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Canucks Coffee: Can't someone throw a hit here?

Brock Boeser's mad. Drew O'Connor needs to throw a hit. And empty seats in Vancouver in a rebuild? OK. But empty seats in Edmonton? My word.

Published Oct 23, 2026  •  Last updated 12 hours ago  •  4 minute read

Brock Boeser says 'It’s the same stuff game after game. I don’t know where the disconnect is.' Photo by Steph Chambers /Getty Images

I caught up with a couple friends after Thursday’s putrid 5-2 loss for the rebuilding Canucks versus the Red Wings.

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They, like just about every Canucks fan I know, fully accept what a rebuild means. They know that wins are not going to be common. They just want to see some heart and hustle in the Canucks’ game.

And they were as baffled as anyone that no one stepped forward to give the game a jolt. As the Canucks slithered their way through the second, a period where the spark in the Canucks seemed to snuff itself out, surely one of the guys who cares could have found a way to throw a big hit. To rip a heavy shot off. No one is saying go and get in a fight, but even that spirit would have helped. Surely.

Their disappointment was matched by the players in the Canucks’ room after the game: a swath of despondent looking players struggling for answers.

Take Brock Boeser, who does believe there’s talent in the room:

“It’s the same stuff game after game. I don’t know where the disconnect is, if guys in here aren’t listening to what the coaches are preaching on our style of play, or some of our structure is not working, or what it is. But it’s embarrassing,” he said.

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He didn’t even want to lean a little on some of the good things that had shown up in the previous four games, all losses, but at least in those games the Canucks were in a tie or even a lead after 40 minutes.

“Even in those games, the sum still feels off,” he replied. “We’re still not generating offence, not getting enough shots, so something’s not working. And I don’t know if guys don’t listen or, like I said, structure, something in the structure we need to fix or what it is. But we definitely have a lot better in this room.”

Drew O’Connor said that the team needs someone, somehow, to find a spark.

“Someone coming up with a big play, big hit, to get our bench going. We just need something,” he said.

After the fourth Detroit goal, Boeser was seen slamming a stick in frustration. As mediocre as the Canucks had been offensively in that period, they’d had enough possession to think that even at 3-1 down and without a shot on goal since Elias Pettersson’s first period power play goal, that they were just one shot away from making the game 3-2. Instead they lost a couple puck battles and just couldn’t defend their space at all as the Red Wings whipped the puck around the Canucks’ zone to set up a floating point shot for Michael Rasmussen to tip past Kevin Lankinen; Rasmussen had used his size to box out Canucks defender Victor Mancini.

“We have some bad changes and we don’t set each other up and, you know, it’s small details,” Boeser said of what he was feeling in that moment of frustration. “All these things I’m talking about are little details of the game … you know, roll lines over and create momentum and stuff. I feel like we’re constantly just sitting back on our heels and they’re just coming down our throats.”

There were a lot of empty seats at The Rog on Thursday.

There have been lots of empty seats in arenas with really good teams, too, like in Edmonton and Vegas.

It doesn’t take too much thinking to realize the superficial problem is how everyone’s lives are going: inflation has been rampant, wages haven’t kept up, we’re in an economic bubble being driven by a technology that employs few people and is, indeed, supposedly designed to reduce the amount of people working and further consolidate the economy’s money in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

People’s disposable income is tight. Tighter than ever.

But beyond that is how teams have shifted their ticket sales approach. They’ve rewritten their equations to figure out how to maximize per-fan spend in the arena. As many will point out, especially in other cities, fans can pay easily $100 before the game even starts because of parking and other affiliated transportation costs.

Then the drinks and food in the arena bleed your wallet. And then there’s the upfront costs of tickets — which are often hard to lock down game to game given how much teams have taken to dynamic pricing.

It’s why every team is chasing improving their premium offerings: there’s just more money to be made off even a few handfuls of high-spending fans than there are in the regular fans who just want a beer and a hotdog and their seat.

Pro sports are more and more being focused in on the wealthy and bleeding them, and less about the rest of us.

Is there a breaking point here?

It’s real crunch time for Manny Malhotra and his coaching staff. The NHL is a tough league and applying the principles that drive the game at this level are hard to nail down.

They’re going to have to find a way to coax their roster into a playing style that fits with what these players can do and who they’re playing against.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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