Cineux Central Friday. It's Dan Riccio and Bick Nizzare here in the Kintech studio. Cineux Central is for enzyme-specific Vancouver's premier Chrysler Dodge Ram and Jeep Superstore on 2nd Avenue between Canby and Maine or at enzyme-specific-crisler.ca. Satty R. Shaw taking a maintenance day and why not with the weather as it is outside? He knew what he was doing. Yeah. Fett's savvy there from Sat. It's like when you see the forecast and you're like, "Ooh, it's going to be sunny. Let me go make a tea time. Nope. All taken. Pretty much." Is that what you tried to do? Generally, yeah. That sounded too odd at least with Cineux. We had one this morning. I had to bail on it, yeah. And reach had to bail. I did. I had a busy morning. Ouch. Dom and I completely canceled it. You were too broken out. Really? Like you, too. I'm the glue guy apparently. Wow. Well, I wanted to go and Tom was like, "Well, don't only our first round of the year should be with reach." Oh. Wow. Dom, very sentimental. Yeah, that's really deep. All right, this took a turn to a place I didn't expect it to go. How are you, Bick? Excellent. Awesome. Weather's good. Team's in first place. Canux play Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals tomorrow. Oh, he's coming to town. He's what? 54 goals away from Wayne Gretzky's record? 55? Well, 54 from tying. Yes. 55 from breaking. So still a ways to go. He's not breaking it tomorrow night. We don't think. But probably when he is about to break it, the Canucks will be on the schedule. All right. So I tried doing the math a couple of years ago, because traditionally, Washington always comes to Vancouver in the first two months of the season. Yes. And he kind of averaged out like 37 goals a season for X-Men of seasons. I think it worked out to like the fall of 2026. Yeah. He could be in Vancouver for it. Now, I did that a couple of years ago. I haven't done it here recently, but... We still all remember Gretzky. And if you don't remember it, you've seen the highlights. So when he broke Gordy House record, and that's where things are at right now with Alexander Ovechkin. It's not a great team, but we'll get into it. It's time for the Open here on Canucks Central. Welcome to the Open. That's your home. Are you too good for your home? Answer me. The Vancouver Canucks, getting ready for the Washington Capitals, continuing this nine game road trip after the bitter sting of coffin up a three goal lead to the Colorado Avalanche and losing it over time the other night. It, you know, one thing that having the schedule spaced out like this does and a game of... I mean, it's one of 82, but because of the opponent, because they're a recent Stanley Cup champion, because they're another contender in the Western Conference, there is an amplified microscope on Wednesday night, and because of the lack of another game happening around it, like we had a long lead up to the Colorado game, and now we have a long sort of discharge from the Colorado game. Sitting in the filth, that is a loss against another Western Conference hopeful. It's probably where you can get yourself into trouble, like overthinking something was Wednesday night good. No, it wasn't. The third period was objectively poor by the Vancouver Canucks, and they arguably got what they deserved in giving up their three goal lead, even with some of the questionable calls from the officiating. Now, a couple of things, though, about how things are playing out since Wednesday night. As much as I'm trying to temper my reaction to Wednesday, it feels as though... The coach is not so pleased with that result, and maybe with some things that he's seeing in general. Now, I'm reading the tea leaves based off of what Rick Talkett has been saying in the media, and sort of seeing how this team is progressing towards the postseason, but after Wednesday night, he was like, "Man, after the first period, I thought I was a genius given these guys two days off." Now, I'm like, "There's no way we are taking any more days off until our next game." Our practice is immediately. Can I tell you what's miracle the day before? Another lap. We're practicing, and we're practicing hard these next couple of days. There's a fight at practice yesterday because they had a battle drill going on, and maybe Philopronic wants Connor Garland's spot on the top power play unit. Who knows, but it's taken a different tone from what we saw earlier in the week, where, "Hey, you guys just beat the snot of the Winnipeg Jets. You earned a couple of days off, go rest, recharge, enjoy some time with your family. Make sure to be ready for Wednesday night's game. They were ready for the start, but weren't ready to close it out." But yesterday, it seemed like Talkett is keeping his foot on the gas pedal and how he is managing this squad right now, and then there was another quote from today. I'm not sure if we have it yet, but he was asked about the schedule right now and being at home for as long as they are and how it's a quirk of the schedule. NHL players are creatures of routine. They like to play every other day. They like the odd road trip because that's what they're used to, and here they are sitting at home for a month. They're going to have a lot of downtime, and it's going to be a little bit different than their regular schedules. How do you keep them going? And for Talkett, he sees it as this is a huge opportunity. This is our chance to get in some good practices, and we've got to get some guys out of third and fourth gear and end of fifth gear because we've only got 15 games to go. And I'm hearing this, and I feel as though it appears to me, Rick Talkett doesn't... Or he's not sure yet if everybody on this roster is ready for playoff hockey and what's going to come once they get past April 18th in the season finale. So I don't know if it's so much a reaction to Wednesday, as much as it is, you have to just get ready for playoff hockey. Yeah. Because to be fair to Rick Talkett, and the team as a whole has really brought to this philosophy too, they are very good at brushing what just happened away fairly quickly and looking ahead to the next game. Not even, hey, these next handful of Montreal Buffalo Calgary, just, hey, Washington is next. And this idea of, okay, the horizon of playoffs is eventually going to come at some point. So not so much that we can't compete against the Colorado's. You should just get ready for the playoffs anyways. And you're now at a stage where we mentioned this. And I break up the seasons in 20, 40, 20. The final 20 is the race. You got to start ramping it up and he's laid these markers since January, since before the all-star break, you're mentioning, yeah, it's going to ramp up, it's going to ramp up. Well, now you're in that phase of it has to ramp up. And as much as it is about Wednesday, I think it's more about the internal messaging and the internal output that has to happen for this team to say, oh, right, we do need to gear up. Nice to their credit, heave, most notably, Queen Hughes and JT Miller. Yes. Like Queen Hughes had a phenomenal game on Saturday and you can see, okay, it's on its way to trending in a spot. JT has been kind of doing this all-star break, maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit. Start break. Yeah. I think you even go a couple of games before then, but it's been trending. He's been their best player since the all-star break. Yeah. So since the all-star break, he's been trending up. After that, yeah, you can start asking a lot of questions about a lot of different guys. Not that they haven't been good enough to get results and they've been fine. But if you're expected to achieve come playoff time, I look at this more of a, this is the standard we have to set rather than, hey, you were bad for stretches on Wednesday. It's not a team that has a ton of recent playoff experience. Mm-hmm. Well, or real playoff experience, like, I look at the bubble and I think you can take something out of it. Yeah. But I don't think you can take everything out of it. Any player that has playoff experience, it was pretty much not with this team, right? Like JT Miller's got playoff experience. He's been to a Stanley Cup final, but it was with the New York Rangers. He's had playoff experience with Tampa Bay and he had the bubble experience with Vancouver. Ian Cole is, I think, in the top 20, top 15 of active players and total playoff games played because he's basically going to the postseason every single year of his career. And so I know he's going to get what's coming to him come the end of April. But beyond that, I'm not sure, right? Myers has had some playoff experience, sure. But also, again, hasn't been for a while yet since the Canucks haven't been in the playoffs, really outside of the bubble with most of this core. So you're looking at this and guys have some spurts here and there. You know, Ilya McCabe's played in the playoffs with Toronto and Lafferty in the playoffs with Toronto. Sure. You can go through the lineup. Don't need to do it. Liesland home playoff experience. Some of it. Carson Soussey last year was Seattle, but this team as a group hasn't had that. And I'm looking most at, I guess, Elias Pederson right now by his own admittance. He wasn't great the other night against the Colorado Avalanche and his game. It's been at a good level all year. He's had some games where he's ticking it up a notch. But since the All-Star break, we haven't seen Ilya's Pederson go. He started to come out of it after signing the contract and then has this little bit of a setback here against Colorado. We are probably over, no, we aren't probably, we are over analyzing Ilya's Pederson's game. But that's a player. I think I personally need to see to kick it up another gear to really feel comfortable about the Canucks making noise in the playoffs. So the comment today, and actually, while we're talking about Ilya's Pederson, because he's such a, right now he's a pole rising figure at the Canucks Canucks players, which is interesting to say the least. Do you think part of the conversation here of, and hear the statement today from, from Tockett is when we get into conversations about it and fans texting all the time about Ilya's Pederson 2, do you think part of it is some fans don't see the fifth gear from Ilya's Pederson, like don't believe he has a fifth gear, like just this is it, like this is who he is. Whereas people like you and I, although here recently you've been a bit more vocal about it. Yes. I've been a little bit more critical than some others I guess. Natural Pederson defenders would say, okay, like maybe he hasn't been in beyond fourth of the gear, but if he, if he maintains in third gear, like you're talking about a hundred point player, and there's a belief amongst people like us that would say, when he gets to that fifth gear, watch out, like if he can do this in third gear, wait till the playoffs, he'll torque it off. And now you're really going to see the value in, in that. And the only chance we've had is bubble playoffs, which is not regular season games, it's not a rainy Tuesday night in Stoke or rainy Tuesday night in Columbus. Yeah. But it was, it was more impactful than regular season games, so maybe not to the level of normal playoff games. So, so there's something there. The GM of this team who was with the Pittsburgh Penguins at the time has specifically discounted what the bubble playoffs were. Sure. And it wasn't part of the Canucks at the time, but they're not regular season games. They're not natural playoff games. They're somewhere in the middle. Yes. And he did raise his game in that level. Yes. But do you think part of the conversation of why there's such a discrepancy in the attitude at times around Elias Patterson from fans is, can he get to that fifth level, that fifth year? I feel like they haven't seen it enough, right? And there's a part of this that, okay, now we've seen the contract get signed $11.6 million. He is about as highly paid as almost anyone else in the league. It's only a million dollars off what McDavid and McKinnon are making. It's no longer theoretical, right? Now it's like he belonged, we have to judge him on that team. Yeah. And he's only a million dollars off what those guys are making, but he feels like he's $4 million off what those guys are making right now. And you know, that's a hard, you know, bridge for him to gap because those guys are in a tier of their own, right? As the top, top, top players in the league and Patterson is in a second tier. So like, you know, a lot of other star players are in a second tier behind those guys. But you know what? You can't fully judge it on the contracts because that's just how contracts work. It's not what you're worth in somebody's eye. It is what you're able to negotiate. Patterson had incredible negotiating power, which is why we all feel like at $11.6 million, he even took a bit of a discount compared to what he could probably command in a negotiation if he really wanted to push the Canucks a little bit harder. He probably could have. So with that in mind, you're still looking for a player that's going to feel like a $12 million player. And I know he can get there. It's just felt like we haven't seen it in a while. I know he was what second star of the month in January and he had a really good hot stretch through that Eastern road swing, he scored that great goal in New York against the Rangers. Hit some really big games. I think he totaled what 14 goals in the month or something ridiculous through the month of January. And yet a lot of people still felt like, yeah, there's, there's still more that he can give. And one of those things has to be the power play where we've seen the shot just rip through goal tenders, look like it's going to rip through the mesh of a net when he really gets a hold of one. And we haven't seen that dynamism of the shot on the power play. It's affecting the team's results. It's affecting their ability to be a team like Colorado, put them away maybe or regain the lead after it goes three, three the other night. And the power play and where it's at right now, I think has a direct correlation with how we feel about Alias Patterson and where his game is at. You want him to take more control of that situation of those advantages and he hasn't been able to. One power play goal for Alias Patterson since the All-Star break, right? Yeah. Now the power play on a whole is struggled, but his contribution has been muted. But we've seen like, even when the, the power play scores, it's like Quinn Hughes will do something insane, Miller will just be like, you know what, I'm, I'm just going to take it myself and he'll, he'll do it. Patterson doesn't have those moments on the power play. He doesn't just like grab the bull by the horns and just be like, okay, guys, like, all right, we're all kind of scuffling right now. I'm just going to pick it up. Yeah. Well, it's because he doesn't handle the puck in the power play. Yeah. Like that for me is a big thing. And we were talking about it yesterday on the round table. It's, he gets relegated to, and I say this tongue and teeth a bit of like, you're just the shot. I'm everything they're looking for, but he doesn't really over the handle the puck. No, because you got very qualified guys in JT Miller and Quinn Hughes, but when you're not handling the puck, what opportunities do you have to be the one that wants to grab the, the power play by the scruff of the neck and say, like, okay, I'm going to go create it. Yeah. Because other guys are just going to be more puck dominant on, on the power play. Now, is that something that needs to evolve? It's something I've wanted to see from Patterson or at least from coaching staffs, not even just this one from previous ones as well, from, from, from going back to Travis to Bruce as well, nobody's really allowed Patterson to be a playmaking factor on the power play. Yeah. So that, that, that chance to do that, it, it feels like you'd be breaking protocol almost to say, if a retrieval went his way and he gets it, it's like, all right, well, now I'm going to do it. Is it within the structure of what they're supposed to do? Yeah. So when he has tried those things, he screws it up, you know, he'll try to gain the entry and make a, a fun move at the, at the offensive blue. And it turns out to be a chance going the other way. We saw that with the, the weird stretch of games where they were giving up a bunch of short handed goals. There was, and there has been moments when he's on the half wall. He doesn't have the shot. He's looking for a pass and he tries to pass through people in order to get it backdoor. The pass isn't really there and it ends up being a turnover. Like, we've seen those moments and hey, he's not the only one on the power play that's committing these errors. Everybody is. It's, it's been a team effort in the downfall of this, of this power play, but you've, I've noticed it more with Pedersen than others personally. And the power play remains my biggest concern going into the playoffs, among other things. Because for as much as yeah, they need to kick it into another gear, like defensively they play well, you know, the, the breakdowns that they normally have are turnovers and bad areas, uh, almost self made errors, um, taking bad penalties. Sometimes it's a bad whistle. Like we saw the other night that puts you down five on three against Nathan McKinnon. So good luck with that. But generally they still defend well structurally. It's almost like their muscle memory now is to defend well as a team. And that's a huge positive, which makes the power play sort of puzzling because this is, this was supposed to be their separator coming into the year. And what's kept them atop the Pacific division is how much the rest of their game has come around in spite of their power play dropping off. And yet the power play remained the same at practice today though. Talk it did say Lindholm will eventually get another look on power play one. All right. There's a couple of other things we wanted to get to. And I know big wanted to get in on Hunter Bruce Devitch. There was a couple of things Elliot reported on with 32 thoughts that were interesting. And one was that the Canucks started to question the signability of Hunter Bruce Devitch. Great word. Yes. Signability. Is that even a word? I don't even know. It is now. It is now. Elliot Friedman made it a word. Uh, he can do that because he's for each, um, so Vancouver did worry about signability and Hunter Bruce Devitch was on our, uh, partner station sports at nine, 60 in Calgary flame stock and mentioned this about how he feels being in Calgary versus the opportunity he may have had in Vancouver. I see a lot of, you know, potential and just excitement out of myself. Uh, I just can't wait to get out there, compete by, you know, my butt off, but, uh, I just, yeah, I see a lot of potential potential of myself getting in there either. It's the AHL or the NHL, whatever it is, and that's obviously the goal. Um, I see more potential here than I did see in Vancouver. So it's, it's great. I just, uh, yeah, I can't wait to, you know, see myself in a flange jersey one day. So Bruce Devitch was, uh, if not the top, uh, piece going to Calgary right there, I guess with the first round pick because of how he's played this year as a big scoring defenseman in the OHL, but it is an interesting clip. He sees more potential in Calgary and I just, I simply just take that as maybe an easier path to the NHL than there is in Vancouver at this moment. Yeah. But isn't that kind of a odd? Yes. Yeah. You're 19 years old. Are you kidding? And by the way, I want to be very clear here. Like I am pro player mobility, right? Yeah. If a player wants to say like, if he believes that he's got a better chance elsewhere and there's a team willing to give it to him and you can find a way to make work, I'm wishing Hunter, Bruce Davis, the best in his career, but it's also, it's like, you're 19 years old. Yeah. And he's very qualified, he's going to be, I think, a very interesting player to watch developer the next couple of years. If you're good enough, the depth chart takes care of itself. Yep. The players sort out the depth chart as much as the coaches have, you know, ideas who they want to play. If someone's significantly better than someone, they're not going to limit the kind to play this fourth pairing plugger over someone like him. The only like roadblock I see for Hunter, Bruce Devitch is Quinn Hughes on power play one. All right. Like there is no right shot defense and then are like signed in the organization right now other than Noah Julesen. But if you think you're going to be a power play one guy, but I know how far down the road, this guy is old, you're already considering that in Calgary, it might not be that far down the road. I don't know. Mackenzie Weger's pretty good. I don't know. You know, he's like the leading goal scorer amongst defenseman in 30 and a draft that's loaded with demon, Calgary might have one of the best picks, sure. And they might just be like, Oh, you know what? This power play demon who's also having to be right handed, let's draft him. Like you don't know what's going to happen in two years to order to be that concerned about down the road, like all the opportunities are going to be there for me. I just thought it was wild. Apologies. Correction mom. I sell kelma car leads the defenseman in goals. Kenzie Weger's at 15 and been stuck on 15 for a while. You're so right about that, Dick. And it just, you know, not to like, no, I'm not doing the thing of like, Oh, it's a good thing they got rid of out of the organization or anything like that. But like, that's a very interesting comment to say like, I'm already picturing and clearly qualified. He's having a fantastic season again. But the idea of like, this is where I see these paths, it might be a scenario where the connection may have capitalized on a situation where rather have it fester and make it worse that does his value decrease where they cash in an opportunity. It does feel like a cash in an opportunity part because I mean, he's having a great year in the OHL. He looks to be a player that's got a lot of potential as an offensive talent. But anybody, any expert that I follow with the OHL really likes his offensive talents and his offensive gifts. But they still have a lot of questions about his overall game and eventually you're going to get to the NHL and your overall game has got to be at least some kind of a level that teams are willing to carry you as a power play specialist kind of guy. You know, we've seen how quickly it's fallen off for Tyson Barry in that sort of a situation and Tyson Barry's had a fantastic career. He's made a lot of money. So I'm not really disputing that. It's just you are looking in my opinion. This is a player who's very confident in himself, but look at the next step on the ladder rather than 10 steps up on the ladder is more where I would picture this because you've still got time in the O, you got time in the A probably and then an NHL chance before you're working up that ladder, which is the hardest rung of ladders to move up on. So the point now I'm like actively excited to see where he plays next season and when he plays in the NHL because if he's got that much confidence, man, like, okay, maybe he's going to be a spectacular player, but if you're going to be a spectacular player, the power play thing would have sorted itself out or the opportunities would have sorted itself out. We've got more to get to some other things on the Vancouver Canucks, including an update on Phillip Ronik, but we're going to have Ian McIntyre join us coming up next on Canucks
