𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

NEWARK, N.J. — Just two days after trading defenceman Quinn Hughes in a stunning blockbuster with the Minnesota Wild, the Vancouver Canucks took the ice for a game in Newark, N.J., and beat the New Jersey Devils 2-1.

It was a fun result for a team that’s struggled mightily this season and, in their peculiar Canucks style, has matched that complete lack of on-ice success with captivating off-ice drama, which culminated in a franchise-altering trade on Friday.

Even better than the result was the overwhelmingly positive first impression that the three players Vancouver netted for Hughes — centre Marco Rossi, defenceman Zeev Buium and winger Liam Öhgren — made in their Canucks debuts.

Buium was the headline piece of the return and made the most significant contribution to Vancouver’s victory on Sunday. The 20-year-old defender played a top-four role on a pair with Tyler Myers and logged over 17 five-on-five minutes, continuing to take a shift late into the third period even as Vancouver shakily hung onto a one-goal lead.

The rookie defender recorded two power-play points, which will draw most of the attention from the box score watchers, but the points didn’t accurately capture the value he provided in his Vancouver debut. Installed on the point of the first power-play unit, Buium picked up a primary assist on a play in which he missed Conor Garland with a pass from the point to the right flank. That pass was off-target enough that Garland had to circle back toward the blue line to gather it before firing a high-to-low pass to Jake DeBrusk at the net front. DeBrusk’s first shot was stopped by Jacob Markström, but he was able to roof his own rebound to open the scoring for Vancouver.

Later on in the period, after Öhgren won a foot race to a puck and drew a boarding call on Devils winger Stefan Noesen, Buium attempted a cross-seam pass to the net front, which would’ve missed Brock Boeser harmlessly if not for Devils defender Brenden Dillon deflecting the puck into his own net.

The fortunate nature of Buium’s production shouldn’t obscure how impressive his first game in a Canucks sweater was. He was stout defensively, sharp and smooth in transition and even threw a big hit early in the game on Jesper Bratt, evidence of Buium’s potential to be a well-rounded two-way defender as he matures.

“He jumped right in, it seemed very seamless for him,” said Myers, who partnered with Buium throughout the afternoon, of his first impression. “I was telling him to use his skating, it’s a big strength for him and you could tell even when I’d played against him earlier in the year, and he used it tonight.

“That Bratt hit was great. We came back to the bench and you could tell everyone was all excited. He got into it early.”

Elsewhere, Rossi offered the Canucks meaningful stability down the middle of their forward group. It seemed telling that after the game, when Canucks head coach Adam Foote was asked about Buium, he quickly brought the discussion back around to Rossi.

“Zeev was good, he’s got confidence, he’s so young, but you saw him walk the line and you saw his swag. You need to have it to run a power play like that, and he has it, and it was nice to watch, but I just also liked Rossi, like, a lot,” Foote said. “He plays it the right way. He’s very predictable, he comes up high, he does his job, he makes the right play. When it’s time to pass, he passes, when it’s time to shoot, he shoots … What I like is he plays the odds, he’s got the percentages down … So he’s just a smart hockey brain.”

One can understand, given the options the Canucks head coach has had at centre since Vancouver’s sixth game of the season, why Rossi’s reliable, north-south-skilled game would stand out in his mind as such a significant addition to the lineup. And Rossi wasn’t even entirely up to speed from a stamina perspective on Sunday either, given it was the first game he’s played since sustaining an injury more than a month ago while still with the Wild.

As for Öhgren, his contributions were more muted than Vancouver’s other two additions, which is to be expected given that he debuted in a fourth-line energy role. Öhgren’s physical tools, however, were unmistakable when he was on the ice: his speed, size and motor impressed.

When the final whistle blew and Vancouver managed its surprising regulation victory, this new era was off to a winning start. That the team itself was able to turn the page on the Hughes era makes something of a fresh, feel-good start to what comes next for the Canucks.

Looking beyond a results-based or emotional analysis of what Sunday’s victory meant, however, we have to focus on the big picture. As the Canucks must as well.

In some ways, this was a perfect outcome for the Canucks at the tail end of a historically tough weekend for both the franchise and its beleaguered fans. The club’s new additions performed well, the club got a victory that felt like a fresh start and at no point did the Canucks look like the sort of side that might be capable of climbing out of the NHL cellar and walk through the back door of the Western Conference playoff race in the months ahead.

Sure, there were things to like about Vancouver’s new lineup. All of Buium, Rossi and Öhgren bring pace, and the club felt like a deeper team in the wake of Friday’s three-for-one trade. Thatcher Demko was sharp, although the Devils hit multiple posts and seemed out of sorts offensively, and we know the Canucks goaltender has the potential to steal results in bunches when he’s available and on his game. The Rossi addition, especially as he ramps up to full capacity, is an particularly fascinating one given the Canucks have spent the past couple of months treading water without a baseline level of NHL functionality down the middle of their forward group.

It’s fair to note that Vancouver’s biggest Achilles’ heel — its lack of NHL-quality centres — will receive a significant shot in the arm once Rossi’s addition is furthered by Elias Pettersson’s return to the lineup.

Nonetheless, the seams of what is likely to ail the Canucks in the short term were evident throughout Sunday’s game. In particular, Hughes is a unique game-breaker capable of functioning as a standalone driver of play and offence from the back end like no other defenceman on the planet. There’s a reason why, over the years, we’ve typically bisected our analysis of the Canucks to discuss Hughes’ five-on-five minutes separately from what we’ve long discussed as the “non-Hughes minutes.”

Well, they’re all non-Hughes minutes now, and on Sunday, you could tell.

Vancouver beat a Devils team that was playing the second leg of a back-to-back and has struggled offensively in the absence of Jack Hughes — Sunday’s game was the sixth time in New Jersey’s last 16 games that it has failed to score more than one goal —  but the Canucks were outscored at five-on-five and generated little in the way of a sustained attack at even strength throughout the game. Vancouver registered only seven shots in the latter two periods of the contest, and created fewer expected goals in 50 five-on-five minutes than it generated in any other game this season, according to Natural Stat Trick

Even when this team was rolling during the 2023-24 campaign — before the drama with J.T. Miller, or the uncertainty with Hughes, or the departure of Rick Tocchet — the Canucks were massively reliant on Hughes to help unlock opposition defences and create offence. Without him, we would expect Vancouver’s already-below-average offensive attack might lose its bite significantly. To watch the game critically on Sunday was to see the outline of what that could look like as this season goes along.

This, of course — as ghastly as it is to think or say, much less root for — isn’t necessarily a drawback for the Canucks. It’s in the best interest of the franchise, after all, to maintain this current level at the absolute bottom of the NHL standings, where the club currently sits in terms of point percentage.

In the wake of the Hughes trade, there are still 50 games to play, enough runway that the team will win games in fits and spurts, and perhaps even win games in sequence from time to time. To some extent that both are unavoidable and necessary, especially given the Canucks will need several key players to retain some level of trade value if they’re going to lean into the necessary future-facing priorities that the organization has for too long neglected.

Nonetheless, the Canucks need to focus on the big picture. Not on this team, but on the next great Vancouver team, which will probably take years to build.

Doing so will require losses. It will require managing the value of depreciating assets with uncharacteristic ruthlessness and it will require accumulating surplus draft capital over a multi-year horizon.

Those goals can coincide with the development of young players, with the occasional fun win and with enough hopeful performances to permit fans still coming to terms with the wreckage of the failed 2014-19 Canucks rebuild to cope.

In the here and now, and in the wake of Hughes’ departure for the Twin Cities, it’s that future that must remain our focus, and the organization’s top priority.