Halford & Brough in the Morning - The Best Of Halford And Brough 12/30/24

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Halford & guest host Thomas Drance look back at a busy weekend in sports, they talk Saturday's epic Canucks collapse versus the Kraken, plus they look ahead at what's next for the team without Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson. This podcast is produced by Andy Cole and Greg Balloch. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

You're listening to the best of Halford and Brough. You're listening to Halford and Brough. Got into the slot, no shot, stopped by Deco, rebound, he scores! Jadon Schwartz to the net. Has his second of the afternoon. And the Kraken have clawed back. No. No.

No, no. Myers delays. Into the slot. Miller and Besser missed it. It's a two on O for the Kraken the other way. Vince Dunn in on Demko. Shoots. Scores.

How is that? This is the worst. Good morning, Vancouver. 7-0-1 on a Monday. Happy Monday, everybody. This is the worst. Good morning, Vancouver 701 on a Monday. Happy Monday, everybody. It is Halford. It is Brough. No, wait. It's Thomas Drance.

And we are coming to you live. Hello. From the Kintec Studios, the beautiful Fairview Slopes in Vancouver. Thomas, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Adog, good morning to you. Good morning.

And Laddy, good morning to you as well. Hello, hello. Halford and Brough for the morning is brought to you by Vancouver Honda, Vancouver's premier destination for Honda customers. They have a friendly, knowledgeable staff that can help with anything you're looking for, sales, financing, service, or parts. We are already in hour two of the program. How did that happen?

Don't confuse people. Don't say that. See, now, hour one. They'll be like, where was hour one? It's actually hour two. Hour two becomes hour three. Yes. This actually hour two. Hour two becomes hour three. Yes. This is getting confusing.

Hour two of this program. It makes sense, though, because time stops during the holidays. It's true. It works differently. We all know this. Drance gets it. Don't call it hour two, though. I thought he was going to go on a time isn't linear rant.

Someone's going to download this hour. They're going to be like, but where's hour one? Yeah, just call it hour one. Hour one slash two of this program is brought to you by Jason Hominick from Jason.Mortgage. If you love giving the banks more of your money, then don't let Jason shop around to find the perfect mortgage for you. I am being sarcastic. Let him do that. Visit him at Jason.Mortgage.

Tell the people about Kintec, Thomas, before we get into today's show. We're coming to you live from the Kintec studio. Kintec, Canada's favorite orthotics provider Powered by thousands of five-star Google reviews Soar feet, what are you waiting for? Kintec, we got a big show over the two hours that we're going to be here today Very excited to be here Happy belated holidays to everyone I hope you all had a good Christmas or whatever else you were celebrating over the last week

We only have one guest on the program today Mike Tanier is going to join us at 7.30 A wild weekend of the National Football League. Drance has takes, Drance has thoughts. Well, yeah, but we only have one guest, but we have an old friend, which is Canucks fatalism. Oh, God. We're going to get into some of that as well. We're going to

dwell on that, I'd expect. We will spend a lot of time talking about whatever that was on Saturday afternoon at Rogers Arena. One of the most epic What happened? The most epic collapse in Canucks regular season franchise history Andy. We win this history over the weekend. But we are going to

forge about 15 or 20 minutes this morning to talk about the NFL as well because there was a lot that happened yesterday and there's games tonight as well. Going into week 18, final week of the regular season next weekend. But yeah, Mike Tannier is going to join us at 7.30. We got a lot to get into,

including everything that happened with the Vancouver Canucks. So without further ado, Laddie, let's tell everybody what happened. Hey, did you guys see the game last night? No. What happened? I missed all the action because I was... We know how busy your life can be.

What happened? You missed that? What happened? What happened is always brought to you by the B.C. Construction Safety Alliance. Okay, on the weekend, which featured a couple of very historic and infamous losses on Canadian soil, the Vancouver Canucks etched their names into the history books with a truly epic collapse against the Seattle Kraken on Saturday.

Vince Dunn, Vince Dunn scored his second goal of the game, just 2-15 into overtime, and the Seattle Kraken overcame a three-goal third-period deficit beating the Vancouver Canucks 5-4 on Saturday. Just the third time, third time, third time in NHL history, the long, decorated history of the NHL, third time that a team has lost a regular season game after they were leading by three goals inside the game's final five minutes.

Would you say they were done in? Does that make it worse? Just deliver that line. Does that make it worse? You beat Greg to the dad joke punch somehow. Are you done with the done puns or will there be more? I'm done. Okay.

I'm done. I thought before we get into the hardcore analysis of this game that we do a little exercise for the listeners. A little Monday morning torture. We're going to go through every single goal and break down just how bizarre this was after the Canucks had already gone up

4-1 on a Jake DeBrusco goal 3 minutes and 9 seconds into the game. It's actually 5-1 on a Jake DeBrusco goal three minutes and nine seconds into the game. It's actually 5-1 by my standards because I thought that Dakota Joshua's goal probably should have stood on the board. I'm biased that way. Whatever.

4-1. Jaden Swartz scores to make it 4-2 at 15-15 of the third period. At this point, you're thinking, okay, we've seen this before. Canucks maybe let the foot off the gas late a little bit, but there's still less than five minutes remaining,

and it's still a fairly comfortable lead. Then Vince Dunn does this. I think most people in the building thought he might take a look at shooting that. Now here's a turnover in front. Vince Dunn scores! Canucks fail to manage the puck in their own zone, and Vince Dunn pounces on it in the middle of the ice, and just like that, it's 4-3.

It's a little dirty. It's still good. Things are still good. It's okay. You notice maybe a tinge of nervousness in Brendan Batchelor's voice on the call right here on Sportsnet 650. But still, with about a minute and 20 seconds left and a 4-3 lead, surely, surely the Vancouver Canucks are not going to give up

a third goal in the final five minutes of the game. Now, kudos to the Sportsnet cameraman working the game. I don't have his name either ready, but just a tremendous job when it's at 4-3 to pan over to each of the benches, the Seattle bench and the Vancouver bench. Over the Seattle bench, this is Coach Jessica Campbell furiously scrawling up a play on the whiteboard. Then over to the Canucks bench bench where adam foot was doing the same on the defensive side of things advantage campbell here's what happens with 50 seconds left in the game sooner

back to the puck lost it to schwartz cutting to the slot no shot stopped by deco rebound he scores jaded schwartz to the net has his second of afternoon. And the Kraken have clawed back from a 4-1 third period deficit with three straight goals to tie it at four in the final minute. It's just a little slimy. It's still good. It's still good. It's pretty slimy at that point. It's 4-4.

You're still getting a point out of it. So you can still salvage this thing. It's gone Schwartz, Dunn, Schwartz. So the pattern would only suggest that in overtime, it was going to be that same guy that started this whole comeback, Vince Dunn. Here he is, 2-15 into the extra frame

to give Seattle an improbable 5-4 victory. Into the Seattle zone. Myers delays into the slot. Miller and Besser missed it. It's a two on O for the Kraken the other way. Vince Dunn in on Demko. Shoots. Scores!

The Seattle Kraken end their five-game losing streak with a miraculous come-from-behind win this afternoon in Vancouver. It's just a little airborne. It's still good. It's still good. It's good. I know.

And there you have it. Ladies and gentlemen, your weekend in Vancouver Canucks hockey. Felt like an act of God watching it live. To be totally honest with you, I do think there's a little bit more there. Here's the truth. For 40 minutes,

the Canucks were outplayed by the Kraken and were pretty fortunate to have the lead and when I say outplayed that's a relative term because the Kraken are pretty mid right and frankly look disinterested by this do you mean like the Kraken held the puck more I thought the Kraken had better chances I thought they looked like the better team for about 40 minutes and yet it felt like one of those oh the Canucks are going to get away with this type games neither team generated anything like the goals on the board were I largely the result of poor goaltending sorry laddie but both ways I thought Grubauer was atrocious and I thought the Buneier's goal was obviously one Demko would want back correct and the Canucks were I thought pretty poor for 40 minutes but they entered the third

with a 3-1 lead and ironically started to play really well and for the first 10 minutes of the third period maybe the first 15 you might even say the first 15. Yep. They actually looked like a pretty serious team intent on winning. The Joshua bounce, I thought that was clearly going to come back when I saw the replay, personally. Okay.

It's not a controversial call. You know, while I had my, I was, we were out at a lunch. Yep. The game was on the screen. We were all very excited. A luncheon, right? A luncheon. Yes, I assume. Not to be confused with a regular lunch. Yeah. The game was on the screen. We were all very excited. A luncheon, right? A luncheon.

Yes. Not to be confused with a regular lunch. The lay people having their lunches. No. I was watching it and, you know,

the replay went over about, I don't know, seven or eight times and all of us furious debating was it with his glove? Was it a chicken wing? Can you score off your shoulder?

Did he head it in? We were all thinking all of these things and then there was a simmering underbelly of the conversation was like it's probably coming back yeah and it did i think i you know as much as i'm a homer on this one i think rightfully so whatever it was still a 4-1 lead with five minutes remaining and it felt like a deluge at that point right like it was like oh man this is getting ugly for this mid kraken team and you know i i mean i'm writing live right because i'm filing at the buzzer every game.

I had a whole section on, like, where did the Kraken go from here? Like, what a disaster this team is, you know? Honestly, at that point, ended up deleting it. And so a couple things, though, I do think precipitate. First of all, obviously, the bounce off Juleson's posterior is tough. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Yep.

But I think the Canucks overreacted, right? So this was the first game we saw them play without Quinn Hughes. Their game's been trending in the wrong direction with Quinn Hughes, too. But we've been talking about it all year, the with Hughes, without Hughes effect. And now that this team is playing all non-Hughes minutes, it's dicey. And we know it's going to be dicey on a week-to-week basis at the moment as Quinn Hughes recovers here.

However, in the very first game seeing this team play, they actually did something pretty interesting that worked. Okay. Eric Brandstrom led all Canucks defenders in 5-on-5 ice time In the game, the Canucks outshot the Kraken 10-4 in his minutes They didn't score, Kraken didn't score But they controlled play He was the only defender for whom that was true

Okay Which speaks to something we all talk about Or certainly, I know Brough likes to talk about it He always asks me about it when I do my hits Canucks defense not not super fleet of foot they're not the most mobile group collectively you could say that and Branstrom brings at least a little bit of that push is he Quinn Hughes or Philip Hronik no but at least he brings a dimension that this team sorely needs and lacks to the point of it being a critical absence in Hughes and Hronik's current sort of state out of the lineup. After the Juleson goal, Branstrom plays,

or the Juleson deflection goal, Branstrom plays one more shift the rest of the game. They built this lead lead leaning heavily on a number one guy who was at least able to like move the puck and then what happens well julson sends a bit of a hospital pass to susie susie does a fly by clearance picked off by vince dunn back of the net and then derrick forbert another another the left side defender loses the puck behind the net like he literally didn't know where it was and that sets up the guts of the ice opens up the guts of the ice that Schwartz skates into and deposits it on the uh on the second opportunity

very very Zach Parise like good pull to what do you either owe or suggest this kind of deployment? Because you bring up a good point. You're not going to replace Quinn Hughes one for one with anybody. No. But if there is a reasonable doppelganger light, it might be Branstrom. And maybe the proof is in the pudding through two-thirds or three-quarters of the game. Yeah. Because they had staked themselves out to a 4-1 lead where Branson was playing with regularity.

To me, it felt like, okay, we've got the 4-1 lead. Old school thinking, let's get our big, tough, physical, defensive defensemen out there and make sure that there's no mistakes. The problem with it is... You can't move the puck. Yeah. The problem with it is this club right now, you know, I think honestly, even with Quinn Hughes and Phillip Hronick, you can see the seams from their puck moving generally.

You watch this team play and there's nights where they don't generate anything, especially without Quinn Hughes on the ice, but even sometimes with Quinn Hughes on the ice because they can't get the puck moving well enough as a collective blue line group. Now you remove Hronick and Hughes. I just think this is a punch they can't take. You can't afford to not be using Brandstrom right now.

You can't afford it. And I think we saw it. We saw just how bogged down, just how extreme it can get. The margin for errors basically disappeared with the Canucks missing their entire first pair plus Pedersen at the moment. You cannot have that little sort of get up and go, that little ability to spatially problem solve

while moving up ice in your lineup. And I think they played with fire and got burned. So a quick reset here on Sunday's news, because we're talking about it, but we haven't exactly laid it out for the listeners that might not be aware. On Sunday's practice or after Sunday's practice, following a very disheartening

loss to the Seattle Kraken, Canucks head coach Rick Tocant announced that Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes wouldn't be making the upcoming trip on this two-game roadie through Calgary and Seattle. Pettersson would be out a week. Hughes will be out week to week. Both are very alarming

injuries. Hughes week to week, probably obviously the more alarming of the two, because of A, what you just mentioned about how the Canucks are deploying alarming injuries. Hughes week to week, probably obviously the more alarming of the two because of A, what you just mentioned about how the Canucks are deploying the defense without Hughes in the lineup. And two, week to week could mean a lot of things, right? Very nebulous injury update. It could be an awfully long time.

Let's get into this now because I know that you're writing about this and it's going to be the topic of conversation moving forward with Hughes out of the lineup. How do you deal with his absence absence how ugly is it going to get without Quinn Hughes in the lineup yeah potentially very ugly so I've got a new notebook up at the athletic and I just sort of pulled the numbers out of curiosity five on five this season Canucks have played 669 minutes with Quinn Hughes just over a thousand without him in Quinn Hughes, just over 1,000 without him.

In Quinn Hughes' minutes, they've outshot their opponents by 86. Pretty good. Decent. That's good. Without him, they've been outshot by 114. With Quinn Hughes on the ice five on five, they've outscored their opponents by 18. That's good.

Without Quinn Hughes on the ice, minus 10. That's bad. That's bad. And so we've known that the non-Hughes minutes were problematic for this team all season, and now it's all non-Hughes minutes over this sort of two-week span. Their schedule's relatively soft, right? You're talking Calgary.

You're talking Seattle. You're talking Nashville. You're talking Montreal. Yep. Those are the next four opponents. And yet, I mean, I do think there's a real possibility when you really look at it, that the bottom might fall out of this team's ability

to control play at all, five on five. It could be ugly. They're not going to be a good team that goes in as a heavily favored side in any of these next four games right they shouldn't be and and that's not to say that they're not going to be able to find ways to win you know i think we kind of know that this group has some tactical news some some onions when it comes to grinding out wins here but that's what they're going to have to do they're going to have to play low event hockey they're going to need to get really good goaltending

they're going to need to convert opportunistically because they're not going to be able to control play. The thing that scares me the most right now is the great unknown. Because if you go back and you look at Hughes' first six seasons in the league, I think maybe something that we don't talk enough about is the durability of a player. He does not miss a lot of games. I think the most he's missed in a season is six.

I know that the first... And that was the groin injury year. Right. And 2019, 2020, and 2020, 2021 were obviously shortened seasons due to the pandemic. But he was there suited up for all of them. Not knowing what the blue line looks like without him is maybe the scariest. It's like the deep blue sea. It's like when you don't know what's out there.

You know that it's not good, but you're not 100% sure of what that bad is. And we saw the first glimpse of it and it was like, see, that's a thing, right? I don't know. Saturday, and I think it would be unfair to, you know,

point a line between Hughes' absence and directly what happened against the Kraken. Like, there was a confluence of freaky things that happened.

There were, but also, they probably don't happen because at some point the puck gets on Quinn Hughes' stick and he's like, we are skating 50 feet.

He skates at the safety, for sure. And then making a sick pass and now we're set up in the opposition zone and we're going to spend a minute here and everyone's going to take a breath while I make three dazzling dekes at the blue line and now we're going to cruise to a 4-2 victory. The security blanket part of it is kind of what I was leaning into with this, is that he was always there. When you're always there and you're always in the lineup,

there is a sense of familiarity, but it's also like, okay, when we're in trouble or when we're in the crap, what are we going to do? And more often than not, it's let's find 43 and let's make sure he gets the puck and he'll do good things. That's gone. Well, they're calling it a hand injury, but it absolutely might be just from the stress of carrying this team. Right. It's gone. Well, they're calling it a hand injury, but it absolutely might be, you know, just from the stress of carrying this team.

Right. It's a back. It's a hand. But yeah, so anyway, it is a suspected hand injury for Hughes, which was suffered in the Ottawa game on the 21st. And then, and we don't have the audio at the ready, so I'll just paraphrase it.

Talk It was asked yesterday. Can we just give a little bit of dap though to J-Pat who goes the, let me just play devil's advocate. Yeah, he did. And advocate he did for the devil because he asked Rick Talkett did playing Quinn Hughes

on the 23rd against San Jose where he was doubtful and then a game time decision then sued up to play aggravate the injury at all? And Talkett shot shot it down I would say fairly emphatically that whatever he had injury wise wasn't going to get any worse by playing now this does open the head coach and that line of thought up to a lot of questions namely well if it didn't aggravate it what's changed from the San Jose game to the Seattle game? Like, if it was okay to go in San Jose, what has changed in the three or four days since

that allows them not to go against the Kraken? How serious is this injury? I mean, and you got to remember that the club has not confirmed any of this. Like, they've not come out and said that it is a hand injury. I don't even know if they've designated it as an upper body injury, right? It could just be the old-fashioned body injury.

But this is a lot of speculation here. However, we did understand that Hughes was hurt prior to San Jose and played, and then he came back from the break and was unable to go against the Kraken. So something changed in that time. We're just not sure what. Yeah, it was a game-time decision against the Sharks, and, I mean, you hope that it wasn't aggravated. Rick Tockett implied in his answer yesterday that what Hughes has was one of those things that can't get worse which you know would rule out if

we if we knew it was a hand injury and all all manner of injuries right it's like that actually does help narrow it down pretty significantly yeah but you know obviously the the like if it's a pain tolerance thing and it didn't get better over the holidays, in that instance, for example, not to speculate, but just for example, if you're dealing with a bone bruise, something that can't get worse in your hand, and it's incredibly painful, and you gut it out one night, and then you're like, and three days later, I'll be back. And then three days later, it's still hurting really badly.

And you're like, look, I can't do this for the next four months right like there's no way i need to take a sec and let that make sense to me but it basically has to be along that sort of narrow path otherwise it's definitely something we should be looking at with furrowed brow so um the petterson thing as well, it definitely sounds like that's going to be shorter in term than the Hughes injury. Taka put it out yesterday, and I've already reiterated this, a week on Pettersson.

So that means that he won't be available, as mentioned, for the team's next game, which is going to be on New Year's Eve in Calgary. And then they play on the 2nd, January 2nd, in Seattle against the Kraken. We're at a point with Pedersen in this market where he's, you know, I think when we, maybe tomorrow we can talk a little bit more

about sort of the year in review for the Canucks, but it really does feel like 2024 was the year of Quinn Hughes in a way where, you know, because of Demko's injury, because of Miller's inconsistency, especially this season, because of Pedersen's year-long funk, Quinn Hughes stands kind of alone in the constellation of Canucks stars now, as he should, honestly. He ascended to a totally different level, won the Norris.

It's a totally different conversation today than it was 12 months ago where it was like this Canucks core group, and now it's Quinn Hughes and everybody else. and I think that's first of all completely valid so we're we spend 10 minutes talking about Hughes's absence and like we're just kind of getting into the Pedersen of it all isn't that instructive of where the team is I think it speaks volumes but I want to note this in those non-quinn hughes minutes right in non-quinn hughes minutes elias petterson is the only canucks center who has a positive goal differential away from quinn hughes okay so his absence as like compounding loss with 43 out of the lineup is actually

magnified because frankly he's the only Canucks centerman this season who's been able to win their minutes away from Quinn. Yeah, I mean, the other part of this too, and this has to bear mention, is that the club's forward depth more than allows it to try and compensate for the loss of Pettersson as opposed to the depth on defense. It actually exposes that as well,

is that the team is, and the front office has done a very good job, I think, of making sure that you've got options B, C, and D at forward. Yeah, like we saw Hugh Suter play really well for 10 games in JT Miller's absence, for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not perfect, but it'll work. And they've got those options.

Those options do not exist on this blue line. So if you want to talk about the absences of Hughes and Pedersen sort of illuminating other issues with the team, I think that's one of them, is that the worst case scenario going into the season, and Bruff and I talked about it, was like, God forbid if Hughes gets hurt. We never entertained the idea of, God forbid,

if Hughes and Hronik get hurt at the same time. Yeah. Because it's not an NHL blue line at that point. No. I don't think so. It's definitely a bottom. I mean, you would take Anaheim's blue line or San Jose's blue line today over what Vancouver will likely have against the Calgary Flames.

Because when we had... No question. When we were going through this exercise with Hughes in the lineup and with Hronik out, you've got Hughes, who's a bonafide one, Soucy and Myers, who on a good playoff team are probably third pair guys. That's fair. No

second pair guys. And then I feel unjust. I think Suse and Myers both qualify with the very cowardly 4-5. Sure. They're 4-5s. Bad 4s, good 5s. Right. High-end 5s. Low-end 4s. four five sure there are four slash fives bad fours good fives right right high end fives high end fives low end fours uh but then you've got like at one point with julson and day harney and

when friedman was in the mix you could make the argument that that was those were three guys that on a good nhl team aren't on the nhl team they are playing for your american league affiliate and doing a nice job in Bakersfield or wherever the Sons of Anarchy rode through in California, right? There's a few of them in there. I'm very prepared to learn some Christian Lennon. That's all I'm going to say. You're listening to the best of Halford and Brough.

You're listening to the best of Halford and Brough. We will do the look ahead because there are some very, very important questions to be asked and answered of this team. They've got a mini two-game road trip coming up. Then they come back home for one game against Nashville, I want to say. Then they go out on an extended five-game roadie through the East. It starts easy. It does.

Montreal. And then it's a gauntlet. Yeah, it gets a lot more difficult after that. And there's a lot of questions. Two in particular, though, that we're going to focus on. The inability to move the puck, especially from their own end and within the blue line. Are there fixes on the horizon?

Are there solutions either via call-up or via trade? Also, and you can have about a minute and a half to riff here to get this one started, to whet the appetite of the listeners, the goaltending situation moving forward. Yeah, I mean, I was thinkinget the appetite of the listeners, the goaltending situation moving forward. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking in the wake of that game, like as I was walking home on the seawall,

I was just trying to think of, you know, act of God type Canucks games that we've seen recently. And the one that came to mind for me was that Minnesota wild 10, seven loss in like February of last year. And I remember in the wake of that game, the club basically iced Casey DeSmith, started riding Demko really hard until obviously he got hurt. And then, you know, Archer Shelovs ends up supplanting DeSmith in the playoffs.

I mean, it was a harbinger of a major storyline that unfolded over the rest of the year. Now, obviously, I don't think this is an analogous situation. The club needs to be patient with Demko, but six games back, there are clear signs of rust. His save percentage is below 880. He's below expected in terms of the saves that he's making, and he's only won two of six games.

You know, if the Canucks are going to be without Quinn Hughes here, if they're going to need 930 goaltending to to reel off some wins even to just manage like that 550 point percentage they probably need to hold the fort here like I think there's an argument to be made that Lankanen is their best option in the short term and yet we all know that if this team's eyes are on the big picture getting Demko back in form has to be a priority. Is there a tension there in terms of who plays in the blue paint for the Canucks? That comeback doesn't happen if he's fully ready to go. I'm not saying he's still injured, but if he's in his prime form,

that comeback does not happen. Especially because the first goal wouldn't have happened. No. The first goal wouldn't have happened, and then you probably get one save off done you know like one of those two done say done shots get saved um so yeah i mean it's just something to monitor here rick tocket suggested that they were going to split on this upcoming mini road trip but if hughes's absence is more multiple weeks the like week to week has two weeks in it but it's like if it's more multiple weeks, the week-to-week has two weeks in it, but if it's more multiple weeks, how does this play out?

I think it's an interesting question. Guys, can you feel it? I kind of feel like there's a goalie controversy brewing here in Vancouver. For the Vancouver Canucks, the schedule upcoming, in case you're wondering, they are going to reportedly have a brief practice today before flying out this evening to go to Calgary. Then it'll be a game. I'd love to spend my this evening to go to Calgary. Then it'll be a game.

Love to spend my New Year's Eve in Calgary. It's the best place in the world, especially on the 31st. Party down in Calgary. So there'll be the New Year's Eve game in Calgary. Then it'll be a game against, which is now a full-fledged rivalry after what happened on Saturday, the rematch, the grudge match against the Kraken on the 2nd. There's a game sandwiched in there.

It's a back-to-back. They go from Seattle home to Rogers Arena to take on the National Predators the night following. And then there's a, I would classify it as a daunting trip. A daunting trip. I think so. Out east. So run through it real quick because it begins with a game in Montreal.

Although as Laddie pointed out, who's the new hotshot goalie in Montreal? Jakob Dobesch. Do you know anything about him? Came out of college. Really big, big goalie. I like him. And they've finally given up on Caden Premo. Which goalies do you not like? Caden Premo. Catching strays on Vancouver radio. Caden Premo's like, what am I doing

here? What's nice about this upcoming Canucks road trip, right, is that Montreal game falls on a Monday, which means I get a full weekend in Montreal. Good for you. Love that. Love a full weekend in Montreal. That is the most important takeaway of the Canucks schedule,

is that Drance gets a full weekend in Montreal. Agreed. Then Washington. This Washington team, by the way, they're the most bizarre team in hockey. Very strange. They're super fun to watch. Ovi scored yesterday, bringing him to 870

on the career. NHL.com and the NHL, by the way, are so fully aboard the chase. Was it an empty netter? No. Okay, good. It was a 4-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings, I want to say, actually. I think Patrick Kane had a goal in the assist. I love the look on Caps players' faces when someone else scores into an empty netter.

They're all mad. Yeah. So good. Those don't go to you. Those go to Ovechkin. And if he's not on the ice, you wait until he gets on, and then you give him the puck, and he scores into the empty net.

So 24 to tie now, 25 to break the record. So, I mean, obviously it won't happen when the Canucks visit Washington on January the 8th but um keep an eye on OV as we go forward uh so backtracking a bit because the conversation that we had prior to going to break and the reason that we're laying out the next week and or weeks is that one the very good chance that Quinn Hughes won't be playing in any of these games that we just talked about he's definitely not. You hope he's backed by that Caps game. But week-to-week implies that this could be week-to-week.

Multiple weeks, yeah. Not week-singular. You're right. Elias Pettersson is week-singular. Quinn Hughes could be week-to-week. Do you have, I don't even know why I asked, because I know the answer to this. You know some jerk Canucks fan, by the way, is about to text the inbox and be like, yeah, week-with an A.

Yeah, right. I was waiting for that one. Sorry. And Drance got it, which is good. You just stole someone's what we learned. We need the content. No, that's fine. We can use it later. This show is very repetitive. I know that you have some thoughts, dare I say hot takes. The ability

to try and fix the puck moving issues that plague this team. Is there something either via recall or is there something out there in the abyss that is the trade market? I honestly don't think so. I've been thinking about it long and hard, thinking like, one thing about

one thing about the Canucks search for a defender, right? Is you know, I've sort of been calling it the Tyler Myers line, right? Which is a higher line than the old Mendoza line in baseball. Okay, so the Myers bar, if you will. The Myers bar.

And the problem with the Myers bar is you actually have to be pretty good to clear it. Okay. As often maligned as Tyler Myers is on these airwaves and among Canucks fans. Saturday didn't help. The truth is that it's pretty hard to supplant a 6'7 guy who moves the way he does and squeezes the blue line as well as he does and earns as much trust as he does in terms of actually bumping him down the line.

He's a high five for a reason. And if you're the Canucks, the cost of acquiring that type of player is A, prohibitive, and B, there's just not... We're talking Mike Matheson, we're talking Marcus Pettersson. Do either of those players even cross or jump over the Tyler Myers bar? It's debatable at best.

If he doesn't necessarily jump over the bar, though, might he do it in individual facets of the game, say puck moving? Right. Maybe you bring in a flawed player, a misfit toy that does that one thing one thing which is move the puck up the ice with regularity and efficiency well we've already seen with brandstrom especially in the first 17 games that he played for the canucks like what a massive sigh of relief it is just to have a guy with some get up and go on the back end relative to this club's lack of secondary puck moving

without Brandstrom in the lineup. I think Zdorov, like Zdorov's completely wild forays carrying the puck into the offensive zone. God, I miss him. I miss him so much. I miss those wild forays more than you could imagine. I think the Canucks do too. You just didn't know what was going to happen.

I don't think he knew what was going to happen. No, he didn't. But he knew he was going. He knew he was going and he was probably going to take a bad angle slap shot at the goaltender and you know what? Sometimes it was going to work and it was going to be very cool. Sometimes it was on Stuart Skinner

and it was going to be good and we all loved it. And so you know now we've seen this management group like when Carson Soucy got hurt, they moved quickly to acquire Zdorov last season. So we've seen this management group, like when Carson Soucy got hurt, they moved quickly to acquire Zdorov last season. So we've seen them make, let's call them a band-aid trades.

Sure. Band-aid trades, like let's just put a band-aid on this gaping wound for the short term. Think about the puck moving player type, right? The Brandstrom player type. Relatively affordable and and in greater abundance than the credible top four option ideally with term who actually leaps over the myers line that this club probably still needs big picture but if you wanted to try and bring in

you know like a player like travis dermot was claimed off waivers by the minnesota wild not too long ago those players do kind of come available. Could the Canucks consider that? You know, sort of looking at expiring players primarily, I don't think there's very many good options. You'll be shocked to hear this. There's not very many good options on the trade market for blue liners. But also, are any of those players that you'd bring in going to leap over the,

let's call it the Kirill Kudrausev line? Oh, man. Is that where you're going? I thought it was going to be a Wolanin. Very popular line. Wolanin, Kudrausev, Mark Friedman. You have some guys who can skate who are just a recall away. I'd at least consider it if i was the knucks i have time for this only because um their dips into the american hockey league thus far with

abbotsford have been good yeah i've been very i mean i think max sasson is a great example of is it is it sassone oh they're that's an ongoing one. I think it's Sasson. I'll have to get clearance on this after the show. Yeah, we'll text Shorty. I think we've come to a conclusion on this. We say Sasson, but we also jokingly say Sasson. Sasson. I think you're closer with Sasson. I think your joke, I don't think it's Sasson, to be clear.

Although RDS will definitely be calling him that on the next visit. We will now refer to him as Max S in the interim. So Max S. It's illustrative of a couple things. One, what you can do with all the sort of hard work and determination and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps that you can make yourself into an NHL player and a viable one in the short term. The other part of it is like it's reflective of

how deep the depth needs to go sometimes totally defined and so when you're going into your farm system it shouldn't be and what i think it has been in the past for both the organization and fans of the organization is desperation like oh god we have to call this guy up as opposed to okay let's give this guy a shot because we have good depth organizationally. So Kudryatsev or Wolanin at this point, I think some people's eyes would either get really wide or have single tears falling out of them that this is what it's come to.

But I'd add Mark Friedman in. Friedman's good. I'm pretty confident Friedman's good. The thing that gets me right now is that this management group either hasn't or won't make the move that they've made in the past. The hallmarks of especially Rutherford and Pittsburgh was in signs of duress or times of trouble, he would make the move almost sometimes to his detriment. Like sometimes it wouldn't work. Right.

And they don't always. You don't bat a thousand in these deals. So you're saying having found himself in times of trouble he's letting it be yeah god i hate you i apologize you know what i can allow it it's a good one um no but honestly this group i just and especially after last year where and i know know Zdorov was maybe right place, right time. All the pieces fell into the appropriate like spots. But I just feel like, you know, I keep looking at it and like poking. I'm like, do that again. Let's make that happen again.

Let's find that solution or some comparable solution out there. It seems wild to me that such a active management group has sat on his hands since the Branstrom acquisition. So I think, though, you've bumped into a pretty rare moment here where the price of defenders just happens to be massively inflated over the course of the season. Like, we've seen that play out where, jacob truba's contract has a brutal next year on yep it's bad and it's tough the rangers still got positive value in getting off of that trade you think about you're a chick netted like the the old ricky williams package he got like a full draft class plus another good young defenseman from the Minnesota Wild. You think about even Timothy Lilligren.

Timothy Lilligren's on a bad contract. Timothy Lilligren is on a bad contract and does not jump over the Tyler Myers line. Yep. And he netted multiple draft picks. But it's never supposed to be easy. Ole Matta. It's never supposed to be easy. Ole Matta got a third round draft pick.

I know. You know, like, a couple years ago when the Canucks got Ethan Baer, it's like they took on Lane Peterson's contract and paid a fifth to get Ethan Baer. And we're just kind of in a different world. Like, do you know what teams, do you know how many teams in the league right now

could use an additional, like additional top four capable defenseman? Totally understandable. I count four complete blue lines around the entire league. Four. Every team, every contender, every pseudo contender needs these guys. And so I think what sort of happened is I think the Canucks built a defense, frankly, that was incongruous with their efforts to evolve offensively. Okay.

And I think they always were sort of treating it like an experiment, I think pretty explicitly. They were going to kind of wait till Christmas, see what they had. They wanted to double down on the way that they played defense the year before. We know that Vinny Deharne was a like a favorite of the coaching staff when they decided to sign him sort of later in the day on July 1st it hasn't really fit it hasn't really worked out the club's really struggling to get out of their own end and yet the market that they're trying to buy in now or that they've been trying to buy in

for a while I just think the prices are massive and the quality of the players are extraordinarily low and it's just like a perfect storm where i think they're really reluctant to make a reckless move especially given the fact that you know i think they like what they have coming yeah and i'd add this like this team hasn't played the right way consistently enough to sort of warrant the sort of spend so it's almost like just a perfect storm that i think has created an uncharacteristic level of passivity okay from a super aggressive front office to this point i'm still not sort of counting out a band-aid trade here because man, the Canucks need a puck mover. So let's say... Yeah, but are they going to do that

if the management's like, this isn't our year. What's the point in giving up assets? I mean, I still think they're going to be confident that if they can get everyone back healthy, they can peak at the right time. It still could be their year. Yeah, what I'm sort of interested in

short term here especially with sort of the softness of the next four games and then the difficulty ramping up massively for the rest of January is this team just doesn't have margin for error right they're eight in the western conference by um points as it sits today. Yep. Seventh by point percentage, but you're a four-point game. Like, you're a regulation loss away from Calgary. To being on the outside looking in. To being on the outside looking in by point percentage,

which is what matters, of course, in real time. Yes. And, you know, so this team can't afford a skid. None of us can ever afford a skid. No, they're tough. You want to avoid them at all costs, mostly. In light of that, though. Not the skids.

In light of that, though. Yeah, you don't hold skids to the light. Throw them in the laundry. In light of that, the goaltending. And I do want to get back to this because I am, I mean, we talked about jokingly brackets not jokingly talk about getting dave pratt out of retirement because we can all see the goalie controversy on the horizon we don't want to be that inflammatory and we don't want to be that salacious and over the top but everything seems like uh i don't want to call

it a perfect storm, but all the pieces are aligned that we could be having one of those conversations on a game-to-game basis now about which goalie, not that you want, but you need to put in net because you need to stay afloat during this time where Hughes and Hronik aren't in the lineup. Like, if you're playing this blue line and you're not going out and making a Band-Aid trade, which I think we've kind of crystallized that it might not happen because the market's not right for it, this is your blue line.

This is your defense. Maybe there's an addition of a Wolanin or a Kudriatsa, but this is it. So you have to make do and make chicken salad out of this. If that's the case, what goalie are you rolling with? Yeah, well, and that's so right now anyway like i i mean kevin lankanen is the more informed canucks goaltender is is that debatable like i mean he had the triangulo goal against which wasn't pretty so i went back and looked at it so you go back to his last few starts and let's just start with that one in vegas sure um he was fine

he made a really nice save on Mark Stone in that game. It was a fantastic save on Mark Stone. But 18 to 20. So 18 saves on 20 shots. It's a quality start. The goal again, I mean you've got to allow these goalies the odd one where they're just not

at peak form. And the Petrangelo one was exactly that. Is it a stoppable puck? Yes. No, you don't want that goal going in right but even Laddy won't defend that he's just shaking his head okay but you're going to allow that um perfection is you know basically unattainable that these goals are going to go if they're going in every game problematic the Petrangelo goal I was more than willing to like okay that happened right those are going to happen over the course of the season uh the auto game statistically was kind of a nightmare for Lankanen, right?

Yeah, but I mean, so I would say that one, I would absolutely defend him on because the Canucks defending was appalling. I mean, all of those goals were off the rush, lots of them including cross-seam movement beforehand. As a goalie myself, though, it's like you allow five in a game, you're like, I didn't have a good night. Oh, yeah. No, of course. And you're probably the same way, you're like, I didn't have a good night. Oh, yeah. It's one of those.

And you're probably the same way, Laddie. Certainly not perfection. We'll put it that way. But if you allow five, even if you had no chance on the five, you're like, I didn't have a great game. As a team, you're frustrated. But personally, I think you see it as a failing as well. But that's just because goaltending is the most frustrating position

in the world. That was a classic, though. That was a classic, though, where the Canucks got a point out of that game and it was clear that they'd gotten away with one. Yeah, I would say that. They didn't play well. Yeah, especially defensively. Just in case anyone heard what they think that they heard,

I will make this crystal clear. That was not on Lankanen whatsoever. No. I'm just saying that there is a world where you come off the ice or come off the field as a goalie where you've allowed five and you're like, that wasn't a great night for me. That's just the nature of the position. He was great against Florida.

Yes, great. He was good against Tampa Bay, and he stole them two points against Columbus. Okay, so now let's do Demko against San Jose and Seattle. Right off the hop, it's eight goals over the course of two games. The Seattle one, there was a lot of issues there. I think that's fair to say, right? Yep. I mean, the Buneers long distance. Did that go through his glove? Yeah, I think so. I think he got a lot of issues there. I think that's fair to say, right? Yep. I mean, the veneers, long distance.

Did that go through his glove? Yeah, I think so. I think you got a piece of it. Yeah. I was like, you know, it's the old second baseman. There was a hole in my glove. You look at it afterwards. Yeah.

Yeah. Right? We've all been there. Most of us not on the same stage that Demko did it on, but it's not a good feeling. He's got one quality start in six games. So I would agree with your initial assessment that, yeah, Lankanen's the more informal. Like, at the end of the day, right? We look at Lankanen's in six games. So I would agree with your initial assessment that, yeah, Lankanen's the more informal.

At the end of the day, right, we look at Lankanen's last five games. Look at Lankanen's month of December, and he's given you four quality starts basically across what, I guess it's seven starts in the month. Demko's given you one in six. So

all I'm saying is Lankanen is the informed goaltender for now. And Demko has been the goalie of record in five of the last seven and each of the last two. So he's gotten the lion's share of the work. Yeah. And fair enough. Like this team should be focused on congealing into this sort of dark horse contender come playoff time. Right. I mean, could you argue that this team peaked too early last season? Yes. Right. I mean, could you argue that this team peaked too early last season? Yes. Right?

I mean, clearly. 100%. So, you know, not the worst thing to go through. Like, at least it's not May now, right? At least you're going through it and it's January, you know, or December, late December. You know, this time of the year, the Canucks were first top of the table, no problems, sunny days. And the latter 33 games of the year were an absolute slog and then they could barely generate a shot on goal

in the playoffs like they barely were able to buy a goal and that was with Stuart Skinner you know like ritualistically sacrificing himself during the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. So the big picture here is playing Demko in the lion's share of games and focusing on getting this goaltender, who is probably one of the highest-ceiling puck stoppers on the planet, when he's healthy and on his game, getting him to the level where you can play him every other night in the playoffs should be this team's top priority and yet on the other hand right now i'm pretty confident that the canucks

are going to struggle to control 45 of shots five on five over the next with no hughes and heronic in the lineup yeah for the next two weeks i mean even if they had heronic in the lineup i'd be like they're gonna really struggle five on five they're going to really struggle 5-on-5. They're going to get caved in most nights. Even against teams like Nashville. Even against teams like Calgary. And so, given that, how do you overcome that? Well, you play low-event defensive hockey.

We know this Canucks team is capable of it. And you play your most informed netminder. And you get crazy good goaltending and finish your chances. That's it. Can you, could you, like conceivably though, let's say Lankanen goes out. Okay, hell, let's say he plays tomorrow night

in Calgary. Yeah. I expect it. I'm telling you, I expect it. Has a blinder. Right? Like I say, you know, solid, whatever.

The case may be that he's back on form, similar to that form that he showed against Florida. Do you then start allowing, like, okay, we're going to have like, you get the ball and you run with it philosophy for the goalies. Like you play until you lose. Can you do that?

Can you do that with Demko? I don't think so. If it was not right now, if there was another goalie dynamic where it wasn't clearly defined as like Vez and the finalist a year ago. Yeah. You know, coming off year ago. Yeah. Coming off unprecedented injury. Yeah.

There's so many layers and wrinkles to it where you just don't want to let him sit in mothballs. And I don't think that they would do that. No. However, there is a case to be made that this is the most precarious time with all the other things that have gone on this season. This is the most precarious time for this team because the weakest part of the team, the blue line, has been hit as profoundly

as you can be hit. I can't think of another team that had a weaker blue line going into the season that has lost to number one and number two guys. Point to a team that's had it happen to them. No one can really survive losing their top pair for any length of time, their entire top pair for any length of time, their entire top pair for any length of time.

But I do think the Canucks are uniquely positioned to have a glass jaw here. Like, this is a punch they cannot take. Some teams can mask over it. They've got either the depth or guys that have the ability to step into elevated roles. And on Saturday, granted, it was a small sample size and everything, but we saw some pretty glaring things, both in terms of who were getting the minutes, more importantly, who wasn't at what times,

and what that might look like moving forward. Well, if at any point you're like, man, you know what this team really didn't do enough of? They didn't play enough of Eric Brandstrom in the highest leverage defensive minutes. If you're at the point where that's an actually valid point of criticism. A sentence spoken aloud. Yeah, not just a sentence spoken aloud,

but something that I actually think is fair to note. That's a tough spot. You're in tough. You're listening to the best of Halford and Brough.