Welcome Matt: Gaudette dagger another example of 'Canuck Luck'

Plenty of happenings in last night’s shootout loss to the Ottawa Senators, as it may well have marked the end of this season’s playoff chase and the start of a soccer-style supporters’ section in the lower bowl.

The Larscheiders moved up in price and down in location, more on that in future shows.

But we had a listener submission yesterday that this offseason would mark the end of Canuck Luck — or as our colleague Don Taylor often calls it: “impending doom” — a scarred fan base conditioned to expect the worst after 52 years and no Stanley Cups.

If that listener is right, then former Canuck Adam Gaudette stands as that centuries-old knight guarding the gate to Canuck Luck’s Holy Grail.

He wins the game with a shootout move taught to him by Canucks goalie coach Ian Clark — and I’m sure Clark had Gaudette under his charge plenty of times as a healthy scratch to work out the goalies. The shootout goal came just one year after he was summarily dispatched to Chicago following the Canucks’ COVID outbreak.

Gaudette was fingered as the cause of the outbreak by his teammates, who went to GM Jim Benning asking that he be removed from their room, and the former Canucks boss obliged, acquiring Matthew Highmore from the Hawks.

Gaudette has since moved on to Ottawa, where he was pointless in 19 games heading into last night, and only got tabbed as the fifth shooter because he knew Demko so well.

Demko, of course, was only in the goal because of Jaro Halak’s upper-body injury, and didn’t particularly enjoy Gaudette’s arms-stretched Kesleresque celly. The Canucks goaltender fired the puck back down the ice towards Gaudette, and I’m guessing it was more than just the celly that offended.

Gaudette was a Hobey Baker winner as the best player in college hockey, an anticipated Canucks prospect and the club’s erstwhile third-line centre had he been able to hold down the duties.

Instead, he quickly became a ‘two-and-10 guy’ — in the league two years, acts like he’s been there for 10. That entitlement and his social media habits rubbed some wrong over at Rogers Arena.

So you can only imagine how good it felt for him to stick the dagger in Vancouver’s playoff hopes, and with a raucous crowd — including the lower-bowl Larscheiders — at full throat for a seventh straight win at the conclusion of a marvellous game.

The trade has worked out for the Canucks, but Gaudette is the ghost that haunts, guarding the promise-land in chainmail. And when you think of the confluence of events that had to happen to bring us to his moment last night, it sure seems like Impending Doom struck again.

The Canucks did not choose poorly, but they lost nevertheless.

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