What makes Sportsnet Pacific “pacific,” exactly?
There’s little that distinguishes Sportsnet Pacific from every other Sportsnet channel. It's largely all the same programming, apart from carrying Vancouver Canucks games. Yes, they started showing Sportsnet 650’s Canucks Central pre-game show before some games this season, but that’s basically it for local, west-coast-based coverage.
It didn’t used to be this way. Canucks games were followed by a locally-produced and hosted post-game show with Don Taylor and ex-Canuck-turned-analyst Garry Valk, among others. It was at least one thing that made Sportsnet Pacific actually feel specific to the pacific.
Even the Canucks games aren’t always particularly pacific. That was the case on Wednesday night as the Canucks faced the Calgary Flames. Instead of flying out the Canucks’ broadcast team of John Shorthouse, John Garrett, and Dan Murphy for a one-game road trip, Sportsnet instead decided to just use their regular Flames crew, with Rick Ball calling play-by-play and Kelly Hrudey providing colour commentary.
The decision surely saved Sportsnet a little bit of money but it’s the kind of decision that risks alienating the fanbase west of the Rockies. It couldn’t have been any more clear that this was a Flames broadcast and not a Canucks broadcast or even a national broadcast, even with a familiar voice like Ball calling the game.
Even the digital board ads, whose major selling point is that they can be tailored toward the market in which the game is televised, were entirely Calgary-specific. It made the digital ads even more jarring than they usually are, as much as Gary Bettman might argue that they’re the opposite of jarring — comforting, even, like a cozy blanket that coats the players in a hazy glow and occasionally flickers like a rustic candle.
But the most obvious sign that this was a Flames broadcast was the obsession with constantly cutting to Flames goaltender Dan Vladar, who was backing up Jacob Markstrom in this game.
Vladar was mic’d up, for some reason, and the broadcast repeatedly cut to clips of Vladar on the bench throughout the game. It might have made sense if Vladar provided interesting, unique, or funny sound bites, but he didn’t. He reacted a bit more enthusiastically to the play on the ice than the typical backup goaltender, perhaps, but he mostly just said things like, “Attaboy!” or shouted, “Skate!” or “Yeah yeah yeah!”
After one of Vladar’s many mic’d up segments, Kelly Hrudey enthusiastically said, “Great stuff!” But it wasn’t great stuff. It barely qualified as “stuff.”
The broadcast even cut to Vladar at other random times for no discernible reason, such as after a Flames goal. They were very eager to show us that he was fist-bumping his teammates.
It got to the point of absurd comedy, like a bit from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! that keeps repeating a bad joke until you can’t help but laugh. At one point, Hrudey threw to a commercial with a complete non-sequitur, shouting, “Take a look at Dan Vladar!” as the camera cut to the goaltender.
Gentle reader, I literally laughed out loud.
The peak of the comedy came late in the broadcast during a break in the action.
“Let’s take a look…” said Hrudey and as he paused the broadcast immediately cut to the camera focused on Vladar, like a reflex, before he continued, “...at Bo Horvat.”
Perfect comedic timing, 10/10, no notes.
Like this game, I watched Dan Vladar. Er, I mean…Like Dan Vladar, I watched this game.
- Maybe the key for the Canucks is to take and blow a multi-goal lead as early as possible in the game, just to get it over with. That seemed to be the Canucks’ strategy against the Flames, jumping out to a two-goal lead in the first two minutes of the game and then quickly coughing up that two-goal lead before the first period was even over. If you know you’re going to cough up a lead, may as well get it done early so you have more time to recover, I guess.
- I was going to intersperse every bullet point in the IWTG with Dan Vladar’s reaction to the previous bullet point but I’m honestly pretty sick of seeing Dan Vladar.
- Bo Horvat, who said he didn't want to be a distraction, appeared thoroughly undistracted when he opened the scoring just over a minute into the game. After Curtis Lazar couldn’t quite jam the puck past Markstrom, J.T. Miller got the puck to Oliver Ekman-Larsson. His point shot was going wide but Horvat dragged it back inside the post with the best tip since “Wear sunscreen.”
- Lazar was playing with Horvat and Miller because Brock Boeser was a late scratch. No, not because he was traded, apparently, but because of an undisclosed illness. As a result, lines were shuffled and Nils Höglander was put back into the lineup and proceeded to play in such a way that he made you question why, exactly, he was ever taken out of the lineup.
- Höglander had a fantastic game, picking up two assists, doling out three hits — including an absolute doozy on the 6’6” Radim Zohorna — and helping drive the Canucks’ best line. That line was, of course, Höglander, Sheldon Dries, and Conor Garland, just as everyone predicted.
- 34 seconds after Horvat opened the scoring, the Short Kings Line made it 2-0. Tyler Myers jumped up on the rush and moved the puck to Höglander behind the net, who relayed the puck to Garland before jumping to the front of the net with Dries to create some havoc. That provided the space for Garland to cut off the boards and ripped the puck hard into the top shelf as revenge for always being just out of reach.
- The Flames responded on the power play, because the Canucks still have one of the worst penalty kills in the NHL. Tyler Myers got caught too high in the zone when he skated out to get in the shooting lane of a shot from distance. That left him unable to get back to the front of the net to prevent a tap-in goal for Mikael Backlund. Why yes, Myers has been on the ice for the second-most power play goals against of any NHL penalty killer over the last three seasons, why do you ask?
- Okay, the Short Kings Line wasn’t perfect. At the end of a strong shift, where Höglander hit the post, they botched their defensive zone coverage and Dies hung his goaltender out to dry when he left Andrew Mangiapane wide open. Nazem Kadri slipped a pass through Myers to Mangiapane, who sent an awkward one-timer under Martin.
- The Flames took the lead in the second period when Trevor Lewis skated right through Myers and Kyle Burroughs for a chance that Martin stopped. Unfortunately, only Lewis could find the rebound and he banked the puck off Martin’s arm and in from behind the goal line, which, of course, required an immediate reaction shot from Dan Vladar.
- “I really didn’t like the second and third goal,” said Martin after the game. “I give credit to my team for sticking in it and pushing.”
- You might be getting the vague impression that Tyler Myers didn’t have a great game and for that, I apologize: I should have made it much less vague.
- Myers wasn’t the only struggling Canuck, of course. The entire top-six had a rough game in their makeshift, Boeser-less lines. Fortunately, their new-look third line stepped up to tie the game.
- Höglander picked up the puck in the neutral zone and moved in down the right side, then flipped a nifty saucer pass across to Dries, who suddenly remember that he was one of the top goalscorers in the AHL last season and ripped a perfectly-placed shot over Markstrom’s glove into the top corner. And I mean the actual top corner — the puck went off the junction of the post and crossbar and in.
- Myers took one of his goofiest penalties of the season in the third period. He reached up to catch an aerial puck with one hand but, while he was doing so, Bo Horvat accidentally skated into his stick and knocked it out of his other hand. Without a stick to drop the puck to, Myers seemed confused as to what to do with the puck, so he just held it for a second in his hand, which you’re not allowed to do. I can’t even be mad, it was just so ludicrous.
- Fortunately, Myers’ penalty didn’t cost the Canucks and they even got a pretty good shorthanded chance out of it when Pettersson and Lazar broke out 2-on-1, only to get narrowly foiled by Markstrom. The puck got through the former Canuck, but he got just enough of it to send it rolling past the post, which was as close as the Canucks would get in the third period despite multiple chances.
- The Canucks had the best chances in overtime too, but couldn’t solve Markstrom, so the game went to the shootout. Martin was perfect, turning aside Jonathan Huberdeau, Dillon Dube, and Mikael Backlund. At the other end of the ice, Markstrom had the answer for Pettersson, jabbing out a pokecheck on a move that he likely had seen many times from his former teammate.
- Markstrom had no book on Andrei Kuzmenko, however, as this was his very first shootout attempt in the NHL. It was a devastating move, as Kuzmenko wheeled in with speed, then suddenly tapped the brakes like someone was following him a little too closely on the highway. That opened up a gap, as Markstrom wasn’t able to match his pace, and Kuzmenko snapped the puck glove side.
- Martin seemed somewhat pleased.
- More importantly, what was Dan Vladar’s reaction? The one time Canucks fans might have wanted to see Vladar and the broadcast dropped the ball.
