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This week in anguish:

• Misery loves company, so we are delighted to be joined by Canuck superfan, devoted listener, Vancouver expat, and Thunderbird grinder Alissa McArthur!

• The Canucks have just concluded their third-best regular season of all time and were just one game away from the final four...so you better believe we devote significant time to talking about Troy from Richmond, Jacob from Gävle, and Nik from Moscow.

• Tristan presents his cockamamie General Theory of Petey Bitterness, while Alissa drinks a bit more deeply from the cup of wisdom and sobers us again.

• Hmm, important point of order: Do we actually even like playoff hockey? Won't somebody please think of the Quintin?

• We're cool, we're calm, we're gonna be OK...just as long as we come up with the perfect local intro song to counterract our sometimes somnambulant starts.

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This week in anguish:

• The first (and almost certainly last) mid-game episode of TWiA! Crow along vaingloriously with every Brock Boeser snipe! (Even those that turn out to actually be Elias Lindholm's.) Groan plosively with every indignity visited upon our beautiful boys! Strain to hear the off-mic musings of Racquel Rabey!

• Ardella is off to Scandihoovia for the next month and bit, so applications from any prospectively scabby co-hosts are welcomed.

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This week in anguish:

• "Way to go boys! Never doubted you for a second," said your trusty co-hosts while hooked up to an IV drip due to perspiration-related dehydration.

• When you move the goal-posts enough, everything becomes a three-pointer (Does that work as metaphor? Look, we barely even understand hockey.)

• Tristan short-lists the best play-by-play calls of Pyoos Suter's series-winning goal. (Does that qualify as a pun? Probably not.)

• Time to better get to know more about the historic hardware we might be taking home this season, with our chief archivist reporting in on the Vezina, Adams, Norris, and Byng.

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This week in anguish:

• Look, in the regular season these episode descriptions are mildly useful because you never know what vaguely Canuckian rabbit-hole we'll be crawling down to escape the indignities of the week that was, but in the playoffs? We do actually talk about the here and now, we promise.

• That doesn't mean we won't still make time for an expose on Richard Brodeur's 1982 save percentage and long-forgotten minutiae about the Linden's glass-smashing hit.

• Let us ape a little bit of Big Zee's sangfroid sass and go boldly together towards Game 5.

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This week in anguish:

• PLAYOFFFFFFFFS!

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• You're a captain, Quintin, and don't let nobody tell ya different.

• Much like the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, the thoughts of your intrepid co-hosts are often misconstrued as being sequential. Can you tell we're getting a bit punchy up here on this playoff precipice? It's the podcast that aims for mildly amusing but has to settle for hysterical.

• What should the Rogers Arena staff, our fellow fans, and society at large be doing and/or not doing at every single moment in time so as to not attract our ire and/or disdain? Find out all this and more in our even-keeled and good-natured review of our recent in-person entrapment at the hands of the LA Kings.

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This week in anguish:

• What do we want?

• Playoff glory or at least to know the particular nature of our ignominious defeat!

• When do we want it?

• Now!

( - Yes, we're having a bit of trouble enjoying the remainder of this regular season.)

• What do Ilya Mikheyev, the Babych brothers, this other Babich, Belarussian bazas, and Percy Williams have in common? That's a question Ardella will be sure to answer just as soon as she's finished hand-tabulating the grimmest list on Olympedia.

• Tristan talks back to the radio. If you can throw a hat, you can throw a jersey. Yes, we are actually uniquely hard done by. And for heaven's sake: grow up, John Tortorella!

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This week in anguish:

• Your favourite co-hosts Obstinate and Pliable demonstrate great resilienciness by poking their heads cautiously out of the slough to celebrate Petey's big payday.

• We gird ourselves for the upcoming trade deadline by surveying the best last-minute impulse buys in Canuck history, which quickly reveals itself to be a history of best trade deadline deals in Pat Quinn history.

• Who lacks all conviction in the postseason and who is full of passionate intensity? Mere anarchy is loosed upon the show as Tristan presents his definitive list of the Clutch vs. the Nahsomuch.

• The third Sedin and the third Courtnall should probably start a support group for tertiary brethren.

• Broken fourth wall update: Ardella and Rachel worked on a Trevor Linden jigsaw puzzle after recording, and Tristan('s goalie) won his beer league playoff game.

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This week in anguish:

• "I went ballistic" - Ardella Thompson

• Remember the Sandman? Sure you do. Remember "The Big C.S."? Liar.

• "Arshdeep, I'ma let you finish, but Andreas Martinsen had one of the South Asian NHL debuts of all time!"

• Thanks to Kuldip Bains and Brenton Demko for providing a rare dollop of good vibes.

• We excoriate ourselves for ever subscribing to the Team of Destiny newsletter, and then talk ourselves fifty percent of the way back onto the bandwagon.

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This week in anguish:

• Mustering all the wisdom and sangfroid of her half-century of Canuck fandom, Ardella enters and sagely proclaims, "Pride goeth before the fa-...Hey! Get up, you bum! Are you kidding me!? Aaaaaagh!", flipping over a coaster, and stomping out of the room.

• Look, we remain cautiously optimistic for our seemingly singular swing at the mini-golf windmill, but this week brought back up a feeling or two.

• Shortly after pointing out his criminal brow shape, Tristan frames Noah Juulsen as a question.

• Ardella's Media Miscellany provides third-degree buzz marketing for Tanti Interiors Ltd and offers an excitingly unpaid voice acting opportunity to Daniel Wagner.

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This week in anguish:

• A milestone half-marathon and a souvenir Covid bout kept us off the airwaves for much longer than intended, but you better believe we couldn't resist talking about...Petey being the best at passing the puck into some buckets or whatever.

• Ardella welcomes Elias the Third with a bevy of fun facts. Did you know a zebulon is a term for a digression so severe that it sends one careening through the lists of most-popular Swedish baby names?

• The lamps of Kuzmenko's megawatt smile have gone out in Vancouver, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetimes. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. We will remember them.

• Tristan's lays out the spread for a bric-à-brac picnic including Trevor's trees, Jyrki's groceries, BMo's law, JT and Co's jean jacket, Johnny's brevity, and of course Thatcher's hug snub.

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan and Sistran get corporeal at Rogers Arena as the Canucks defeat the Senators in 18 minutes, leaving Tristan 42 minutes to look a gift wagon in the axle.

• Relative cheer volumes! Timbit timing! Actually accurate Adelaideans! And are we all Canucks, Wayne? Are we really?

• Dive boldly, often baldly, and beer-gutted into halcyon summers with Howie Meeker's NHL Showdown.

• Annie get your G.O.A.T., we're kicking it into square one and firing up the etymology wagon.

• We blow it up and start all over again with the Honey Badger.

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This week in anguish:

• The Hughes Bowl brought up, in addition to some hurt feelings for our primordinate son, the issue of strong mom genes. Exhibit A: the Jagrs, and the Jagrs with Cup. Exhibit B: the Hugheses.

• We heard from Jim Rutherford for the first time in a long time. Ardella basks in the sweet sounds of regret, while Tristan would like Jim to re-check his Rolodex for monied Vancouver property developers with a vested interest in helping his hockey team.

• Almost nearly totally passes without mention of one Roberto L.

• There's a new All-Star skills competition format and the rules, for one of our hosts, at least, are an intoxicating mixture of copious and frivolous.

• Our helmets are too dull (but may be on the precipice of being too shiny), our emboweled wine bar is at once too empty and too extant, and our yellow is all wrong. No, there is nothing we can't whinge about.

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This week in anguish:

• Various and sundry topics after a two-and-one week in which the wins felt pale and wan in comparison to coming up snake eyes against Vegas yet again.

• We head back to 1994 for a black-red-yellow song suggestion, and then stay there to bask in the hyper-local, Canuckian invention of Cameo 1.0 that was Rob's Stag.

• We learn that Zadorov, like Petey before him, is a surprisingly dyed-in-the-wool Canucks fan. What would a team of all Canuckleheads look like?

• We look back to 2019 and chortle with Epimethean hindsight at the Hockey News' projection for this year's roster.

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan takes the reins, so prepare yourself for two things: We'll be covering a lot of ground, and we'll be tilling that good earth very, very lightly.

• Is Kuzy getting chilly in the doghouse? What's scarier than a silent Hög? How many Crawfords work for the Canucks? And ain't it just nice to hear that Trevor still cares?

• The PWHL has no plan, but that's still leagues ahead of "plans" like the NHL's anti-sensical take on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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This week in anguish:

• Bo Horvat and Ardella's DAWG rating goes stratospheric, while Tristan puts the old captain's tears under the microscope.

• Sometimes bitten, forever mauled, Ardella and Iain McIntyre lead us on a tour of the five players who were happiest to see the back of us, statistically speaking, at least.

• The PWHL releases their jersey "designs" for their inaugural season, and they're spectacularly unimpressive. Sad Whale noises.

• Natalie Miller supports Hockey Helps the Homeless, and I just hope it doesn't ruffle too many feathers when I say I think that's swell.

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This week in anguish:

• Wound up with the title that it did, but was also very nearly called "Are We Actually the Best?" What can we say? Like most fans, we tend towards oscillation.

• I'll see myself out. But not before sharing with you this Gen Z update of the famous leaning Linden photo.

• Ardella is away next week so no new pod for a fortnight, by which time nothing will have gone wrong and everyone will be happy.

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This week in anguish:

• Was, for the first few hours of its life, marred by audio issues which are now fixed. Delete and re-download if you're getting an echo.

• There's very little actual anguish to speak of! Tristan is basking in the blue-light glow of the NHL.com standings page and watching fluffy Canucks.com content, while Ardella is inventing monsters under the bed in the form of jersey-embedded micro-stats.

• Frivolity levels have extended to the creation of charming Canucks gifs, from Brock and Petey being eternally but playfully withholding, Ian Cole's GOAT, and Beauvillier's jackal alter-ego.

• Don Taylor is being inducted, rightfully and at long last, into the BC Sports Hall of Fame. Now there's nothing left to do but mount the campaign to have Brett Hull and Duncan Keith unceremoniously booted from the BC Hockey Hall of Fame.

• Frank Frederickson, square-jawed scion of Icelando-Canadian ice hockey, and pioneer aviator who ran out of runway at the very end of this episode. Sorry, Frank!

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This week in anguish:

• Feels like its head is bobbing just above the surface of the great abyss. Better than the alternative.

• A hearty welcome to the pod to anyone who had their Google alerts set for Dit Clapper, Erin Whitten, or the Bil(l)s Laforge, Esqs.

• Andrei Kuzmenko! Travis Dermott! Mariah Fujimagari! Mark Friedman! These are just some of the proper nouns you'll hear on this week's fabulous episode, proper nouns brought vividly to life by verbs! Verbs! Your friend in meaning.

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This week in anguish:

• But no! This week in transitory triumph!

• We are both meaner and more succint in victory, apparently. Apologies to the family of Jay Woodcroft. But we wrapped up all the slander in under an hour!

• Melt down the ice and dismantle the sun. Just freeze us in amber this week like a couple of mammoth-sated mosquitoes.

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This week in anguish:

• Finds us surprisingly shaken by Stan Smyl finally falling from the full-time Canuck firmament. Out of respect for Steamer's proverbial work ethic we take a tight and focused trip to the archives, barely even discussing the hourly rental cost of UBC arena icetime in 1982.

• The Position Player Portion of the Pod prances to its triumphal conclusion, going on the offence with Husky bulldog Aidan McDonough, piff paff puffing with Pius Suter, and rolling out the red linoleum for oft-unsung Tony Tanti.

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This week in anguish:

• Senior Executive Host Ardella is firmly in the driver's seat this week, steering us deftly through many diversions and connections like checking in with a gone Sawyer, putting the "huh" back on the Hronek, and why the humble pride of the Church Athletic League was pleased as punch.

• Tristan puts in a workmanlike shift in the errors and omissions department, plucking the Nanaimo Clippers out of the tub when grasping for the name of a random WHL team, citing the sage words of "Dave Tocchet", and being at least a party to a conversation that referenced "Chris Tanev's draft class".

• Do you suffer from diacritical marks? Have you been affected by male-pattern Balderis? Perhaps this segment, ostensibly about Teddy(s) Blueger(s), is right for you.

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This week in anguish:

• The pod spends a combined 15+ hours at Canucks training camp, working towards Ardella's stated goal of "just trying not to get attached to these people."

• No one was left heaving in a Juolevian heap after any of the drills, heavily hampering our talent-evaluation process.

• We now have a huggable captain, an extant president, and a whisper on the wind about a practice facility.

• How Did We Not Know (and why on earth would you) about the former pride of the Rimouski Oceanic, Thatcher 1.0?

• Prick up your ears on a continuing basis for the Position Player Portion fo the Pod, which shines the spotlight on goalies this week and consists of an up-and-comer (Tolopilo), a going concern (DeSmith), and a back-catalogue backstop (Gamble).

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This week in anguish:

• We're back! And just in time to catalogue the Connecticut Whale (and the whole darn PHF) being reduced to oil and ambergris. 

• Ardella carefully curates the most impactful happenings of each of the 14 weeks of our hiatus.

• Tristan hangs up his prospect expert hat and returns to the pro scouting ranks. Hey, I hear this Troy from Richmond guy is supposed to be pretty good.

• We grapple with a world in which the Vegas Golden Knights (and Ben Hutton) are your Stanley Cup champions, Connor Bedard is a Chicago Blackhawk, and Dale Tallon is a Senior Advisor to the putative good guys. 

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This week in anguish:

• While Ardella brings her usual homespun statistics and handscribed quotations, the show largely progresses along the lines scralwed out by Tristan in clumsy block letters on clipboarded sheets of looseleaf:

CHEECH FILIP HRONEK / TRADE DEADLINE PRIDE CURRENT MANAGEMENT REGIME / PAST MANAGEMENT WEST COAST EXPRESS WHALE

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This week in Connecticut:

• A definitive power ranking of PHF arenas!

• T-6th: International Skating Centre of Connecticut, home of your beloved Whale

• T-6th: Northtown Centre, home of the Buffalo Beauts
• 4th: Canlan Ice Sports York, home of the Toronto Six
• 3rd: The Rink at the American Dream Mall, home of the Metropolitan Riveters
• 2nd: Richfield Ice Arena, sunken 70s living room of the Minnesota Whitecaps
• 1st: Warrior Ice Arena, home of some schmucks from Massachusetts

• Vestigial 1st: Danbury Ice Arena, erstwhile Whale habitat

• History! We review the Whale's tributary impersonation of the scrappy Pittsburgh Pennies.

• Fluff! We learn a li'l more about Janine Weber, Alyssa Wohlfeiler, Janka Hlinka, Kennedy Marchment, and others.

• Vengeance! One day after we recorded this during the Whale's 5-3 defeat to the Toronto Six, we stormed back and beat them 6-4.

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella puts aside her pad of paper and turns show prep over to Tristan for this one, who comes armed with such fascinating and well-researched talking points as "Horvat: chant" and "Pettersson: clothes".

• We're Google Translating Swiss newspaper articles to get to the bottom of why HC Visp is abandoning neutrality and Jake Virtanen all at once. 

• How Did We Not Know that we've already had a player who rivalled Conor Bedard's eye-popping World Juniors statistics?

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This "week" in anguish:

• We struggle to fathom how we got down into this trough, and yet we remember every damn step along the way.

• Taps urgently on our tattered "There's no salary cap on respect" sign.

• Misses and appreciates Gino Odjick, and will continue to do so forever.

• Comes distressingly close to agreeing with Andrew Walker on something.

• Rolls out the anguished carpet for Rick Tocchet. Huzzah. 

• Sighs along with John Garrett, and wishes our team could do a better job of embodying John Shorthouse's 2023 resolution. 

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This "week" in anguish:

• Comes out almost utterly at random now. Much like our beloved squadron, everything is meaningless and there is a distinct lack of accountability.

• With that in mind, it's all venitalated spleens and strangely strenuous ennui for the first 45 minutes or so.

• But you'll learn something! Connor Bedard numerology and a curious history of exceptional status, at the very least.

• The tears in rain fall shortly after Connecticut. These whales are not nice, while this whale is. Pucky/ie, "the whale who likes hockey", is unfortunately lecherous.

• Just because it deserves to be put in print, Ardella on JT Miller: "He doesn't have the confidence to be humble."

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This week in anguish:

• Was recorded shortly before Elias went supernova against the Kraken. We woulda mentioned it, I promise!

• Is really just a collection of troubling bullet points from the last month-ish, including such lowlights as...

• Our briefly shiny, now tarnished front office and our human rights tribunalations.

• How Allvin and Rutherford really, really need to block After Hours' phone number.

• The fact that there are no signs of light, even compared to end-stage Benningism.

• The treatment of Bo, Brock, Nils, and others.

• Our utter lack of internal salary cap structure.

• Our checked-out coach.

• Wait, you guys are having fun!?

• But all is not lost! The farm is actually looking a bit fecund for once, and Jeremy Colliton is Sweder than we ever realized.

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This Week in Anguish:

• Is on strike until the Canucks make peace with Rachel Doerrie, Brock Boeser, and you know what? Troy Stecher, too. 

• Failing that, we will abandon these lofty principles and return to the digital airwaves as soon as both co-hosts dig themselves out from the angsty work piles they've become buried under. 

• Doctors are calling it a high morale sprain, and the prognosis is week-to-week.

• All currently captured Tears in Rain have been hermetically sealed for safekeeping and will be aired later in the month.

xoxo,

Tris and Ardella

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This week in anguish:

• Once again, we've convinced ourselves what a great idea it would be to quarter-watch a muted hockey game while attempting to simultaneously podcast.

• The cohesion suffers! Ah well, a good time is had by all (two of us), and we learn a great deal about Swedish 'Nucks, savour some sterling Läck stats, and we add a new chapter to Garrett's Big Book of Pings. 

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This week in anguish:

• Seems to dare Jim Rutherford to fire it, so flippantly does it thumb its nose at the very concept of structure.

• A roadtrip of comparisons has stolen Tristan's joy, but never fear! The last nine seasons of futility have almost fully numbed his frayed nerves. 

• In a fit of November Neurosis, Ardella has dehumanizingly bracketed every one of the Canucks' 48 contracts, pitting them against each other in a hunch-based, cap-free battle royale. Tristan immediately proceeds to draft the makings of a team that would get likeably trounced by its own castoffs.

• The ballet-inspired Soviet coach Tristan was thinking of was Anatoly Tarasov. His dictatorial successor was indeed Viktor Tikhonov, but it was Vsevolod Bobrov who coached the Soviet team at the '72 Summit. Vsevolod! 

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This week in anguish:

• Is one of those weeks that's probably better summed up by all the potential episode titles we discarded in the first 15 minutes.

• Any element of mawk-ness has totally disappeared.

• There's no ray of light.

• We're below the rock that is rock bottom.

• If we weren't the laughing stock of the country and of the world... (This one just kind of trails off.)

- We get things on the rails for a highly structured, straightforward back-60 minutes. That's how you win in this league, after all. 

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This week in anguish:

• Was recorded as we watched the Canucks deflate/implode against the Nashville Predators, after each period. We maintained a super even emotional keel throughout, though - no worries.

• Is essentially the KevinCast, as Juice, ironically, gave us a great deal to chew over.

• The Whale took it on the fin in their first foray back against the sinful Pride. At least we have Lenka Serdar's...creature (?) to console us.

• We leave Shorty behind in this week's Tears in Rain to unleash Mean John Garrett.

• Ardella's tone-of-voice power rankings, exposed.

• Switchy-swap sweaters. Everyone's talking about them. But we cut to the chase. This Johnny can skate. This Johnny can't. Be better, Johnny.

• Where do Canucks come from, mostly?

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This week in anguish:

• We bask in the glow of, at long last, a good li'l 48 hours for our beleaguered team. 

• We don't let go of old grievances, though! We take Patrick Allvin out behind the pumpkin patch for a talking to. 

• More tears are spilled in rain than are captured. That's an assessment of this week's segment, but also probably a fun fact. 

• Were we even slightly on the ball, we would have made much more of Mikheyev's breakout week and Spencer Martin's sterling job maintaining his perfect points percentage. Here's John Garrett chagrining at our lack of professionalism, instead. 

• This Week in Connecticut sees our habitat endangered, our pod much changed but seemingly improved, and finds us a bit confused about how to do this season's whale watching.

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This week in anguish:

• Was the worst single week in Canucks history.(?) Ardella's voice raises at the end of that sentence. Tristan's does not. You decide. 

• We lose our damn minds temporarily before we even make it to the nine-minute mark. 

• Jim  ̷B̷e̷ Rutherford went on After Hours and that gave us (and Bruce Boudreau) a whooole lot to think about.

• Ardella lightens the mood by sewering Elias Pettersson's early campaign. He's almost as bad as JT, folks!

• We ask the big questions about the Power Rising video, such as, "What?"

• Determined not to let all those wonderful little John and John moments get lost in time, Tristan unveils his new segment, Tears in Rain.

• Doubling down, Ardella turns to the financial statements of Hockey Canada to cheer herself up (but like, actually) in this week's How Did I Not Know That?

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This week in anguish:

• Swaddled in ignorance of Saturday's result, we spend a great deal of time bewailing game one.

• It's not like we're going to give up a multi-goal lead and allow another shorthanded goal against in the very next game, right? Right!?

• Not to worry, though. We sort out Bedard to the Canucks by 2025, max.

• Ardella has questions, Tristan adopts a power-play, and Whales are spotted on the horizon. 

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This week in anguish:

• We begin season five (!) with a whole new ethos: no prep.

• We swoon for Kuzmenko, stump for Bo, mull over Miller and manage to fall a little bit more in love with our beloved Bruce.

• Despite (and, to be honest, preceding) all these fuzzy feelings, we still find a tremendous amount to be anxious about! Damn the gods for putting the season of Brock in peril. Why is there such a burgeoning middle in the GM Jim venn diagram? Whither Ms. Doerrie and wherefore Mr. Tallon? We gnash our teeth. 

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This week in anguish: - 51 years of season-summating headlines, handily hi-lited for your edification. 

• A last fond look back at our bygone betters, the boys of 2002.

• Talking over the year-end media availabilities, but really just lamenting our inability to give Brock a hug. 

• A whistlestop tour of Transcarpathian ethnicities, featuring all your favourite Horvats. 

• How Did We Not Know that Dale Tallon pulverized baby Bobby back in the day?

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This week in anguish: - Ever keen to emulate his NHL heroes, Tristan decided to try out this fun new Covid protocol he'd been hearing so much about.

• This meant we hadn't recorded in two semi-meaningful weeks, leading to this episode having a pretty prodigious conversational PSI.

• You know how people complain about coaches ruining the game with too much structure? Think of this episode as a protest against that. We freewheel for an hour and forty. Firewagon podcasting...is that a thing?

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This week in anguish:

• Breaking down all of Bouce Broudeau's win-the-weeks.

• "Hope, persusade, whatever," and other inspirational advice for Patrik Allvin.

• Beating the Maple Leafs at franchise records we have carefully hand-selected.

• Checking in on the miraculous regular season finish of the 2001/02 Canucks.

• Spencer Martin and our expensive goalie severance packages.

• Chase Gray saves the orca and the Canucks embarrass themselves with their "offers" to indigenous artists.

• How Did I Not Know about Markus Naslund and Peter Forsberg's charitable superteam?

• Tristan describes things he saw in Canucks mic'd up videos. What to see Weekend at Petey's for yourself? How about gurning Bo Horvat?

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This week in anguish:

• Is a Frankenstein's miracle of audio stitchery after one of us had issues with their recording. (It was Tristan. It's always Tristan.) If it seems like some sentences end a bit before they should

• We cemented our eternal Connecticut Whale credentials in truly Canuckticut fashion by losing a heartbreaking, do-or-die final game to a bunch of jerks from Boston.

• Ardella has quizzes! First: ranking the many Marches of the post-2011 Canucks. Who you got? Travis 3? Willie 1? All your favourites are here.

• Then: forget March Madness and make way for March Melancholia. Gasp with delight as the Sad Sixteen are whittled down to the Oful Ocho before the Forlorn Four give way to the Troubled Two. Only one will stand as your Cheerless Champion of the sixteen discouraging things that happened this March off the top of Ardella's head!

• We take stock of the two sad times we tried and failed to turn ourselves into the team that beat us, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

• The true inventors of the hockey stick, the greatest Canucks win of all time, and Ardella gets belted by one small difference between beer league and the bigs.

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This week in anguish: - It finally hits us that the homestand, this season, and maybe even this core are in danger of dying with a whimper.

• Like a stone plooshing into a pond, this realization ripples out into three wavefronts of worry, each one more sacrilegious than the last.

• We say goodbye to Tyler, tally the Travises, and tie our hopes, once again, around Troy.

• Like light from a dying star slowly reaching the earth, this week's lackadaisacal editing schedule puts Tristan in the awkward position of sewering Halak at his moment of greatest Canuck trimph.

• Ardella reads over a hundred pages of graduate-level research on the hockey organ. Diapasons of laughter ensue. Charge!

• Whale win! Whale win! Your 2022 PHF regular season champion Connecticut Whale are sharpening their baleen while they await the identiy of their first Isobel Cup opponent.

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This week in anguish: - Unimaginably, the Canucks (and Brad Hunt) have won yet another week.

• Do you know who Nils is, Bruce? Tread carefully.

• JT Miller rockets up the body language power rankings.

• The paltry archaeological evidence of Dancing Demko.

• The Canucks' new Pride jersey, more comments on the Black History Month jersey, and a plea for 41 jerseys a year.

• Claude Vilgrain played 145 non-Olympic international games for Team Canada from 1986-1988. How? Huh? Against whom? And other queries resolved.

• David Bauer's principles lose Canada the 1964 silver medal.

• This Week in Connecticut revels in past dominance and anticipates a consequential showdown.

• The First Invitational Sesquicentennial Canucks Games-Played Quiz.

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This week in anguish:

• Winning the week while protecting Christopher Tanev's face and Jacob Markström's pride (and ignoring the ongoing descent to hell in New Jersey)

• Ardella slyly coins a wonderful phrase. "At one point there was a scrumble in front of the goalie." Delightful.

• Old Man Jannik and the case of the plastic shells.

• We talk Black History Month in various forms, including appreciating the Canucks' newest jersey design, going ghost-hunting through Madison Bowie's article, and naming the also-rans in Justin Bailey's chronicle of Black Cancucks.

• Nat Bailey's ultimately unsuccessful efforts to torpedo Ernie Dougherty's career.

• Slap Shot is 45 years old and there is a great deal we still dont' understand.

• Prospect potpourri, including Aidan McDonagh and a plague of Huskies, Gunnarwolfe Fontaine's admission to the all-name team, Klimovich's journey from Pinsk to Minsk, and Lucas Forsell's animorphosis.

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This week in anguish:

• Olympic revelry turns quickly into a search for the Canucks' new (or additional?) mental performance coach.

• The Canucks' front office is more available than ever, and we extract insights. Among the most superficial and tangential: Patrick Allvin is the future of ASMR, and Carey Price had the most horrific ears mask of all time. 

• The view from Section 307 as the boys Eeyore themselves to the brink of playoff irrelevance. 

• Boudreau (sorry, "Bruce") questions the team's readiness, and after a detour through Michael Jordan's towel-centric process we're poachin' coaches and tip-toeing across Jannik Hansen's lawn.

• Ardella is becoming radicalized online and Tristan wishes that he could cut as sharply up the ice as a Tohoku Free Blade. 

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This week in anguish: - Despite winning the week, we fear we are living in the twilight of the idols. We love our new management group and their putative vision, but who will be the first to go once Jim starts to philosophize with a hammer?

• Perhaps, if we all just close our eyes and misunderstand Bayern Munich's slogan hard enough, we can all stay as one big happy family after all.

• Welcome Cammi Granato! You have risen to great hockey heights while reflexively batting off prejudiced attacks for over 20 years...but can you withstand our withering critique of your slapdash workflow as a children's author?

• Yo Juho, I’m really happy for you, and I'ma let you finish, but the Canucks already had one of the best player-of-the-game objects of all time. One of the best of all time!

• If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results, surely our plan to once again draft Elias Petterson in 2022 is flawless.

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This week in anguish: - Podz and Högs both get a night in or around the pressbox, and in the latter case we strain to avoid using the term "pork scratchings".

• Tallying Bruce's winning weeks.

• Huge Hughes news, and a rare point of controversy as we debate player travel during the All-Star break.

• Like so many others, we unhinge our jaws and stare agape at just how badly Rocky Wirtz and Gary Bettman are handling life, the universe, and everything.

• Passing notions and superficial observations on 50 years of Canuck all-stardom.

• Remember the Challenge Cup in 1979? Or Rendez-Vous '87? Wanna?

• How to build a cohesive dressing room in two easy steps (and one easy steppe).

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This week in anguish: - Is going description-less for the time being as I'm uploading it eight seconds before having to go to work.

• Give it a listen! All shall be revealed. 

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This week in anguish:

• The boys pulled off a successful-on-our-terms road trip and a tremendously gutsy overtime loss to the Panthers, with Petey looking more and more like himself...so we focus on Petey’s less-than-stellar shootout attempt, and move-less attempts in general.

• We welcome Rachel Doerrie to the fold with our patended mixture of over-familiarity, hyper-scrutiny, and the belief that quotes should never be burdened down by pesky context.

• A journey into the rabbit hole of Ardella's mind, beginning at Ulf Samuelsson and ending with Jesse Boulerice face-sticking Ryan Kesler.

• Like buzzards we pick over the verbal remains of Chris Gear and Nolan Baumgartner in the search for nourishing morsels.

• The pod has a Pod, the PHF has more cash, the jerseys have more pride, the ECHL all star game has more representation, but most importantly of all...

• What's wrong with Lumme?

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This week in anguish:

• Begins with twenty-five minutes of handwringing over the state of our Petey. Basically, we fret-manifested his scoring outburst later that morning, no big deal.

• Breaking down our goal expectations and making sure the Boudreau bounce doesn't descend into a Desjardins dribble.  

• "This town ain't big enough for the both of us," said Probity to Competitive Advantage. 

• Why did there used to be two professional North American women's hockey leagues? Why is there now only one league and one "player's association"? Are we the baddies? A report. 

• Between the time it took to record and publish this, the PHF has announced their salary cap will more than double next season. This podcast is now basically a vision board. 

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This week in anguish:

• To paraphrase the dearly departed Jim Benning: "Why isn't anyone talking about Dennis Kearns?" We remedy that in an exhaustive yet bracingly brief retrospective of significant Canuck rearguards. 

• Ardella dusts off the Canucks Trophy Case, and takes us from the ballyhooed heights of Harts and Lindsays to the depths of the Mark Messier Leadership Award. 

• Tristan gets his ankles stuck in some bog-standard hockey names, struggling with such basics as Aloysius, Börje, and Dougan. 

• The Connecticut weather report: flurries of fluff this week, followed by showers of scholarly preparation the next. 

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This week in anguish:

• Five hundred! Mediocrity never tasted so sweet. Tristan defends Tanner Pearson, JT Miller censors himself for Ardella's benefit, good chaos, and other thoughts on the OT win vs Anaheim.

• Dmitri Zlodeyev is our entry point to From Russia With Love, Ardella's half quiz, half retrospective segment on the finest Canucks you can find west of Kamchatka. 

• Friendship power rankings. Stocks are rising everywhere, but the ghost of Father Tanev looms large.

• How Did We Not Know about Jason Strudwick's relations, and about Frank J. Selke's managerial precociousness?

• This Week in Connecticut: boo to the Metropolitan Riveters; yay to the Brass Bonanza.

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This week in anguish:

• Betcha forgot about the plight of those plucky '01-'02 Canucks. Well, they didn't forget about you.

• Observations deriving from the recent mic'ings up of Messrs. Garland and Miller. 

• Mocking the prognosticators at the end of Carolina's Rutherford era.

• The Smyl Files: The Coaching Years

• How Did We Not Know when the Steamer first steamt?

• We take one hangdog look back at a fresh-faced Travis Green on the day of his hiring, then immediately jettison him once again and focus more beams of adoration on the Boudreau family, who are bringing niceness back to Minnesota minor hockey.

• Remember Scott Walker? So do we...in this portion of the show!

• This Week in Connecticut: We stare a gift whale in the mouth, and are delighted by what we find there.

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This week in anguish:

• Was recorded at 6:30 on Tuesday morning, which explains a) why we didn't mention anything about Covid once again stalking the Canucks, and b) our razor-sharp wits.

• We go through the tumultuous week in fine detail, bursting all Joy's grapes upon our palates fine until we find the one that turns to ash in our mouths. Then we focus on that one quite a bit, admittedly.

• Extends, as it now always shall, into the great (?) state of Connecticut to check in on our newly-beloved denizens of the Danbury Ice Arena. Go Whale. 

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This week in anguish:

• Has achieved peak irrelevance by recording a 1½ hour audio interpretation of a franchise listlessly circling the drain, entirely unaware that massive, long-overdue changes were a few hours away.

• Wait - weren't the Abbotsford Canucks supposed to be good at least?

• Ardella has a new Google search term emotional temperature: jokes.

• We crunch the numbers on Petey's generosity.

• Halcyon Canucks quotes from days when we might have sucked nearly as hard, but we still managed to have fun doing it.

• Jason Farris is a very smart man who wrote some ostensibly very smart things about the traits of successful hockey organizations. Unfortunately, everything keeps coming up Bowman in the end.

• Wait again - what actually went down around the 2015 firings of Laurence Gilman and Lorne Henning? (Sorry, Eric Crawford.)

• 15 years of Canucks' talent evaluation misadventures as exemplified by the top 107 current KHL scoring leaders.

• Random insights derived from searching the terms "scott melanby" in the Vancouver Sun and Province archives from 2008-2011.

• Francesco told us it would be darkest before the dawn. In the dying moments of the Benning era, Tristan carves out a slice of his hockey heart and gives it to another, adopting the Connecticut Whale of the Premier Hockey Federation as his first ever Team I Am Also Cheering For.

• I thought we were playing the Boston Pride later that afternoon. Turned out it was the Minnesota Whitecaps. And we won! This concludes Ep. 0 of This Week in Connecticut.

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This week in anguish:

• We float in a numb purgatory, suffering ever new and ever more bad occurrences, while never getting the cathartic release of the consequences of those occurrences.

• In what months are general managers most likely to be fired, and how many NHL games are they most likely to have played in? Behold the dual missing links in our managerial puzzle.

• A serious media spat between serious journalists has Tristan asking, "Seriously?"

• Is it better for Canuck fans at this stage to just not show up, or to show up and be visibly, vocally ticked off?

• The Great Arena Rift between Bo Horvat and JT Miller has us thumbing through the archives and dredging up spats past.

• Jockwatch 1984 2021: Still a joke.

• Ardella's emotional barometer can be read by her Google search terms of choice. This week? "Worst failures to meet expectations in Canucks history."

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This week in anguish:

• Jim Benning, recognizing that we are kinesthetic learners, punches us while we're down with a demonstration of just what a losing culture really looks like.

• We want owners who will empower this team to finally win the Stanley Cup, or, in perpetual lieu of that, we want owners we can feel good about. We are often told to be thankful we have local owners. Who are these guys, anyhow? And how do they run the less obsessively-scrutinized businesses in their empire?

• Direct your gazes navel-ward as we continue to track this rebuilding(?) team's unbeknownst-to-them quest to live up to the exploits of their double decade forebears, the 2001/02 Canucks.

• A little bit of Jannik Hansen?

• The time has come, the co-host said, to talk of many things: of shots, and posts, and crossbars whacked, and whither the shooter's ping?

• How Did We Manage To Get This Far In Life and not really know how secondary assists are tabulated?

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This week in anguish:

• Was recorded before the latest loss to the Ducks, but that doesn't really change anything, does it?

• Ardella surveys the history and success rate of midseason coaching changes, for no reason in particular.

• Tristan delves into the archives to get a closer look at when Pat Quinn came down from the rafters and re-zipped up his track suit...for no reason in particular.

• Emily Kaplan('s printed words) lead us through the top current candidates for coach and GM replacements...for no reason in particular.

• Ardella lays out the sad history of players past whose careers peaked with their winning the Calder Trophy...for no reason in particular. 

• How Did We Not Know that no brass is required to get down to Tacks?

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This week in anguish:

• We finally talk about people finally talking about the Brad Aldrich case. Points include our flippant ignorance of Kyle Beach from 2008-2021, Bo Horvat and Antoine Roussel's excellent comments on the issue, and even some grudging praise for the Boston Bruins. You heard it here once, folks.

• Ardella flashes her black metallic VIP library card and heads deep into the stacks to fish out Gary Mason's takes on the 2001/02 Canucks. Surely, 20 years later, this sacred scroll will reveal the answers to our current anxieties.

• Spin at your leisure, Jonathan Swift, 'cause we're about to discuss the Canucks not-so-special teams. Hey-o. Satire.

• Petey is struggling, and we pore over some strange stats of his to help us comprehend it. If only there was a catchy portmanteau we could use to describe weird little quirks about our ol' #40. If only.

• Quick! Who's the clutch-est current Canuck?

• Don't know? That's not very clutch of you. Anyhow did we not know about Daniel Sedin nipping at Wayne Gretzky's heels in a certain all-time statistic?

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This week in anguish:

• Already, we stand mired in a sub-mediocre mess, and debate whose bits of the muck are whose. 

• Our heroes returned. Be careful what you wish for. 

• We take a deep dive into the Quintology, a 1992-1995, high-concept, medium-budget series of themed team and player portraits. 

• Ardella fires up the Statulator and tracks historically inept season-opening gambits.

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This week in anguish:

• We've made our first foray down the I-5, and what have we learned? Ray Ferraro is working for the enemy, Tod Leiweke understands us better than anyone from CSE has in years, and Tristan mounts a spirited defence of arenas with windows.

• Seriously, all the best arenas have windows. From the venerable swoops of the Yale Whale, to SC Bern's transparent Postfinance Arena, it's cool to have windows. If you're still feeling to claustrophobic, Valascia literally doesn't have you covered, but the real jewel of the genre has to be HC Davos' Vaillant Arena, pretty indoors and out.

• While we're on the subject, let's take a moment to geek out about Norway's mountain-hewn Gjøvik Olympic Cavern Hall, and take vicarious pride in the Utica Aud's inclusion on some random list. All roads, of course, lead back to the Pacific Coliseum.

• Captain Bo and Conor the Patriotic Garland earn eternal gratitude for ensuring that we'll never really have to hear about this game again.

-Ardella trades in her foolscap for the drafting table, bringing calligraphy to bear on the question of just when (or whether) the Canucks (or the League) became so downright porous. Between her PBS-quality narration and colour-coded, annotated data visualizations, we honestly defy you not to glean something of value or interest from this research.

• Shout-outs to ThePinkPuck.com, John Shorthouse walks us through the layers of one-way protection, and umpteen How Did We Not Know Thats pursuant to sunny expansion teams of yore.

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This week in anguish:

• We are yet again grateful that the Canucks long ago jettisoned their “this is what we live for” slogan. While it’s true, it’s a bit too depressing to contemplate at the moment. Why not play a round of Deficiency Whack-a-Mole with Ardella, instead?

• Four games in, and the cracks are already forming in the foundation. We watched. They wilted. We whinge.

• Jonathan Dahlen and Troy Stecher are the antipodes on this week’s Diaspora Corner.

• We all hate it when the Canucks take a too-many-men penalty. Ardella suspects that we may be the worst of the worst in this category. Freshly armed with a new stats database and an infusion of boolean logic, she seeks the truth.

• Climbing the surprisingly literate Benning family tree.

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella is experiencing a bout of PPDS - Premature Preseason Depression Syndrome - after suffering six separate deflations in the span of a week.

• Tristan tries to square the circle of being told that hockey players are simultaneously hyper-competitive maniacs and cagey veterans pacing themselves through a meaningless preseason.

• We mourn the loss of Jonah Gadjovich, emblematic of a whole generation of ballyhooed prospects who've been frittered away to nothing. 

• Jonathen Dahlen, the Sisyphus of the Allsvenskan, looks poised to begin the season on the San Jose Sharks roster, and Tristan has some thoughts.

• Ardella tracks Canucks' historical opening night records, and we delve into the sad story of our declining preseason betting odds to win the Stanley Cup. 

• How Did We Not Fully Internalize just how long and futile was the journey to the team's first ever playoff series win.

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This week in anguish:

• Do you hear the sheep(le) bleat? Bleating the song of wealthy men? Quinn and Elias are back in the fold, and we're not afraid to ask the big question: How do these new contracts fit into the team's 2005-06 salary cap structure?

• Ardella has some homespun reckonings from her first full-game viewing of the preseason, while Tristan picks bones with the Calgary Flames about their masks. 

• Why don't Canucks want to be Canucks as much as we want to be (and want them to want to be) Canucks? Part 129 of our ongoing investigation... 

• We begin the audition of Brad Hunt, the first of two 5'9'' understudies to take on the mantle of Stech-est Current Canuck. 

• Jaroslav Halák remembers Pavol Demitra on his new mask, while we, through some buckshot Googling, remember the hockey connections of Václav Havel. So close. 

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan (and Rachel) went to training camp, and Ardella (and you) are the beneficiaries of his bespoke scouting report. It's handmade and useless.

• We consumed our yearly ration of Canucks.com videos in the past few days, with highlights including major manners, general pity, a possible charlatan in our midst, the self-hyping Hunt, and some downright demonic coaching.

• We also talk vaccine hesitancy and long-hauliers, learn some new hockey lingo, Twitter-stalk Conor Garland, and ask Sheldon Dries a very important question.

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This week in anguish:

• Vasily is exhibiting palpable joie de vivre, and it's putting some desperately needed esprit back in our corps. 

• The terrible story of the 1995 murder of Peter Karlsson, then teammate of soon-to-be-Canuck Leif Rohlin, starts us down a long and winding rabbit hole that leads, dogleggedly, to Brent Sopel. 

• How did we not know about Glenn Burke, inventor of the high-five, or Betty Baxter, BC volleyball mogul turned activist turned hall-of-famer?

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This week in anguish:

• We discuss the untimely passing of Patrik Jonsson, who, among many other things, did a great deal for the Canucks in a short period of time. 

• After excoriating the Canucks for not drawing more deeply on the "real" history of Johnny Canuck, we figured we ought to actually investigate just what that history consists of. As Johnny Canuck would say: "Aww, shucks." 

• Did you know that two Canucks teams had eight (8!) twenty goal scorers? How did you not? Bet they're not the two you're thinking of!

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This week in anguish:

• The offseason, long a bastion of competition-less safety and glowing training reports, has taken a more dire turn. We remain concerned that Petey might sign an offer sheet, and we regret the inexorable march of ads across the front of NHL jerseys.

• It's almost harvest time, the blueberries are heavy on the vine (or whatever), and Ardella's mind has turned entirely pastoral.

• We recall the long and winding road to bring the Canucks' AHL affiliate to the Lower Mainland, refresh ourselves on Ryan Johnson's Canuck career, before finally culling the herd...or hearing from Cull, rather.

• Part of the beauty of hockey is that it can unite people from all walks of life and all corners of the globe. But forget that - let's geek out on all the future Abbotsford Canucks who were born within 50 km of us.

• As it turns out, the Canucks not having an ECHL affiliate is like the Tower of London not having ravens...and we just lost our Wings!

• Tristan has some compliments for the Portland Winterhawks design team, and some probing questions for the top men at CCM toiling away on the Abbotsford Canucks' jerseys. They were so busy asking whether they could that they never heard Tristan asking why on Earth they would.

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This week in anguish:

• It's been over two months since we last muddied the airwaves. Rather a lot has happened. 

• We cautiously welcome the new Special Advisors to the GM, camp out at OEL's desert abode, take in the good and the bad of Conor Garland, and question Brad Shaw's communication skills. 

• How Did I Not Know That's include Oliver's Olympic lineage, the grim history of the Tait Mansion, and Jim Benning's machiavellian vision as revealed through his Wikipedia page. 

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This week in anguish:

• We were going to make it through this year if it killed us, but we've survived long enough to come nearer to our mythical "tight forty-five" than we have in months, putting this cursed season to bed in 56 fun-filled minutes.

• Jim Benning, he of the real long history of breaking little hearts like the one in me, answers (?) for his team's season. Put up your dukes, let's get down to it.

• Fred J. Hume saw something he didn't like (the fact that Vancouver didn't have an NHL franchise), and he set out to right it. He never quite got the chance to dig in his heels and see how it feels to have the Canucks raise a little hell of their own. 

• Francesco sent out the call, and the Sedins are still deciding whether to join this fray. What wrongs could be righted if we're united and Hank and Danny lead the way? 

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This week in anguish:

• We complete the final leg of our heads-in-the-sand marathon with Breakfast TV's broadcast from the smoldering wreckage of June 2011, What a Season.

• Mere waves in a sea of clever commentary, we make note of things like the revelation of the Seahawk parentage of the Green Men, hazy recollections of the Towel Power suit man, and a deep dive into the musical and copyright stylings of Jon Mikl Thor.

• Tyler Motte is this year's Canucks Masterton trophy nominee. Just who was Bill Masterton, anyhow?

• Mikey Michael DiPietro, the sharing of the Comets, and the unravelling of Kevin Woodley.

• Enough, Tyler Toffoli. Enough.

• Barry MacDonald was back on the airwaves, and we ask How Did We Not Know about the link between depression and Parkinson's disease.

• Ardella has been grinding her Department of Player Safety axe for weeks now, and finally takes her swing.

• We need a song. (We need a song!) So why shouldn't we turn to the call-and-response stylings of 1992's Newsies?

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This week in anguish:

• We laughed, we cried, and we once again skipped over the most painful bits along with the Boys of '82 in the 2002 Orca Bay Productions Canucks PPV feature - Raisin' Hell and Waving Towels. It's 46 minutes long, and it only took us 40 minutes to recap it. Progress!

• After lurking in The Bleakness last week, Tristan is grateful that Höggy Bear, J-Bone, and a happy-to-be-here Tyler Graovac have authored a few new chapters in The Goodness.

• This week's One-Timers include a return appearance from Mr. Graovac, Edler's "yup" heard round the world, and Hamonic's take on his new hometown.

• We have questions about Jim Benning's truthiness, and some thoughts on his status as an essential worker.

• The Canucks' farm team is coming home to the Fraser Valley, and so naturally Tristan bones up on the 1962-63 season of the California Hockey League's Los Angeles Canucks.

- Next week we look directly into the sun and watch Breakfast TV's June 2011 featurette, What a Season.

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This week in anguish:

• Alex Edler, Tyler Toffoli, Adam Gaudette, Jared McCann, and Gustav Forsling are whistle-stops on our hopefully one-time segment, The Bleakness.

• The Virtanen situation confronts us with a bleakness of a very different sort. We're not quite sure what to say, but we give it our best shot.

• We retreat to the faded comforts of earlier travails and enjoy Ten Years After and, mostly, continued adorableness from Tom Larscheid.

• Ardella does yeoman duty both recounting the broad strokes of the '94 run and distilling our eventual downfall into a series of statistical musings, while Tristan just wanders around aimlessly, beginning most sentences with, "Wasn't it neat when Tom said..."

• How Could We Have Been So Forgetful of Jyrki's erstwhile playoff partner and the great we're sorry-we-rioted party of June 16?

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This week in anguish:

• For a brief moment, it looked like the recuperating Canucks might go 19-0 to round out the season. Boy, wouldn't our faces have been red.

• So, we watched a thing. It was entertaining, nostalgic, hokey, and bizarre. If you didn't watch this thing, we saved you the trouble by poring over it in agonizing detail. If you did, enjoy hearing us say all the same things you probably noticed out loud.

• Ardella dives headfirst into Nostalgia Corner, and comes up clutching the pearl that is Being Ian's "Hockey Night in Burnaby" episode.

• One Timers are pinging off posts all over the place, including a salute to Pat O'Neill and a somewhat scoop-less Travis Green press conference.

• Gird your loins for next week, when we dial back the time machine ten years earlier to view, confusingly, Ten Years After, the 2004 team-produced retrospective on the '94 Cup run.

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Lo, these weeks in anguish:

• A lot has happened in the 19 days since Antoine Roussel opined that a break in the schedule would be nice.

• We pester and applaud our favourite voices in the shifting local media landscape.

• The world witnesses its first Troy Stecher hat trick: a greasy goal, a beauty goal, and A Stech in Time for the ages.

• A forlorn goodbye to Adam "Dimples" Gaudette. We hardly asset managed thee.

• The wholesome Instagram-stalking of Matthew Highmore, and Ardella compares Madison Bowey to a shooting star, in a sense.

• We admire JT Miller for his leadership, and we get why they're still trying to play out the remainder. We still don't think they should, and we won't abide the abdication by the front office and ownership.

• So we're opting out of the return to play, in our hearts at least. Next week we'll be talking about the 2004 Canucks-produced documentary(?) Love This Team, Love This Game.

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Our thoughts are with the players, coaching staff, and especially their families as they battle Covid-19 infections.

• We still make time to celebrate the Canucks putting a $25 million dollar promise ring on Thatcher Demko.

• Tristan does not even halfway hatch a theory about on-ice contributions vs. locker room compositions before getting bogged down in an effort to prove that the Canucks are Canada's most Serbian NHL team.

• What kind of a name is Smyl, anyhow?

• At long last, Jordie Benn gets his glowingly lit, soft-focus player profile. Wear your dang visor, Jordie. 

• One-Timers this week feature Kole Lind, Pat O'Neill, and a Nate Schmidt so desperate for human contact that he's considering playing one of these videographic games. 

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan had five teensy, manageable little talking points, and Ardella claimed to have nothing at all to say. The Canucks who aren't injured are hibernating. This one clocks in at one second under 90 minutes. 

• We better-get-to-know another Tyler (Graovac) and another Travis (Boyd), but the real prize is the Växjö Laker we met along the way.

• We're sorry, Tim Peel, but this story is really about Colin Campbell's emails, the dynamic trio of Tony Gallagher, Jason Botchford, and Willie Mitchell, and the eternally contemptible sportswriters of New England circa 2011.

• This week's One Timers include digging into Andy Van Hellemond's debit card situation, a historic night for three members of the Ontario Reign, and washing our hands once and for all of Rasmus Andersson.

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• The Canucks' two steps forward, one step back approach to life has us wondering if we'll ever cross the finish line in time. 

• We welcome Jimmy Vesey to the team. Or at least we meant to. We end up questioning his character, the reasons for his being waived by the Maple Leafs, his demand-iness, and express concern for his possibly non-existent family. OK, so this one got away from us. Welcome to Vancouver, Jim!

• We give some rare props to the Aquilinis for their pivot to using Rogers Arena as a food prep and donation hub, and then immediately return to excoriating this management group for their inability to talk to their players.

• Inspired by You'll Never Walk Alone, we conduct an exhaustive search for a song all Canucks fans can sing in good times and bad, a search which leads, obviously, to the back catalogue of the Örnsköldsvik Lumberjacks. 

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• We play a round of Vancouver's new least-favourite board game, Twisted Incentives.

• Alexandre Ménard-Burrows is back behind the bench of les Habitants, and it leads us to a check-in with all our old 2011 besties. Sure, we've lost touch a bit in the last decade, but it's nice to hear so many of them are doing well. I'm sure they meant to write.

• Canuck connections led us to two tragic stories this week: the death of Corey Schneider's nephew in a house fire (link to family GoFundMe page), and the 2017 death at police hands of Koray Celik (link to Ottawa Life Magazine story).

• We stuff even more receipts into Thomas Drance's already overladen attaché as we welcome him back from his triumphant trip to Buffalo to...prove that we're really, like, unfathomably the worst.

• In this week's Stech in Time: Your boy scores his first of the year and first as a Red Wing, assisted byyyy...Sam Gagner. This brings up some things.

• Is anybody clutch in the playoffs? Is that a thing? If it's a thing, does Vasily Podkolzin have some of that thing? How much, would you say?

• One Timers this week is brought to you by an adorably churlish Pavel Bure. Blink and you'll miss it.

• How Did We Not Know how ludicrously unfair a mismatch exists between the expansion draft rules for the Canucks in 1970 and the Kraken today. And still Vegas seems to get the easiest ride ever.

• We need a song.

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Did you see how hard we carpe'd that diem? And since that's all that matters in this workaday world...job well done, I suppose.

• But seriously, folks. Jim Benning finally had to face some media questions  and we have thoughts about how that went. Like, an hour of thoughts. Let's go.

• Move over, Ice Chips! Your forty-plus-year reign of being a perfectly fine use of the bottom corner of Province hockey articles is over. Make way for One-Timers, Ardella's new segment of snappy little bits of ephemera that matter even less than all the other stuff we talk about. Jack Rathbone's hair! A Jyrki-versary! That kind of thing!

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella's opening statement begins with a sigh, followed by a brief moment of levity where she describes herself as being simply "so darn sad", before things really go downhill and it's hard to tell hockey- and COVID-fatigue apart as she laments, "Really? I had to live through this week just to be back here again?"

• This was a really bad month of hockey. So bad that it has engendered comparisons to "the era". We're not ready for that, so instead we enlist a much younger Tony Gallager to take us on a tour of the least successful month in Canuck history, October 1984. 

• We hide from the world in the bucolic idyll that was the Utica Comets this week. 

• Ardella ties up a few of her own loose ends, with sections on how and why one might win something for the Gipper, a much-needed retrospective on the Captain and Tennille, and the meritorious record of Carl Brashear. 

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This week in anguish:

• We revel in some of the more obscure benefits of a cratered season. We now cause other teams existential conniptions whenever we beat them, and we can look on the mere existence of an ember of team cohesion as the only victory that really matters.

• We comb the beaches and plumb the depths to bring you reminiscences and updates from Canuck Finns from Petri to Olli. 

• We get acquainted with a humble Rod Brathwaite, re-acquainted with a healing Donald Brashear, and re-educated about the hamstringing of Ted Nolan. 

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This week in anguish:

• Life (or in this case its henchman, Bell Media) finds new and intriguing ways to punch us in the gut.

• JPat, who poured his actual tears and toil into 1040 over many years, spent just over 30 minutes talking about its demise. We spend nearly 45 minutes.

• Get the nostalgia machine revved up and there's no telling where it will go. We talk Sports Page, Jim Robson, Tom Larscheid, and the rapidly diminishing cohort of on-air voices who "get it".

• We're not even remotely done yet. Talk moves on to 650's ancestors, the time the Griffiths owned a radio station, and the slow, seemingly inexorable march to media monopolization.

• The bubbly scales have fallen from Ardella's eyes (gross), and we re-examine what we thought we'd learned about the playoff Canucks in the harsh light of mid-February.

• And for our Stech in Time: Troy's doing great, everyone loves him and Detroit, and we deserve whatever fate befalls us from here.

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella, experiencing feelings, has prepared something of a speech. Tristan (more of a new media guy, really) would like to discuss a thumbnail. 

• There have been great indignities this week. These come with anecdotes. There has also been tremendous futility. This comes with statistics.

• We've identified at least one historical stratum between this week and the bottom of the barrel. It was the first week of November, 1997. 

• We re-hire Mike Gillis. 

• Aftonbladet only carves the week's sorrow into sharper relief, while some of the internet's most searchable hockey jokes assuage it. A bit. 

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Was just...awful. I mean, you were there. Gross, right? Mighty disquieting in many ways as well. So we talk about all the things you might expect us to, but also...

• An oh-so-timely autopsy of the 2010 draft,

• The ugliest goalie mask of all time,

• The arc of taxi squad inequity bending slowly towards justice,

• The 1937-38 Chicago Blackhawks,

• And the fact that while Ardella might not remember who Taylor Fedun is, Ashton Sautner probably does.

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• We retreat to the warm, fuzzy, fading memories of Game 1 before grappling with what may be a somewhat difficult back-fifty-three.

• We finally officially welcome Travis Hamonic to the squad, and appreciate the diverse humanitarianism of this family-focused farmboy. 

• Braden Holtby's new Luke Marston-designed mask is on the way, and our exploration of the Sea Wolf / Wolf Pack connection leads us heart-tuggingly back to Troy, as so many things do. 

• Who are the high shooting-est and least shot upon-iest teams of all time, and why, why must they both be the Boston Bruins?

• We return once more to Höglander-gäte, and are excited for the coming golden age of jersey diacriticism. 

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Nils Höglander is forcing everyone to learn his name. Past examples of Elias Pettersson and Jonathan Dahlen just go to show that you can never force someone to learn your name right. 

• We check up on at least some of the Calgary Canucks, and then learn something heartening about Troy from Richmond in Detroit. 

• Ardella flaunts her quiz-mastery while Tristan muddles his way through surveys of draft pedigrees and hometowns. Plus, did you know about Rogle BK's real raison d'être?

• Drink deeply or not at all from the font of R2P MoU wisdom. There, shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, while drinking largely sobers us again.

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella reminds us that Micheal Ferland is a person and not just a line item on CapFriendly, and we learn a bit more about why concussions do what they do.

• Travis Green climbs the TWiA power rankings as he waxes poetical about his love for BC, his core four, and being nervous.

• It's been a few weeks since the initial discussions around Dave Gunnarson's ill-conceived Thunderbird mask. Since then, we've learned more about the artistic lineage of the Thunderbird House Post totem, and about the story of just why those totem poles are at Brockton Point in the first place.

• Quinn Hughes has the highest PPG of any defenseman ever drafted 7th overall. We find 9 other Canucks and 3 nearly-Nucks as we work our way down the all-time PPG list for 7th overall picks. 

• Ardella festoons the pod with festive stats of historical Canucks team records over the holidays. How Did We Not Know about the winningest Canucks holiday squad of all time?

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Is enlivened by the presence of Moezine Hasham, founder of the Hockey4Youth organization. While we may differ with Coach Moe on the present weight of Braden Holtby's past bona fides, and on the potential desirability of any (any!) Canadian team winning the Stanley Cup, we agree with him on pretty much everything else.

• In proud TWiA tradition, we leap headfirst into the shallow end and re-litigate 2011 before ever propertly mentioning what Hockey4Youth is all about.

• Hockey4Youth has a mission to increase social inclusion for new Canadian (newcomer) & high-priority youth through their free ice hockey and off-ice life skills program. Learn more about H4Y and see their work in action in the documentary Home Ice. 

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Famously, on the day both his wife and mother died, Theodore Roosevelt inscribed a large, black "X" in his diary with the words, "The light has gone out of my life." In more recent news, Troy Stecher is no longer a Vancouver Canuck. 

• Although all roads lead back to Troy, we talk about various other things as well, especially Ardella's hard-learned lessons from a flabbergasting fortnight, a How Did I Not Know That about playoff pay, and we make mournful sounds for what feels like a swiftly shutting window that barely even opened. 

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation and HerosHockey.

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This week in anguish:

• Can probably best be summed up by the many potential episode titles that didn't quite make the cut...

• If Not Zen, A Little More Sanguine

• Sunday Mourning

• One Fat Lehner Glove Away

• Holding Hands Around the Goalie

• Half of a Master Plan

• That’s Barely Outshot (In Canuck Language)

• I Do Have a Section on “Vegas Loathsomeness”

• That Teddy Bear Face

• Where’s Luca Sbisa Now, Jim?!

• His Scoring Aura

• If This Team Had Managed to Keep on Going

• Even the Two Goals Are about Bonding

• You Don’t Get Those Plusses for Free

• A Lot of Ink at the Wall

• Coaches Having Coffee in Cars

• You Don’t Run Out of Fingers

• Psyche Up with Something Mellow

• Another Bloated Episode

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This week in anguish:

• We talk through one of the most remarkable weeks for the hockey world in living memory.

• We draft a letter to Francesco Aquilini, asking him to commit to supporting the initiatives of the Hockey Diversity Alliance.

• We educate ourselves about Black hockey history and racism's deep roots in the game through the documentaries Soul on Ice and Too Colourful for the League.

• We revisit the story of BC hockey pioneer Larry Kwong.

• We still eke out a bit of time to lick our Game 1 and 3 wounds, and crow victoriously about Game 2.

• How Did We Not Know about Börje Salming's indigenous heritage, and about the Ottawa Senators' historical thoughtlessness?

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This week in anguish:

• The Canucks' fortunes soar as high as they have in almost a decade this week, while Tristan still found time in Games 3 and 4 to plumb those old familiar depths of despair.

• Two seconds: Proud as fudge of Travis Green. Enjoy him for a bit. Frankly correct. Turn the music up. 

• We revel in the tight-knit camaraderies of this team

• A polite rejection of any invitation to be anybody's team but our own. 

• Tyler Motte's meteoric rise, as predicted by our resident BC Lions correspondent.

• Troy's resilient, unbelievably-stressful-for-us, dream-of-a-lifetime-for-him, rollercoaster of a week. 

• Elias remains everything to this team. 

• Go team. Go team, go. 

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This week in anguish:

• Is happily gobsmacked to be up 2-0 on the Blues, and especially to learn that Bo Horvat is able to do...that.

• Acknowledges that underlying everything that's going well for the Canucks right now is one Quintin Hughes, just stirring the drink.

• A micro-transcription of 27:50-27:56:

T: Are we done with Stecher stats?

A: We're done with Stecher stats. Now we're doing Stecher intrinsic...wonderfulness.

• Dan Hamhuis retires after a long and successful career. We survey some of the lesser-known entries from his trophy case.

• Brent Sopel leads us to his dyslexia foundation, which leads us to Ace Bailey, which leads us to the surprising source of a sporting tradition.

• How Did Ardella Not Know, or at least remember, about Bowie's already-established playoff acumen?

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This week in anguish:

• Is almost entirely anguish-free for the first time in the life of this podcast. The first honest-to-goodness, tangible team victory has us walking on air and has Tristan constantly bumping into his microphone with over-enthusiasm. (Sorry.)

• How Did We Not Know about Christopher Tanev's untouchable overtime goal percentage rate, and about Daniel Sedin's vaunted place in the all-time overtime goal-scorer's ranks.

• The compliments are flowing and we have nice things to say about the perpetually favoured and the oft-maligned.

• His TOI stats notwithstanding, Troy from Richmond had himself a quietly serviceable series, and even more importantly, he won the game within a game against his erstwhile idol Jared Spurgeon. A Stech in Time this week celebrates a Minnesota Wild blogger who just...gets it.

• Buttressed by two years of breathless Pettersson Praise Portions, Tristan uncharacteristically takes Ryan Hartman’s side in the case of fist v. back of head, Alex Stalock’s side in the case of sportsmanship v. stick-shoving, and the side of thrift in the case of normal v. eye-wateringly expensive shirts. Oh, the magnanimity of victory.

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This week in anguish:

• Five years with the length of five years have passed since the last Canucks post-season game. We take our emotional temperatures and try to decide whether this feels more like 2015 or 2011.

• Hearty applause for Matt Dumba and the Hockey Diversity Alliance, medium applause for HNIC's intro that zeroed in on the lived experiences of hockey players of colour, and many bemused stares at the NHL's creative anthem choreographies.

• Ardella joins forces with Tennyson and goes Kraken hunting.

• Just when we thought we were free, Thomas Drance interviews Jim Benning and we're dragged right back into re-litigating the truth-adjacent history of this regime. Why won't Jim just be honest with us? The words "Gustav Forsling" are uttered on this podcast for hopefully the last time.

• How Did We Not Know that both the development of Rodrigo Abols and the outcome of the Nucks vs. Wild series are likely to be governed by Gumperson's Law?

• With a heavy heart, Your Moment of Sven was likely retired for good following Baertschi's decision to opt out of the postseason. Tristan unveils its successor segment, A Stech in Time.

Thanks for listening! This episode supports the Hockey4Youth foundation.

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This week in anguish:

• We've been enjoying life as the hermetically sealed Canucks - every Canuck blunder is simultaneously a Canuck blessing. We celebrate some rare good news from Olli and Micheal, and wonder whether Jack Rathbone was a figment of our imagination.

• To our ears, at least, the Kraken landed with a soggy thud. We never asked for a sibling, we don't want to share our room, and they've already started stealing our stuff! (Yes, we now consider the hard "k" sound part of our hockey patrimony.)

• There was, of course, bad news this past week, and we talk about the life and nearly unparalleled Canuck connections of Jack McIlhargey.

• The Wild are a real team that we're going to have to come to grips with. We begin with their newly minted coach Dean Evason, who leads us to ignominious Canucks legend Bill LaForge, PhD.

• Ardella has the money line and the inside scoop on which play-in series should be the closest. We're number 3! We're number 3! 

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This week in anguish:

• Captain Bo's cursive condemnation of Jake's undisciplined play jolts us into game shape. We run through the high and lowlights of training camp 2.0 so far.

• Ardella plays quizmaster in Tales of Training Camps Past. In stops ranging from 1978-2015, we find the Canucks variously leaderless, jazzercizing, reuniting, de-uniting, and generally gasping for breath. 

• It's yet again time to dip into the well of Troy Stecher lore. This time, we compare our two divergent hometown heroes. Once again, we watch Jake nervously from the sidelines of life, tut-tutting and hoping he'll figure it all out one day. Then, in an even more hallowed tradition, we find yet more reasons why Troy Stecher is the best. 

• At long last, The Road to the Stanchion. Kevin Bieksa was really, really good in 2011. But he was also really, really, present, and that was half the battle right there.

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This week in anguish:

• Labour peace is in the air, training camp is around the corner, the cap crunch looms, the Bern Bear hibernates, Jack Rathbone might not be as into us as we are into him, and Jake Virtanen has good taste and poor judgment. 

• Tony Gallagher is inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and we celebrate his unrivalled career by poring over articles of historical significance before returning horrified from a trawl through his Twitter follows.

• Ardella examines the near-parodical parity of the upcoming saw-off play-in series versus the Wild.

• How Did We Not Know about the Aasen up Minnesota's sleeve?

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This week in anguish:

• We're still not sure we see the (non-financial) point in the push to finish this season, but since our conflicted feelings are the fuel this podcast runs on...

• It finally happened. JimJohn have the helm firmly in their clutches, the age of Judd is no more, and we can't help but be pre-jealous of whoever gets to have their team managed by our ever-growing collection of cast-offs. 

• We talked a bit about Tryamkin, Tyler Myers, Micheal Ferland, Brock Boeser, and Chris Tanev, because the Canucks are still a hockey team that exists. 

• How Did I Not Know Thats abound! Ardella owes Auston Matthews a quinceañero present, Tristan missed out on the existence of an entire summit series, and we are reminded of the extremely minor demands of the early NHL labour movements. 

• This was the week that (a few) hockey players said out loud that Black Lives Matter, and we discuss the statements made by Jake, Brock, Troy, and Elias. We discuss CambieKev's 40,000 word intersectional opus on the culture of hockey and the need for societal change, and we conclude that no voice is too small in the struggle against police brutality and for racial equity. 

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This week in anguish:

• Isolation inertia has set in, and we begin to ask, "Is there really any point to having a bizarro playoffs this year? And is there any point to having them in BC?" 

• But our Swedish advantage!

• It's never too late to learn more about the heroes of '94, as Gino himself takes us to the Lubyanka and we find that Trevor had anything but a country-club upbringing. 

• We work our way through a bounty of backlogged How Did I Not Know Thats, featuring scoring Canucks goalies and all-time Canucks coaching stats.

• Are you full up to your ears with Judd Brackett talk? Then kick your feet up and enjoy this anecdotal behind-the-scenes breakdown of the rest of the Canucks' scouting and training staff. Brett Henning's Dangle Donut! Nepotism abounds! From the dressing room to the boardroom with Craig Heisinger! Ron Delorme's tattoos! It's all here, folks.

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This week in anguish:

• We've been down in the basement drinking coffee for the last three weeks, so we come out of the gates swinging, hitting all the hot topics: Pavel Bure's mafioso past and beer league present, Goldobin's Gagarin gulag, Jacob Markstrom's fierce offseason Canuckedness, and the shuttering of PITB.

• We talked and balked at the notion of watching Game 7 vs Calgary in 2004. Ardella really, really, hated that game, and weirdly it defibrillated Tristan's Canucks fandom, but in either case, it's still a bit too raw, 16 years on.

• We dial the machine back one more notch instead to 2003, and revel in the Canucks' Game 6 and 7 opening round victories against the St. Louis Blues. The WCE is high flying, the Sedins are doughy, Trevor Linden is oiling his crutches for Game 7, and Markus Naslund needs to chew better.

• In perhaps the best-titled segment in TWiA history, Ardella traces out the West Coast Express in The Arc of the Line, before delving into a discussion of famous line names in Canucks and NHL history.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.

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This week in anguish: 

• Nothing happening has never stopped us before, so we cheer for our beloved Canucks versus those dastardly Canucks in the Sedin Cup, try to see Jim Sandlak through the Cam Neely forest, mourn Eddie Lack's retirement, and wiretap JT Miller.

• We take a game recommendation from Jason Brough and revisit Game 7 of the 1989 first round series between the Canucks and the Flames. Can Tristan pronounce "Petri"? How many championships did Babe Pratt win in 1933? When is Jiri Bubla's parole date? We ask the big questions, folks. 

• How Did We Not Know about the Referee's Crease? Or even very much at all about creases in general? 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish: 

• Nothing is happening, and we have a lot to say about it. Ever dauntless, Ardella has fresh research on relative ages of Canucks captains, thoughts on the Bo Horvat video conference, and predictions about the end-of-year team awards.

• We watched two vintage Canucks games this week: friends of the pod Jyrki Lumme and Corey Hirsch dispatched the Avalanche in 1996, and Harold Snepsts and baby-Smyl put paid to the Blues in 1979.

• Next week we'll be watching through our fingers as the Canucks go down swinging to the (ugh) Flames in overtime of game 7 in the 1989 conference quarterfinals. 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• We're a bit stir-crazy, and our scattershot opening segment sees us calling out owners, the Athletic, fate, and humanity in general.

• But hey, Will Lockwood signed, and let's not forget that Vasili Podkolzin was having a heck of a year before everything got shuttered.

• Ardella can't quite bring herself to point the Time Machine in the usual directions, but makes enlightening stops instead at previous league-stoppages to see how players responded in the past, and then all the way back to 1919 to take a closer look at the lost Stanley Cup series between the Canadiens and Metropolitans.

• For the next episode, we're going to be watching the 1979 Canucks defeat the St. Louis Blues, and enjoying Corey Hirsch putting a temporary stop to the aspirations of the Cup-bound Avalanche in 1996.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.

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This week in anguish:

• The week and the season are slipping through our fingers. Discuss.

• Henri "the Pocket Rocket" Richard sadly passed away this week, and this leads Ardella to an examination of the extracurricular winning of Stanley Cups by once and future Canucks.

• Shots against. Are they really all that bad? The Canucks are bleeding shots at historical levels, but that never seemed to bother Kirk McLean, so...?

• We tally the Tylers and tabulate the Tanners.

• Jimbo in Boca is acting a biiit too collegial, in our opinion.

• Garth Butcher is big enough for his britches in 1991, Markus Naslund is milquetoast in 2001, and Alain Vigneault has some 2011-vintage words of wisdom that this week's Canucks need to take to heart.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• The less said about the Canucks' week-long collapse, the better, so...

• We waste no time in firing up the Wayback Machine. The Canucks are getting their second chance at their own airplane in 1991 (which leads to a discussion about the comparative difficulty of travel schedules), a once-ballyhooed 4th overall pick plays his first game in 2001 (which leads to a discussion of Mr. Juolevi, of course), and the Canucks weren't exactly a juggernaut by the time of the trade deadline in 2011 (which leads to a discussion of that tricky month of March). 

• You can tell we really want to avoid the on-ice events this week by the fact that we devote a good 20 minutes to discussing the murky history of Canucks mascots. Do you remember Lil' Red? The Canuck Duck? Prankster Bear? Well, it's all just a prelude to Tristan's marine biology presentation, anyhow.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• If they who laugh last, laugh best (and if "last" is taken to mean "most recently"), then allow us to laugh in the Bruins' stupid faces for a moment.

• Ardella better gets to know Tyler Toffoli, our newly beloved off-brand Brock Boeser.

• Do not trade Troy Stecher. Obviously, do not trade Troy Stecher. We wallow in the unthinkable and then just appreciate Troy Stecher for a good 30 minutes. 

• The Canucks still can't get firing right in 1991, trains and ponds have Marc Crawford feeling loose and breezy in 2001, and the only thing that amazes Chris Tanev more than breakfast in 2011 is lunch.

• How Did We Not Know that the Canucks (apparently) are (somehow) middle-of-the-pack in average contract salary?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan unexpectedly got to see the Sedins' jersey retirements in person, and Ardella is keen to know how things looked from the cheap seats.

• We applaud Kevin Bieksa, appreciate the Sedins all over again, review Ryan Kesler's revisionist history, and hope that Willie Desjardins is holding up okay.  

• We do a rapid-fire filling of what we've arbitrarily decided are the eight remaining spots in the Ring of Honour. Don't hold us to this. 

• The Canucks finally pay their organ bill in 1991, Iain McIntyre has nothing to write about in 2001, but writes about it anyway, and Francesco is too busy trying to buy an NBA team in 2011 to notice that all his defencemen are getting injured.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Yeesh! Pride goeth before whatever that week was. 

• The upcoming banner-raisings have as asking How Did We Not Know a great deal about the arbitrary history of retiring jersey numbers?

• In 1991, incorrigible hockey outlaw Pat Quinn has repaid his debt to society; the goalie graveyard is overflowing in 2001; and we recall the walking wounded of the 2011 d-corps. 

• An all-time Canucks goalie record quiz that Tristan almost completely bombed.  

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Read it and maintain emotional composure: 1st in the Pacific, 2nd in the Western Conference, 7th in the National Hockey League. 

• Quinn Hughes is on pace to challenge for the Canucks' single-season scoring record for defencemen. Tristan runs through the 15 names he will have to surmount to become the Canucks' all-time best d-man. It's not...daunting.

• The Canucks Time Machine sees Pat Quinn indulging in his favourite pastime in 1991 (firing Bob McCammon), Felix Potvin wearing out his Vancouver welcome in 2001, and everything is looking up during Cody Hodgson's first game in 2011. 

• How Did We Not Know about the famous coach of the Vancouver White Spots?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• We sharpen our number 2 pencils and dive into the Canucks salary cap...woes? Situation, at the very least. In the end, we just list our signing priorities in order of how much we like them as people, and then insult them all with lowball offers. 

• Petey can do everything, Quinn can do most things, but he can't do that, and Markstrom shines on and off the ice at this year's All-Star weekend. 

• The Canucks Time Machine sends us struggling to stay afloat in the Smythe division in 1991, witnessing the birth of the West Coast Express in 2001, and basking in the confident quotes of the 2011 team at the All-Star break. 

• How Did I Not Know That? The Salary Cap Edition.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan was in attendance for the HockeyTalks game against the Coyotoes. We look back at notable Canucks mental health advocates, and see how much things have changed from the Corey Hirsch to the Tyler Motte era. 

• Ardella has thoughts on shots, salaries, and sobriquets in an all-new, one-time segment called...Shots, Salaries, and Sobriquets. Tristan fails to come up with an Örnsköldsvik-based nickname.

• The Canucks Time Machine reveals that Tom Kurvers was unhappy in 1991 (and 1992, and 1993, and...), that Markus Naslund was beginning a remarkable run of dominance in 2001, and that we were looking to our farmhand saviour Sergei Shirokov (!?) in 2011. 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Festive Foofaraw this week includes Elias, the Emperor of Empathy, a genteel Goldobin, a burgeoning box of Baertschi fan mail, and a good week for Lynchpin Loui. 

• Chris Gear gets a promotion, the Canucks get a new AGM, and the spectre of Weisbrod hangs over it all. 

• We hop in the Canucks Time Machine and learn that no one wanted to go see the Red Army this week in 1991, nobody wanted to take a penalty this week in 2001, and everybody wanted to be like a Sedin this week in 2011. 

• Quinn Hughes' invite to the all-star game restores our faith in ballot stuffing, and we look back at the history of multi-Canuck appearances in the "big" game.

• How Did We Not Know about Pavel Bure's post-Calder victory snubbing?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• We saw the guys win their seventh straight with our very own eyes. We saw very little evidence of the existence of one Mr. Trevor Linden on Nineties(Four) Night. We heard Mark Donnelly sing a very small section of the national anthem, and wish we heard even less.

• How Did We Not Know about Doug Lidster's very own 1994 anguish?

• Our boys are the best boys. Nils Höglander and Elias Pettersson remind us of that this week.

• We fire up the Canucks Time Machine to see which Greg Adams was the most patriotic British Columbian. (Spoiler: It's Greg Adams.) We check in on Kenny Ohlund's somewhat forgotten eye injury and very forgotten leg-breaking slash. Finally, we bid a less than fond adieu to Mathieu Schneider and tend to one of (one of!) Kevin Bieksa's horrific skate-blade wounds.

• Should players just suck it up and wear their helmets during warm-up? Ardella has a bold and surely more injurious solution! Tristan just wants a selfie with Troy.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.

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This week in anguish: 

• We're on the best run of the season! Let's hand out some Christmas plaudits to the boys.

• We're in a junior state of mind as we dive right into ignorance with How Did I Not Know That: the Norwegian roots of the Punch-up in Piestany. 

• Ardella leads us through the many Canucks connections of world junior teams gone by.

• Tristan has read a very long Twitter thread about John Weisbrod, so you know what that means: Many of the details will be muddled, but at least this way you get to rest your eyes as he sputters it back at you.

• We hop in the Time Machine as Red Fisher phones it in in 1990, noted nabob of negativity Iain MacIntyre sharpens his knives in 2000, and at long last the glorious 2010 team puts an end to the parade of misery that was the New Year's game against the Flyers. 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• After a grave oversight last week, this week's episode is the Michael Dipietro edition. Like its eponymous tendy, this episode is also a fair bit shorter than you've come to expect.

• We couldn't get together to record a regular episode this week, but boy howdy has Ardella ever come through with 1) a festive and timely Canucks poem, 2) another illuminating trip in the Canucks Time Machine, and 3) a footnotes-inclusive edition of How Did I Not Know That? Happy holidays from everyone here at Anguish Industries; you'll hear from us again next week.

• The Week that Was

‘Twas the week before Christmas and out on the ice,
Canucks were a mixed bag of naughty and nice.

A lost weekend concluded in Vegas - no joys,
Knights outshone our lads, it was men against boys.

Surely, we hoped, losses couldn’t come thrice,
But goals proved elusive - that darn Carey Price.

At last some redemption from an unlikely source,
An overtime winner from TanMan - of course!

But we know that for this team, no victory is free,
It came at the cost of poor Josh’s right knee.

Still the group soldiered on and beat Pittsburgh in style,
Maybe Murray puts this one in his “Lotto Luck” file.

One more win against Oilers would suit me just right,
A Merry Christmas to all if Monday’s a good night.

• Canucks Time Machine

Dec. 21, 1990 - Canucks recorded a 7:4 win against Edmonton. A young team trying to find its way after several losing seasons and recently recovered from 5 game winless slump extends it winning “streak” to 2 games on the back of an all-star performance from 20 year old Trevor Linden who had a 6 point night - 3G and 3A.

Can history repeat itself - please!

Dec. 20, 2000 - Brian Burke (how can we forget he was a Harvard Law School grad when it is mentioned almost every time we hear his name) sues BCTV for a report suggesting he did not fully co-operate with Vancouver police department in its investigation of the McSorley - Brashear incident.

Tireless research (ok - it was three slight variations on a google search) did not reveal the outcome of this litigation. I was reminded, however, that defending Brian also turned to the courts to defend his reputation in 2013 when he sued anonymous internet posters who made comments that the real reason Burke was terminated by Toronto was an affair with a sports reporter and not his complete inability to steer the Maple Leafs to playoff success.
Interesting from a legal perspective as he was allowed to bring an action against defendants known only by their online handles without knowing their real identities and the BC Supreme Court ruled that the defendants could be served with notice of the lawsuit through private messages on a discussion forum. But, as usual, I digress.

December 15, 2010 - Ryan Kesler scored his first (of 4) NHL hat trick in a 3:2 OT win against Columbus. He had previously recorded twelve 2-goal performances. 2010-11 was Kesler’s 7th season with the Canucks and, according to Damien Cox in the Toronto Sun his scoring success (10 G in previous 15 games) was due to a maturation in his game and personality. Described as a “less verbose” with “far less silliness and chirping and a more focussed approach”.
The same was said to be the case with Burrows and Bieksa - who were “just as fierce” but “just smarter about it.”

Shout-out to the Kes and Juice podcast episode 2 where the hosts and guest Alex Burrows once again demonstrated their famous maturity and lack of silliness!

How Did I Not Know That?:

Here is the short(ish) version of the long and winding road that led to my HDINKT moment this week.

1. Much was made of the fact that Pittsburgh did not muster a single shot on goal in the first period of Saturday night’s game. This was the 5th time in Canucks history that they have held an opponent shotless for an entire period but before we get too cocky about that we need to know that the Canucks recently set an NHL record for shot futility themselves. On January 26, 2017 in a 3:0 loss to Arizona their first shot came almost halfway into the second period - a full 28:12 minutes of shotlessness. (To add insult to injury - one shot was initially recorded in the first period but was subsequently removed by the scorekeepers.)
2. Thoughts naturally turned to other shot stats and I learned that the NHL regular season most shots by a team in a game is held by Boston with 73 against Quebec Nordiques on March 21, 1991. The Canucks regular season record is 62 shots registered in a 3:3 tie against the N.Y. Rangers on January 31, 1991. Apparently 1991 was a very prolific year for shots or the scorekeepers were unusually generous for a few months.
3. Pause for a brief reminder that the NHL record for shots against in any game is also held by our Canucks. Luongo faced 76 shots (and saved 72!) in the quadruple overtime first round playoff win against Dallas in 2007 - his first NHL playoff game to boot.
4. Back to the point - Looking further into the Canucks 62 shot performance against the Rangers I discovered it was a tie at the end of a 1W 7L stretch for a team with an abysmal 19-30-5 record and coach Bob McCammon was fired immediately following that record-setting offensive performance. He was replaced by Pat Quinn who joined the team the next day on their flight to Los Angeles.
5. What I didn’t remember was their plane being nearly (100 meters away) involved in a tragic fatal crash at the Los Angeles airport and the team being so shaken that they, understandably, suffered their worst defeat of the season (9:1) against the Kings.

Despite this lengthy post which might indicate otherwise - hockey is really just a game and there are far more important losses to worry about than what goes on in the arena.

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This week in anguish:

• Is not actually just a 65 minute verbal description of Tristan's jersey design. But we certainly do talk about it. Look at it! It's so beautiful. 

• Jacob Markstrom's stellar game against Carolina has us thinking about the history of Canucks goalie coaches. It is both shallower and more murky than we expected.

• We offer about two dozen rapid-fire yet eminently reasonable fixes to Canucks' game presentation. Greatest hits include #floattheblimp, #colourinthering, #ditchtheanthems, and other less hashtaggable suggestions.

• The Time Machine brings us back to the brink of Eric Lindros ownership in 1990, to a fourth line consisting of only one actual forward in 2000, to Markus Naslund's much-needed last hurrah in 2010. 

• How Did We Not Know about the Viking Award?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Is late! We were felled by technical difficulties. Marvel at how smooth and polished we are on take two.

• We waste no time firing up the Canuck Temporal Apparatus, stopping in 1990 to pore over Gary Valk's college yearbook, in 2000 to enjoy Trent Klatt's effortless goal-scoring, and finally in 2010 to witness the jersey retirement of everyone's favourite Camrose Kodiak.

• How Did We Not Know about the Canucks' storied history of employing Hobey Baker winners (and nearly winners?)

• We still love Alex Burrows (obviously), we love having his adoptive son Antoine Roussel on the team, and we are slowly coming to appreciate the prodigious stride length of Tyler Myers. 

• How Have We Not Yet Reached The Limits of Our Ignorance when it comes to the Canucks' short-handed goal prowess. Petey, Millsy, you've got next kill. 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella holds Tristan's harried hand and walks him through the week that was.

• We learn a bit more about the heritage of our favourite Alien, and Tristan sticks a highly undeserved Finnish press pass in his pipo. 

• It's a knock-down, drag-out, tough guy edition of the Canucks Time Machine. 

• How Did We Not Know about either the innovative Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes, or the reason why Gino Odjick wore number 29?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan asks what kind of a team we have this year. Ardella weighs all the evidence and comes to a heartening conclusion.

• That can't be the last Moment of Sven, can it? We are far from neutral on this issue. Biased. Partisan, even.

• All aboard the Gravy train as Ardella better gets to know Tyler G.

• Our beloved Cory Schneider has been sent to a fate worse than New Jersey: Binghamton.

• We get historical and put the 2019-20 Canucks powerplay into context.

• The Canucks Time Machine takes us back to Gino Odjick's first call-up in 1990, Tony Gallagher feeling bizarrely positive in 2000, and Ed Willes prematurely tearing into the 2010-11 Canucks blueline.

• How Did We Not Know that we shouldn't get quiiite so excited about Nikolay Goldobin's AHL scoring, once we look at who is sitting one place behind him.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.

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This week in anguish:

• We are sorry (see, it's not that hard) it took so long to get rid of Don Cherry, but we're happy to see the back of him.

• Brian Burke kickstarts this week's Canuck Time Machine, and we are reminded of the many reasons we don't want to see him more on TV.

• Tristan hijacks the time machine and sets it to machine wash only as he retreads the long and winding road of Canucks jersey and logo design. 

• Ardella breaks out the fancy stats to explain why we're really not seeing what we think we are.

• Lifetime NHL bans: How Did I Not Know That?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Everything is fine.

• Tristan conducts a strategic retreat to Utica, and gets better acquainted with Ashton Sautner, Josh Teves, Guillaume Brisebois, and Jalen Chatfield, only to find out he likes Brogan Rafferty best anyhow. 

• Ardella goes on a VIPs-only tour of 2019 NHL culture, and begins to fear that she may be a grocery stick. 

• Barns: Are some of them biased against your beloved Vancouver Canucks? Ardella storms in, questions blazing. 

• Headlines ripped from the Time Machine, and, of course, How Did I Not Know That?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Securing 7 out of 8 points in the past week has us on a high, and being on a high immediately makes us fret about the surely forthcoming low. 

• At long last, we better get to know Big Tex himself, Tyler Myers. 

• Tristan wallows in the 2015 first round playoff loss to the Flames, both for how much it sucked at the time, and for how it forces us to remember how dominant Micheal Ferland once was. 

• Ardella fires up the time machine to remind us of the Canucks rookie who was talk of the town in October 1990, our farm team depth in 2000, and that the October 2019 team just outdid their 2010 brethren. 

• "How Did I Not Know That?": Thatcher Edition

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• The Capitals' cardiac-damaging comeback has us questioning our new "spot them one, then score five" strategem. 

• The Utica Comets continue to steamroll opponents, and the six defencemen they're icing are (hopefully) a testament to our improved organizational depth.

• Ardella educates us on a fun minor-league tontine scheme.

• Sven speaks for a moment or two, and we fret and fawn along with him.

• Don't even think about trading 5'9", 180 lb Troy Stecher.

• New mask designs for Demko and Markstrom lead Ardella down a rabbit hole of helmet regulations, the great visor invention controversy, and an expose on stick length. 

• Undying powerplays. How did I not know that?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Sven, Nikolay, Reid, Olli, Kole, and all of the streaking Utica Comets take a well-deserved victory lap.

• Brent Brandon Sutter takes us on a tour of the Canucks' life in the air, and Tristan laments the cramped condition of our bleary-eyed boys. 

• How many Felix Potvins and Kirk McLeans could Roberto Luongo purchase? Ardella has the answers.

• Roger Nielson never met a rule loophole he didn't want to send a defenseman charging through.

• How Did We Not Remember the sad details of the Vladimir Krutov story?

• Are you sitting on a basement of West Coast Express-era VHS tapes? Put 'em on YouTube!

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella calls for less ceremonial ceremonies, as we celebrate Bo's captaincy and forget the name "Ron Shute". Give us a break - we've only had 49 years to learn it. Sorry, Ron.

• We get reacquainted with former Peninsula Panther star Phillip "Jordie" Benn.

• We debate the existence of the Ring of Honour itself and Todd Bertuzzi's place therein. Won't someone please think of Brendan Morrison?

• New duds! The Canucks' newest oldest duds hit the ice for the first time, and Tristan hopes we can look past their imperfections and maintain our affections for the stick-in-rink.

• We turn to Wayne Gretzky, Tora Sedin, and Darcy Hordicuk to provide some historical context for Drew Doughty's sulky post-game comments.

• How Did We Not Know That Tom Larscheid never said anything remotely deserving of being fired?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.

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This week in anguish:

• You better believe that we rend our garments and gnash our teeth for Bärtschi the Bernese Beauty.

• We lament the continued employment of BraAndon Sutter, question the measurements of Tyler Myers, and rage against the perpetual Groundhog Day-ification of Troy Stecher.

• We wish for an end to the captaincy question, and pause to give props to Luongo's greatest ever tweet.

• Ardella burrows into the archives to take stock of opening nights in 1990, 2000, and 2010, and we return once again to the inexhaustible well of How Did I Not Know Thats, the 1970 entry draft(s).  

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Was recorded 24 hours before Jim Benning's contract extension, which (partially) explains why we sound so ignorant.

• Vasily Podkolzin, we hardly knew ye in advance, but you are firmly in the fold now and there is quite a lot to like about you.

• Julien BriseBois goes rabbit hunting and Farmer Jim may have been caught in the crosshairs. Let's hope not.

• Tyler Myers fills the Tryamkin-sized hole on our blueline. Can he do much else?

• The Terror of 2015 is one of the good guys now. Does he have any bang and crash left in him?

• Luongo retires, Luongo is great, Luongo was great, but he certainly shouldn't have his number retired by the Canucks.

• Celebrate 50 years of hapless Canucks history with Ardella and original team owner Thomas Scallen, who didn't have a graceful bone in his body.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.

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This week in anguish:

• Since hockey is really just a full-contact fashion catwalk, let's get down to brass tacks: the Canucks have new duds! They're not completely ideal, but maybe we just need to reframe our whole existence as a team as a 50 year journey towards a more perfect uniform.

• The entry draft is just days away, so of course you are anxious to hear your favourite hockey outsiders' prospect rankings. Assuming that Hughes, Kakko, Byram and Turcotte are taken with the first four picks, our draft boards in order of preference from picks 5-10 are:

Ardella's:

1. Peyton Krebs

2. Victor Söderström

3. Cole Caufield

4. Alex Newhook

5. Trevor Zegras

6. Moritz Seider

Tristan's:

1. Dylan Cozens

2. Alex Newhook

3. Cole Caufield

4. Matthew Boldy

5. Victor Söderström

6. Trevor Zegras

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.

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This week in anguish:

• We take some time to appreciate the unique journalism and personality of Jason Botchford.

• The Honey Badger doesn't just get to retire without us talking once more about his adorable voice and even more adorable propensity to punch Nazem Kadri in the face.

• In the case of this podcast versus Loui Eriksson, Ardella is representing the accused. Unfortunately for Tristan, she's re-read the transcripts and crunched the numbers. 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• It's emotional locker clean-out day as Tristan and Ardella figure out how they feel as the team ends their season in early April for the fourth time in a row.

• We go over all the highs and lows that left lasting memories during the first year of the Pettersson era.

• We fix the draft and standings systems in one fell swoop. It's so, so simple.

• Tristan sends us into the offseason with a statistic we can all hang our hats on, and, in related news, Ardella closes the year with an all-time great quote: "As long as there's somebody to crush beneath your feet, life is good."

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Ardella sharpens her researching pencil and tackles three gnawing questions: Are the Canucks actually preternaturally good at beating the league's best teams? What happens to Jett Woo's contract if he goes back to Junior next year? And just how do we fare with and without Tanev and Edler?

• Tristan compresses the whole season into five bullet points of pre-vacation positivity. 

• Ardella climbs down off the cross and discovers some Weisbrod fake news in this week's How Did I Not Know That?

No new episode next week. We'll return on Sunday, April 7. 

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This week in anguish:

• On a day meant more for potent potables, we quaff some sobering statistics instead.

• Better know a bookworm as Ardella introduces you to the newest in a line of academically minded Canuckleheads, Josh Teves. 

• The following people will not be fired: Ian Clark. That is all. 

• We weep for the fate of Dave Pratt, and wax nostalgic about the boyhood of Dan Russel. No, that can't be right. checks notes Huh.

• How Did Ardella Not Know about the Original Six?

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This week in anguish:

• We're still sore about losing Dahlen, and ashamed by the behaviour of Canucks "fans" after his departure, so Ardella retreats into the history of heartwarming teammate friendships, with stops at Rypien-Bieksa, Naslund-Bertuzzi, Linden-Ohlund, and, of course, Odjick-Bure. 

• The Golden Gophers knocked out Quinn Hughes' Wolverines, and beloved former Gophers coach John Mariucci gives us an all-time great description of March futility.

• Tristan does a deep dive into a wading pool and examines the defensive corps as it stood on all five March the Ninths of the Benning Era.

• FireBenning

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• We put on our gumshoes and delve into the Dahlen File. Whose spin is straightest in this whole shemozzle?

• Saying goodbye to Erik "Big Mouth" Gudbranson, revisiting the 2014 draft with Jared McCann, and getting beat up on by the Coyotes sends us down the rabbit hole of Canucks comeuppances.

• Brad Richardson inspires Ardella to look into Canuck-killers of recent yore.

• Everyone has been pretending they've always talked about the "bumper spot", and Ardella's had just about enough in this week's How Did I Not Know That?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• The actual hockey this week was pretty miserable, but the Canucks for Kids telethon is coming up and Ardella investigates whether the Canucks and Vancouver are as charitable as we feel like they/we are. The results are…not stellar.

• The realistic options for this year’s trade deadline range from mediocre to disastrous, so Tristan retreats into trade deadlines past to see how much of a role they played in constructing championship-calibre teams in ’94 and ’11. 

• Adrian Aucoin teaches us how to treat our current enigmatic Russian with tales of Bure and Mogilny, and gives Tristan a new fantasy scenario for Tryamkin’s triumphant return. 

• We go clambering up Newell Brown’s family tree in this week’s How Did I Not Know That?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Two dispiriting losses to San Jose and Anaheim reacquaint us with two very familiar flavours of Canucks misery.

• Jim Benning gave an interview, and Tristan came away from it relatively unscathed, with only five bang-your-head-against-a-wall moments.

• Ardella attempts to fill her half-empty emotional glass by researching the team's injury woes, Luke Schenn, Ryan Spooner, and some surprisingly upbeat Jacob Markstrom stats. 

• How did Ardella not know that Christopher Tanev has never managed to play a full season? Well, she didn't, but she learned some interesting things about the most injured Canucks d-men along the way.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Over the past couple weeks, both Tristan and Ardella made various pronouncements about the state of the team that weren't immediately disproven. That deserves a victory lap, right?

• Tristan uses Jonathan Dahlen as the canary in the deep coal mine of his Utica Comets ignorance. What's going on down on the farm, and what happens if we just can't handle the truth?

• Inspired by the loss of our first scoring star Andre Boudrias, Ardella recaps the long history of Quebec-related Canucks, with stops in Port-au-Prince and Maniwaki.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• At long last, Tristan unveils his vision for the Canucks in 2020. It's not perfect, but it's miles better than what we're trotting out currently, and it's within our grasp!

• Ardella pores over the shootout and overtime record books to see just how cursed the Canucks really are. The surprisingly optimistic answer? Only to a middling extent! 

• A double How Did I Not Know That this week, as Ardella unearths an unexpected Canucks father-son pairing. Also, how did she not know that a website last updated in 2014 might not provide the gospel truth? (It forgot about the Tambellinis.) 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Tristan's tenure as a one-week season ticket holder ends with a whimper. He saw one Petey goal and a couple very pretty Petey passes, and brought home a mixed bag of opinions as a souvenir.

• We hold a funeral for Erik Gudbranson. He's perfectly healthy, but he's dead to us. 

• Tyler Madden takes us on a kayak tour of the Northeastern seaboard, and Ardella continues her quest for Canucks originality.

• The All Star weekend made the Alien look a bit human, and we love him for it...no matter what Ed Willes says.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

- Tristan is a one-week season ticket holder. This is definitely not a thing, but he's not letting that stop him from enjoying himself. 1-0, so far! - Ardella is learning Swedish one Aftonbladet interview at a time. Either Dahlin just voiced support for the Petey-Gretzky comparison, or he's got a new whiskey endorsement. - Better Know a Demko with help from the Utica Cometscast. - We make a brief stump speech for the outgoing mayor of Utica, Darren Archibald. - We're paying waaaaay too much for our fourth line, but check our the luxurious fingerfeel of Jay Beagle's intangibles. That sounded sarcastic, but do it. - How did Ardella not know that goal differential was a good predictor of team success? It's a bit more complicated than that. A bit...

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Ryan Johnson considers the development curves of Brisebois and Chatfield "unheard of." He means this as a compliment. We question whether he should.

• Tristan makes the case for stripping the good people of Utica of their favoured form of frozen entertainment and bringing the farm team to Vancouver.

• If Elias Pettersson speaks into a microphone and you weren't there to hear it, does it make a noise? Yes, in the form of Ardella's studious recaps of his busy week of interviews. English? Swedish? She's got you covered.

• Should Luongo have his number retired by the Canucks? Listen to our four seconds of hard-hitting analysis.

• How did we not know about Jim Taylor's work as a Soviet ghostwriter? 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Our blood is boiling and our hackles are up, so settle in and see how many recriminations we can cram into the first 25 minutes of this episode.

• Anders Nilsson and Darren Archibald are Canucks no more. On a hockey level, this is fine. On a human level, this made us momentarily wobbly. 

• No one expects the Norwegian Inquisition as Ardella re-examines every significant trade of the Benning era. 

• We subject our mid-season perceptions of this team to the cruel magnifying glass of, y'know, reality. 

• Tristan realizes he has never really appreciated Alex Edler as much as he should, so he does for a bit. 

• "This is a stick-up," says the Dry Cleaning Bandit (!?!) in this week's How Did I Not Know That?

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• Two of the least observant analysts in Canucks history share what they noticed at a game-day practice and on a tour of Rogers Arena.

• Rocking relentlessly around the permanent Christmas tree with Troy. 

• We get reacquainted with Juice, in all his truculent glory. 

• Yet more entries for the Pettersson Praise Portion: Ardella touts his Norris-calibre defense, while Tristan enjoys his extreme in-game expressiveness. 

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella. 

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This week in anguish:

• We hoped against hope we might see him back in the lineup by now, but instead we settle for a brief Moment of Sven.

• Should Adam Gaudette remain up with the big club as the team gets healthier? Ardella suggests that (on this and any other Hockey Gaud-related matter) we let his dimples guide us.

• What's going on in Utica? We take stock of a league that's getting a bit too big for its britches.

• This week's Pettersson Praise Portion consists mostly of adorable things we learned in the After Hours interview.

• Captain-in-all-but-name Bo Horvat has swept away our preseason skepticism.

• Building Brock shows us yet again that he really is Prince Charming. We take a moment to admire Brock's commitment to team over self, and then immediately turn on poor new Canuck Mitch Eliot, who scores a 0.4 on the Boeserian Selflessness Scale.

• Colton Saucerman helps us get to the bottom of Tristan's real feelings about hockey beards. It's the still-wishy-washy answer to the question no one was asking!

• This version of the Canucks may be the best at third-period comebacks in their 48 year history. Smile through the tears, folks.

• Ardella unveils some very statistical statistics, Tristan takes us back to 2008, and we end with How Did I Not Know That?: Pinkies.

Thanks for listening! If you liked the show, tell a friend. You can find us on Twitter as @thisweektristan and @thisweekardella.