VANCOUVER – Hey, winning is fun. Players on the ice for the Three Stars, sticks handed over the glass to fans, music in the dressing room, even smiles for the media.
And that jet-engine noise? That was the sound of relief Wednesday from the Vancouver Canucks.
On the 21st day of January, the Canucks won their first game of 2026, beating the Washington Capitals 4-3 to end an 11-game winless streak that was the franchise’s longest in 37 National Hockey League seasons.
It was just the fifth home victory this season for Vancouver. The last time the Canucks won at Rogers Arena, they beat the Minnesota Wild and Quinn Hughes was still playing for Vancouver. That was Dec. 6, six days before the biggest trade in franchise history.
So much has happened to the Canucks since then. Most of it bad.
“Obviously, we’re in this business to win hockey games, and we’re not winning,” Canuck goalie Kevin Lankinen said after a strong 29-save performance. “We’ve got to find solutions, and that’s been my mindset, too: I want to be part of the solution and not the problem. So I’m just happy that we got the result today, but we have a long season ahead, and we’ve got to keep building here.”
“I hope this helps quite a bit, just a bit of positivity,” centre Teddy Blueger said after playing his first game in three months. “Some positive energy. I thought we competed well tonight, so it’s just something to build on for us. You know, we played for each other, our details were pretty good, and Lanks made some big saves.”
What was most impressive about the Canucks’ win, other than the rarity of the occurrence, is that the team stuck to its game plan and rallied back from an early 2-0 deficit built by a Washington Capitals’ five-on-three power play that was largely fabricated on a missed call.
This came one game after Vancouver coach Adam Foote blasted his veterans as “the ones that feel defeated first” when a call or play doesn’t go their way.
Canuck Max Sasson was penalized for holding Hendrix Lapierre, although it was Lapierre who dropped his stick and stole Sasson’s as a substitute. Naturally, Sasson felt entitled to cling to the stick with his name stamped on the shaft. Lapierre thought Sasson’s blue twig was his, and apparently so did referee T.J. Luxmore.
“Yeah, I thought it was one of the weirder calls,” Sasson said. “He (Lapierre) actually was holding my stick, and then he had my stick. The ref kind of apologized later.”
Luxmore made up for his flub by bestowing Vancouver a two-man advantage in the second period, on which the Canucks failed to capitalize.
The point of this Sasson/Luxmore five-on-three subplot is that the Canucks did not let frustration or dejection set in. Rather than lose the plot, the Canucks stuck to their script and poured four straight goals past Capitals netminder Logan Thompson to take their first multi-goal lead since a 4-1 road win against the New York Islanders on Dec. 19.
“That’s just the relentless mindset that we have to have,” Lankinen said. “No matter what happens on the ice, we just keep hammering our own game. Sometimes there’s stuff that you can’t control, so you don’t want to put too much energy on that. Only thing you can control is your own performance, your mindset. So I was happy that we turned the game around.”
It was like the path to victory — the Canucks’ strict focus and resilience
— was conjured as a response to Foote lighting up his senior players for negativity during Monday’s 4-3 loss to the New York Islanders.
“Yeah, I think it’s really important,” winger Brock Boeser said of the response. “And, I mean, it’s the truth. We can’t have that bad body language and, you know, the negative attitude on the bench. We can’t show that to the young guys. We’ve got to be good leaders and good role models and be positive. And I thought we were tonight. And I felt that helped us play a better hockey game.”
“I think the best part about it was how our bench was after being down 2-0,” Foote said. “It was really calm, and you’ve got to give a lot of credit to the guys for not getting rattled. T.J., the ref, came up to us after the first and he said he missed that call. I could see why he missed it. You don’t see that happen too often. Maybe it was meant to be to give a test to our guys.”
After Dylan Strome scored for Washington at 8:25 on the five-on-three power play, and Justin Sourdif at 9:43 on the five-on-four (with Canuck defenceman Marcus Pettersson following Sasson to the penalty box for high-sticking), the Canucks rallied back before the first period was over.
In a span of 16 minutes, centre David Kampf increased his season points total by 50 per cent, making nice plays into the slot to set up quick goals for Boeser and Drew O’Connor. Between them, Evander Kane had banked a centring pass in off Washington defenceman Matt Roy to make it 2-2 at 18:22 of the opening period.
Filip Hronek beautifully finished from Jake DeBrusk’s pass on a two-on-one to make it 4-2 at 11:43 of the second period as the teams skated four against four. The Canucks defended well after that, yielding only a six-on-five goal to Strome with 3:23 remaining.
“When the clock was winding down, it felt really good to finally put that streak behind us,” Sasson said. “Hopefully we’ll start a new streak on the right track. But yeah, it feels really good.”
With five games remaining in their longest homestand of the season, the Canucks play the New Jersey Devils on Saturday.
ICE CHIPS – While the Canucks remain a distant last in the NHL at 17-28-5, Blueger is a perfect 3-0 this season. “Small sample size,” he said. The 31-year-old centre, badly missed on the Vancouver’s penalty kill and in the dressing room, logged 18:24 in his first game since being injured in Washington on Oct. 19. The Canucks have won all three games that Blueger has played. . . Evander Kane, whose physical presence this season has been intermittent at best, engaged Ryan Leonard away from the play and popped the Capital in the mouth after he knocked down Canuck Elias Pettersson in the second period. Managing the game at that point, referees Luxmore and Riley Brace called offsetting penalties, which preceded Hronek’s winning goal.
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