The Vancouver Canucks showed plenty of fight Saturday night, but it still ended the same way: another loss, this one a 4-2 defeat to the Oilers.
Vancouver’s losing streak is now up to five, and the record keeps getting uglier at 3-15-1. Still, this was not a night where the Canucks were simply run out of the building.
They settled in as the game went on, made it competitive, and kept pushing until the final horn. In the end, though, they were undone late in the third period by an incorrectly called icing that seemed to wipe out whatever momentum they had built.
Max Sasson got Vancouver on the board with his fifth goal of the season, and Brock Boeser added his seventh late in the third. Leevi Meriläinen made 26 saves on 29 shots in the loss.
Afterward, Manny Malhotra pointed to the little breakdowns that kept his team from finishing the comeback.
"Again, it comes down to those momentary lapses in detail," said Manny Malhotra post-game when asked why his team couldn't pull off the comeback. "Small missed assignments or puck battles.
Those are the things that add up. And eventually, obviously, against a team as high-powered as Edmonton, when you give them those little looks, they are gonna make good on them."
One encouraging sign for Vancouver was the way offense came from all over the lineup. Thirteen players finished with at least one shot on goal, and Drew O'Connor led the group with four. Five more Canucks registered at least two shots, a small but notable step for a team that has struggled badly with depth scoring this season.
The scoring opened late in the first when Mattias Ekholm put Edmonton ahead at 9:14, finishing a play set up by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Vancouver answered just before the intermission when Sasson scored at 19:51, with Jamie Oleksiak and Guillaume Brisebois on the assist.
The second period stayed quiet.
Then Edmonton struck quickly in the third. Jason Dickinson scored 49 seconds in, and Draisaitl made it 3-1 at 4:00. Boeser trimmed the deficit to one with 17:25 left, but Draisaitl sealed it with an empty-net goal at 19:15.
Saturday night can be filed as a frustrating but competitive loss for Vancouver: a strong effort, a close score, and still no points to show for it.
The Canucks are back in action against the Philadelphia Flyers on November 9, 2026, at 7:30 pm PCT.
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