Having been eliminated officially from the playoffs on Wednesday, and with nothing else to play for but pride, the Canucks put in a steady effort against the Avs Thursday night to complete the season sweep of Colorado. Which is strange in itself, but it’s been a strange season. Lankinen stood tall, the team got depth scoring, and DPetey took off the mitts for his first NHL (or ever?) fight. If you missed the game:



It’s been a weird year, but there will be time to reflect on that once the games stop. Yes, one shouldn’t read too much into the garbage time wins and efforts and scoring that people put up… but the inverse is also true, that it would be much more concerning for the team if people were just mailing it in and didn’t seem to care at all.

Almost everything that could have gone wrong went wrong this year: the yin to last year’s yang. But, the boys are still battling and want to battle. So that’s something to focus on. They’ll tell you that themselves.

My attitude is: You work your whole life to get to the NHL, so every game means something,” Sherwood said after scoring his 19th goal of the season in a first-star performance against the Avalanche. “You're still the kid that grew up grinding to try to get here. So I don't care – we don't care – if it's garbage time or not. Obviously, it sucks (missing the playoffs). I think there's a lesson there moving forward that we can't rely on anyone else to make the playoffs. We still owe it to our team, our staff, our fans and the city to give our best foot forward and continue to try to build.”

“We're playing for a lot,” veteran defenceman Marcus Pettersson said. “We're all pros in here and we go out to play hockey to win. That's why we play. We play because we love the game, and we love to win. Sure, we're all disappointed, but I think these games mean a lot now that we know that we're out. It means a lot for next year and setting a tone and keep establishing that culture that we're talking about.

“No matter what, we've still got to have that standard in here. We expect a lot of each other and we hold each other accountable. You need that. You need that tough love. We're still a young team; we're trying to build up that standard.”

The voices in the room want to keep winning, keep plying, because they know the effort they put in right now is going to make an impression on next year. Especially on the younger guys.

“The competitive side is hurting that we're not in the playoffs,” Sherwood added. “So I think if we use that sting and that sourness . . . it'll be an advantage and give us a bigger chip on our shoulder next year. We've had a ton of adversity, a lot of injuries, we've had drama and whatnot. And we've been trying to claw back in that playoff race without our top two centers. Obviously, guys have stepped up. We've just had a lot of adversity. At the end of the day, I think there's a lot to learn from.”

The team has a lot of question marks heading into the off-season, which will be another blog at some point. But it seems like one of those big question marks may not be as large as Boeser said the other day it doesn’t seem like he’ll be back.

“Honestly, it's unlikely at this point,” he told Sportsnet. “It sucks, it's unfortunate. I'm just trying to play good hockey, and then I'll worry about everything after that. We all know it's been a roller coaster of a year. There's been a lot of different things.”

Apparently it’s a discussion for after the season, as he’s not even talking to his agent about it at the moment… just trying to focus on playing.

“Yeah, I’m refusing to talk to Hank right now,” he said. “I feel like I'm playing a lot better hockey recently, and I don't want to get distracted. That's one of the things I've learned: when there's distractions, I don't play my best hockey. The mental aspect of the game is so important. This year, there's been a lot of distractions.”
“We look back at times this season where we struggled as a team,” Boeser said, “and if we were just a little better, we'd be in the hunt right now. It's frustrating.”

The Canucks host the Wild on Saturday, which might be a little motivation for the boys to show they should be in the postseason instead of them. Until then:





Quotes from Sportsnet.

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