Canucks-Kraken Rivalry Should Get Ornery

Canucks Vs. Kraken

Let’s hope so.

Last season was unacceptable if you’re a Canucks fan. Vancouver went 1-2-and-1 against the 4th-year franchise, including two regulation losses late in the schedule by a composite score of 11-to-3.

It should be a fun match-up this season, with Adam Foote as the Canucks head coach, a guy who knew rivalries as a player and probably wasn’t too happy about losing to the southern neighbours as an assistant coach. Maybe Evander Kane will step up the nasty in defending his hometown team against the intruders from Washington state.

The last time things got heated between the two clubs it paid off for Vancouver, mainly thanks to J.T. Miller and Tanner Pearson, neither of whom are still with the club.

Frustrated and angry over an 0-5-2 start to the 2022-’23 season, a tailspin that would contribute to head coach Bruce Boudreau losing his job three months later, the Canucks came out attacking against the Kraken in Seattle on October 27th.

Pearson dropped the mitts just 2:27 into the game against Adam Larsson, and exactly one minute later Miller attacked and fought future Vancouver teammate Carson Soucy. It set the stage.

The Canucks won the game 5-4. It was Boudreau’s 600th career coaching victory.

At home two months later, Vancouver won again head-to-head, this time 6-5 in a shoot-out on December 22nd. Hometown boy Kyle Burroughs fought in this game, as he did in the October match-up.

In January the Canucks fired Boudreau and brought in Rick Tocchet. The team won his first game at home against the lowly Blackhawks. The next night they lost his 2nd game 6-1 in Seattle to the Kraken on January 25th.

“That’s a good team right there,” Tocchet said postgame. “I thought the anxiety caught up with some of the guys, with the emotion of last week, but that was bad. That was bad. Soft. You hate to call your team soft, but it was soft tonight. We didn’t participate in the wall battles, we didn’t get a rim out. We knew what they were going to do.”

This we already knew. Soft doesn’t work.

Seattle beat Vancouver again in their last match-up of that season 5-2 on April 4th at Rogers Arena. It was the continuation of a trend that has slid in the direction of the Kraken ever since, leading up to last season’s somewhat dominant finale.

Whether it was simply due to expansion pains in the case of Seattle, or toxic discombobulation in the case of Vancouver, the opponent in both cases has taken advantage. Let’s hope we have a more level playing field, so to speak, entering the 2025-’26 campaign.

Time to change it up. I think the situation and the personnel are right for a nasty correction in this rivalry. One of the many things to look forward to this coming season.

Prospects from the two organizations meet in mid-September in Everett, Washington. The big clubs play two preseason matches, one in each building. We’ll have to wait a bit for the real thing. That would be December 29th in Seattle.