Tag: Vancouver Canucks

J.T. Miller trade grades: Who won the Rangers-Canucks deal?

Who won this NHL blockbuster?

J.T. Miller is a New York Ranger once again.

And it makes the most sense for the team that traded him and the one that acquired him.

The center who got over the 100-point mark last year is heading from the Vancouver Canucks to the team that drafted Miller 15th overall in the 2011 NHL Draft. Will it be enough to make the Rangers a contender again, in a season in which they haven’t looked like the team that was so close to a Stanley Cup Final last year?

Let’s hand out some grades for the teams and see if that’s the case:

The trade details

New York Rangers get: C J.T. Miller, D Erik Brannstrom, D Jackson Dorrington

Vancouver Canucks get: C Filip Chytil, D Victor Mancini, 2025 1st round pick (top-13 protected)

New York Rangers grade

Rangers fans will certainly be sad when thinking about Chytil, who has shown flashes of the talent that made him a first-rounder in 2017. But health has been an issue. He’s still only 25 and could blossom in Vancouver.

The centerpiece is Miller, the kind of aggressive center the Rangers have been desperate for this year. Mika Zibanejad hasn’t been his usual, reliable self, and the Rangers have missed the bite of a player like Miller.

It’s a trade they needed to make. They can saddle Miller’s large contract and have a chance to show their struggles this year are behind them.

GRADE: B+

Vancouver Canucks grade

Miller was on the block for what felt like forever, with some reports that there was some bad blood involving him in the locker room. So it was a deal that had to be made.

The return? Mancini had his moments in limited time with the Blueshirts, and Chytil has some intrigue as a change-of-scenery player — if he stays healthy, there’s a ton of upside. A first-round pick — even with protections this year — is valuable for a team that’s got its eye on the postseason, perhaps to flip by the trade deadline.

This is one of those deals we could look back at and realized we should have graded it higher. For now, it feels like they might have gotten more elsewhere.

GRADE: B

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Former Notre Dame defenseman signs with ninth different NHL team

Another year, another new team.

If a player is good enough to stick around in the NHL for a while, teams will come calling. That’s the case for former Notre Dame defenseman [autotag]Ian Cole[/autotag], who will be playing his 15th season in the league in 2024-25. He also will be on his ninth different team after the Utah Hockey Club signed him to a one-year contract.

Ever since Cole was traded early in the 2020-21 season, he hasn’t spent more than one season with any team he’s played for. Last season, he was a veteran presence for a Vancouver Canucks team that made it to the Western Conference semifinals, which resulted in a loss to eventual Conn Smythe Trophy winner Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers.

For the Canucks, Cole scored 11 points, nine of them on assists, and recorded 61 penalty minutes. He added two assists and six penalty minutes during the playoffs. Let’s hope he’ll have an 11th straight playoff appearance with his new team.

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Former Notre Dame players on NHL rosters to begin 2023-24 season

Know where to check out the former Irish who have made it to the highest level.

We understand that most of you come here for football, but Notre Dame has a devoted fan base for its hockey program. A lot of NHL players have come through the program, and many of them even have found great success at hockey’s highest level. And it’s unlikely any of them forget that they once donned the Gold and Blue.

For the 2023-24 NHL season, there are seven former Irish on rosters at the start. That’s three fewer than the start of each of the past two seasons. But be on the lookout for the 24 players with Notre Dame connections currently in the AHL or even the four in the ECHL. For now, here’s who you can watch in NHL uniforms:

Q&A: Former NHL goalie Corey Hirsch on OCD advocacy: ‘It gets better’

We talked to former NHL goalie Corey Hirsch about his recent book and being a mental health advocate in hockey.

Retired NHL goalie Corey Hirsch knows a thing or two about fending off unwanted pucks.

During his decade-plus professional hockey career, Hirsch manned the net for NHL teams like the Vancouver Canucks, the New York Rangers, the Washington Capitals and the Dallas Stars. He also played for Canada’s Olympic ice hockey team and has coached in the NHL with the Toronto Maple Leafs and St. Louis Blues.

These days, instead of guarding the goal, he’s helping people fend off unwanted thoughts as a pillar of support for the obsessive-compulsive disorder community and beyond.

In his 2022 book, The Save of My Life: My Journey Out of the Dark, Hirsch (co-authoring with Sean Patrick Conboy) expands on his groundbreaking 2017 Players Tribune article that detailed the horrors of living with OCD and how he found recovery.

Hirsch shared how OCD hit him hardest while he was in his prime playing professional hockey and how he nearly ended his life amid a career that saw him drink from a Stanley Cup as the Rangers’ third goalie.

Ultimately, Hirsch wrote that he found help through being open about his struggles with a Vancouver Canucks trainer and later the team’s psychologist, who diagnosed him with OCD. Choosing to be vocal about his health led to his diagnosis and treatment. Since then, he’s become a leading advocate for mental health in the NHL world.

With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, For The Win spoke with Hirsch about his journey with OCD, his advocacy work and how he’s seen mental health efforts play out in hockey.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

WATCH: Former Ohio State player Cole McWard scores in just second NHL game

Well, that didn’t take long! #GoBucks

The NHL does things a little differently than some of the other major sports we’ve been accustomed to watching. There is typically a very defined college season, and then a separate, turn-the-page, professional season after it’s all done during the next season.

However, in the NHL, players can finish their college season and jump right into action if they’ve been signed after waiting their turn to finish out their college careers.

Such was the case with Ohio State defenseman Cole McWard. He was signed by the Vancouver Canucks after the Buckeyes were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament and is already on the ice at the game’s highest level.

And wouldn’t you know it, just two games into his NHL career, McWard lit the lamp for his first-ever NHL goal over the weekend on a sharp wrister that found its way through traffic and into the back of the net.

Way to make an early mark Cole and make Buckeye Nation proud. Here’s to hoping this is just one of many goals and other highlights over a long NHL career.

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Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes, and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on Twitter.

Bruins’ Linus Ullmark netted the NHL’s first goalie goal since 2020

GOALIE GOAL!

Boston Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark pulled off a rare feat during the waning seconds of his team’s Saturday game against the Vancouver Canucks.

With Vancouver pulling its own goalie down 2-1 to Boston, Ullmark cleared the puck out of Boston’s side of the ice with enough force and focus to net it in the Canucks’ goal.

It’s the first goalie goal to happen in the NHL since former Nashville Predators goalie Pekka Rinne netted one sometime before his retirement.

Naturally, Ullmark’s Bruins teammates were eager to celebrate their goalie on his special accomplishment. It’s been a heck of a year for Boston, and Ullmark’s goal should be a definite highlight.

The Bruins sit atop the competitive Athletic Division with 95 points going into the last stretch of the regular season.

As the team continues to push for its first Stanley Cup since the 2010-11 season, they’ll need more magic like this from Ullmark to make it happen.

Bo Horvat trade: Who won the Canucks and Islanders deal?

The Islanders made quite the playoff push by trading for Bo Horvat.

The 2023 NHL trade deadline is still over a month away, but the New York Islanders have made quite the splash.

On Monday, the Vancouver Canucks traded forward Bo Horvat to the Islanders in a pretty surprising afternoon deal. The move comes just over a week after the Canucks fired Bruce Boudreau and brought in Rick Tocchet as their new head coach. This teardown of the Canucks has been coming for some time, as Horvat was one of the major pieces on the trade block in Vancouver as the trade deadline approaches.

Let’s break down the NHL’s biggest trade of the 2022-23 season thus far, shall we?

Top-Shelf Takes: Bruce Boudreau deserved better than the hand the Canucks dealt him

Bruce there it is.

Welcome to Top-Shelf Takes, a weekly series from staff writer Mary Clarke all about the NHL. Lace up your skates as we dive deep into the epic highs and lows of this little sport called hockey.

It’s never easy being let go from your job. Take it from someone who has gone through the process multiple times: frankly, it sucks a lot!

Bruce Boudreau, unfortunately, was dealt the worst hand imaginable in his final few weeks with the Vancouver Canucks. His eventual firing — and the subsequent hiring of Rick Tocchet — was public knowledge for weeks in hockey circles. So much so that Boudreau was gracefully answering media questions about the topic just a few days before his firing.

It’s safe to say the Canucks handled this business in the most unprofessional way imaginable. If you’re going to fire someone, be quick about it. Don’t let the person twist in the wind for weeks waiting for the sword to fall. And yet, that’s exactly what they did to Boudreau, who had to endure public speculation on his job status for weeks because the Canucks front office didn’t want to name an interim head coach for the remainder of the season.

Let’s be clear, Boudreau is not at fault at all for what happened with the Canucks this season. Boudreau ended his Vancouver tenure with a 50-40-13 record. He singlehandedly turned the Canucks around last season and despite not making it to the playoffs, Boudreau earned the respect of Vancouver fans for the work he put in that made the team better even for just a short period of time.

Vancouver fans weren’t the only people to hold Boudreau in high regard either, as according to an interview with the former coach in The Athletic, Canucks players were quite emotional after his final game, a 4-2 loss to the Edmonton Oilers.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Boudreau said. “All of us, almost all the players and me, were crying in the room. It was crazy. Like, I mean, you’d have to see it to believe it because it’s hard to believe it just saying it.”

It’s hard to say if Boudreau will coach again in the NHL. Since 2007-08, Boudreau has coached 1,087 games, with a 617-342-128 record. Apparently, according to The Athletic‘s Michael Russo, hockey fans will likely see Boudreau on their televisions sooner rather than later, as the former coach is already lining up TV appearances.

All the respect in the world to Boudreau for publicly handling this terrible situation with class. It’s a real shame the Canucks organization couldn’t extend the same to Boudreau on his way out.

A tearful Bruce Boudreau responded to Canucks coaching change rumors

Bruce Boudreau is handling this situation with class.

The writing is on the wall for Bruce Boudreau with the Vancouver Canucks.

Despite going 50-38-13 overall in his time in Vancouver over the last two seasons, Boudreau is likely on his way out as head coach of the Canucks. Possibly as soon as this weekend, according to some NHL insiders.

The Canucks have been a dumpster fire in recent seasons, with the team currently sitting sixth in the Pacific Division with a 18-23-3 record that’s well out of the playoffs. However, Boudreau is not to blame for the Canucks current woes, which all stem from poor roster construction and misevaluated talent. That blame lays on the feet of previous general manager Jim Benning, current general manager Patrik Allvin, and current president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford.

With the Canucks underperforming this season, something has to change, and unfortunately for Boudreau, he’s likely set to be replaced by Rick Tocchet within the coming days. At a media availability on Friday, after missing morning skate earlier in the day, Boudreau got quite misty eyed when talking about what coaching in the NHL means for him. So much so that he ended the press conference early.

Talk about a classy response to an awful situation. NHL fans rallied around Boudreau in support of the Canucks head coach as rumors of his departure continue to swirl.

Eagle-eyed NHL fan saves a Canucks’ staffer from cancer by spotting a mole on his neck

Brian Hamilton, a staffer with the Vancouver Canucks, had his life saved by a fan, when Nadia Popovici, warned him of a cancerous mole on his neck.

Brian Hamilton, a staffer with the Vancouver Canucks, had his life saved by a fan, when Nadia Popovici, warned him of a cancerous mole on his neck.