, there’s a balance to be struck. You need to stay focused and driven, but you also need to remember why you started playing in the first place.
That’s the tightrope the Canucks are walking right now - trying to improve, trying to climb out of the league’s basement, but also trying to keep perspective. This is the NHL.
This is the dream. They’re not working construction in the rain or staring at spreadsheets all day.
They’re playing hockey. And even when the wins aren’t coming, that’s worth remembering.
Head coach Adam Foote knows the grind of a long season, especially when the results aren’t there. He’s seen how the weight of losing can wear on a team - the repetition, the frustration, the feeling of spinning your wheels.
That’s where morale becomes a coaching challenge, not just a player one. And Foote believes the best way to lift morale is simple: win a game.
“We’re gonna have our bumps in the road, but hopefully we don’t stay in those ruts as long,” Foote said.
That’s the goal now - to shorten the ruts, to keep the process front and center even when the scoreboard doesn’t cooperate. And based on how the Canucks played against Anaheim, there’s reason to believe the message is getting through.
The effort was there. The structure was there.
And for once, the result was there too.
It was almost poetic that this brief mood shift came just as the Toronto Maple Leafs - a team dealing with its own brand of collapse - rolled into town. And in the middle of it all was former Canuck Oliver Ekman-Larsson, enjoying a personal resurgence and piling up points like he’s turned back the clock ten years.
For Vancouver, that’s a reminder of how quickly things can change in this league - for better or worse. Right now, the Canucks are still in the thick of the struggle.
But a win like Thursday’s? That’s how the climb starts.
One step, one smile, one goalie stick in a media scrum at a time.