It’s Going the Other Way’: An Ode to the Canucks and a Tribute to a Mentor

Let me first admit in the confidence of this article that, hockey, is my favorite thing, and it’s constantly threatened in the attention economy. The more you care about something, the more you tend to pay attention to it, and the more you pay attention, the more your brain focuses on it.

 

The brain is efficient for a reason, and we get desensitized too quickly about hockey, but perhaps not quickly enough about the Vancouver Canucks. There was always a reason not to believe in them.

 

We find weird ways to discover hope. After all, it’s the hope in sports that really hurts. Unfortunately, for me, this was believing in the Vancouver Canucks.

 

And it got me thinking back to a time when clarity was lacking.

 

Back in 2019, a solemn visit to Vancouver turned everything that had been crystal clear foggy.

 

See, I felt an existential dread most distinctly in the months after my late mentor and legendary Vancouver Canucks pulse (what else can I call him that he wouldn’t hate? He’d hate this one the most, but it’s the truth.) Jason Botchford died.

 

The next time I visited Vancouver, there was a bench overlooking Rogers Arena that Wyatt Arndt, who has done a sensational job of preserving Botchford’s legacy, engraved accordingly.

 

“Best gone but not forgotten – Jason Botchford. Dad, husband, brother, son, mentor, friend. We will remember to always do our dekes.”

 

I was secretly hoping that sitting on the bench would be a transcendent experience that would lift me out of a weird place. I sat there asking him what to do next, if I was going to make it without the one mentor who encouraged my antics instead of scolding them, or at least if he could show me how to start caring again.

 

He hated any public vibe of self-importance, so I debated with myself about even posting that I was on the bench. But I couldn’t just walk into Rogers Arena feeling as alone as I’d felt recently. I’d seen some tributes to Botch online, and I ultimately decided to just post the bench and go through arena security.

 

When I found my seat at Rogers Arena minutes later, the Canucks community that found the post already came to me with a quickness, realness and perspective that I’ve only ever seen executed that well from Botchford himself. Then it hit me: He was them. He was their voice. I loved his voice, I loved their voice, I loved them.

 

Then, a young but confident woman came up to me. She introduced herself, noted we were the two only women in the press box at the time, and that she was with “the Botchford Project,” a mentorship project still going strong and producing important journalism and journalists. I can’t remember what I said, but I remember her postgame was a banger—it had to be.

 

Botchford had a one-of-a-kind take on the traditional “game story,” a full-effort pulse on the team comprised of in-jokes, insider information, and artfully organized chaos that read more like a nightly play. When the Canucks community embraced me, I thought about the ending of the last one he ever wrote—almost cruelly subheaded “Best Ending.

 

I kept asking him why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so s–tty.

 

“And he’d say, ‘That’s the way it goes, but don’t forget, it goes the other way too.’

 

“That’s the way hockey in Vancouver is.

 

“Usually, this is the way it goes.

 

“But every once in a while, it goes the other way, too.”

 

I can’t wait for it to go the other way.”

 

Years later, I’m sitting at a South Boston bar with my best friend, who just happens to be from Vancouver. She wishes she could text her late dad as Brock Boeser wishes he could text his late dad as I wish I could text my late mentor as the overtime Boeser hat trick lifted the Canucks past the Predators for a 3-1 series lead. It was one of many mercurial wins this season, plenty of which seemed to completely defy the tortured existence of the Vancouver Canucks.

 

It took some Canucks fans until roughly Game 81 of their division-winning season to admit that the team might actually be good, and even then there were hesitations.

 

Is this allowed? Will it go toward disappointment, as it usually goes?

 

Some anxieties were valid: The team was coming from behind and pulling late-game dubs out of seemingly nowhere. This would catch up with them. Some weren’t as valid: Thatcher Demko is for real and has the Vezina finalist nod to prove it. And if you ask me, the career seasons out of players like Elias Pettersson, Boeser, Quinn Hughes and JT Miller were each of them digging in and becoming who they were always capable of becoming.

 

Will it ever happen exactly like this again, with PDO for days and career years out of multiple stars at the same time? Probably not. But it needed to happen this time to usher in a new era. The curses needed to be overturned. It all needed to seem a little too good to be true.

 

Like a slingshot that has been pulled back and tightened since the 2011 Cup Final loss to the Bruins, it needed to unleash totally “the other way” to even out appropriately.

 

We went back to that same bar in Round 2, and the bartender bought us a round: “You really seem to care about this,” he said, apropos of the college-aged constituents around us, just thrilled to be out on a Thursday.

 

We did care. And as Miller scored the go-ahead goal with 33 seconds left in Game 5 to push the Oilers to elimination, it mattered, and it was too late to pretend it didn’t.

 

 

Then came Game 7 after the Oilers’ Game 6 pushback. The Vezina finalist goalie had already been gone, and credit to Arturs Silovs for holding more than his own in net, but nothing could replace the stability Demko gave this team. Now top scorer Boeser was suddenly unavailable indefinitely due to blood-clotting issues.

 

Despite the early lack of firepower from the Canucks offense, and despite the early, comfortable lead the Oilers earned, the third period was still interesting as the Canucks pulled within one. You genuinely thought they might do it. You at least stayed up to find out if they did.

 

They didn’t, but for once in a situation like this, you couldn’t blame them. You took their body of work and the circumstances, and it wasn’t perfect but it was something to work with. There’s positive data, returning stars and even some clutchness to build off.

 

 

But most of all, the 2023-24 Canucks were chaotic, dramatic and fun.

 

They were Botchford’s.

 

They were ours. Despite Boston Pizza’s pleas, they refused to be Canada’s team. They were the perfect fold in the same old story of NHL parity. They gave us something interesting, something real, something that reminds us of our old friend Botchford.

 

As the first Game 7 on home soil since 2011 ended in another Canucks loss, there were no riots. There was nothing to be embarrassed about, on or off the ice.

 

There was just a genuine belief that it might be going the other way.