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I Watched This Game: Chytil injured in Canucks' preseason game in collision with referee

Daniel Wagner
Daniel Wagner
|
Sep 25 2026, 4:58 am
I Watched This Game: Chytil injured in Canucks' preseason game in collision with referee
Bob Frid/Imagn Images

Vancouver Canucks centre Filip Chytil spent the offseason studying video of other speedy NHL forwards.

While some players might study other NHLers hoping to pick up some new tricks to improve their game, Chytil was hoping to learn how to avoid injuries.

The oft-injured centre has dealt with multiple head injuries in his career. Last season, a blindside hit by Tom Wilson took him out of the lineup for much of the season, then a puck deflected off the glass into his face to end his season for good. Ultimately, he played just 12 games.

So, Chytil studied players like Connor McDavid to see how they could play at top speed while still avoiding putting themselves in dangerous positions where they might suffer a serious injury.

Unfortunately, hockey is an innately chaotic, unpredictable, and dangerous sport, with more than just two teams on the ice. You can perfectly read the play, know where every opponent is on the ice, and still have an unexpected collision with one of the other skaters on the ice: the officials.

Chytil didn’t make it an entire period in his first preseason game without suffering an injury. 15 minutes into the opening frame, Chytil’s skates collided with those of referee Riley Brace as he chased a puck, and Chytil went flying headlong into the end boards.

Initially, it seemed like Brace got the worst of it, but the referee recovered and remained in the game; Chytil didn’t.

The one hint of hope is that it might not be a head injury. Chytil collided with the boards shoulder first and didn’t seem to hit his head, though whiplash could still be a concern.

“We’re having his shoulder looked at,” said head coach Manny Malhotra. “We’ll know more tomorrow.”

It’s not a good sign when you have to hope that a player has only suffered a shoulder injury.

Chytil might have the worst luck in NHL history; it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Chytil missed games because of a collision with a referee. That said, there’s hope that it’s not anything too bad and that he won’t be out long.

With a sad heart, I watched this game.

  • Can the 2026-27 Vancouver Canucks beat an AHL team? The answer is probably “yes,” but they didn’t do it in this game. The Edmonton Oilers did not send their A team to Vancouver — more like their A-minus team — but they were hungry and aggressive, and that was enough to win the day.
  • “It looked like a lot of guys’ first game, so, as expected, it wasn’t as sharp as we wanted it to be,” said Malhotra. “Outcome aside, it was more the lack of execution early out of the gate and the lack of intensity in our game. We started to find it for the second period, started turning it on a little bit more, which was good to have that response. Don’t want to read too far into this one.”
  • The Oilers opened the scoring four minutes into the game when Brock Boeser got beat on the boards on a Canucks breakout. The puck never got over the blue line, and Issac Howard jumped on the loose puck like Mario on a Goomba, then fired it short-side past Nikita Tolopilo.

  • This was a dominant puck possession game for Elias Pettersson’s line with Jake DeBrusk and Linus Karlsson, even if it didn’t show on the scoreboard. When Pettersson was on the ice at 5-on-5, shot attempts were 22-to-5 for the Canucks, which is about as tilted as the ice can get before Blade comes out and starts to complain about people trying to ice skate uphill.
  • “We just need to have a shot mentality,” said DeBrusk. “Me and Karly were using the walls pretty good there; we’ve just got to find ways to get it to the net.”
  • Keeping in mind the level of competition, this was an encouraging game from Pettersson. To go with some strong playmaking, he had a team-high four hits and went 16-for-20 in the faceoff circle. The one downside — and it’s a big downside — is that he finished with zero shots on goal, which is somewhat less than ideal.
  • “When you have quality O-zone time, it means that you’re doing things right,” said Malhotra of Pettersson’s line. “But to the bigger picture stuff — getting pucks to the interior, attacking the seams, getting pucks on net is the bigger issue.”
  • The Oilers took a 2-0 lead about five minutes into the second period. Brock Boeser got stuck in the defensive zone after his linemates changed. At the end of a 1:39-long shift, Boeser was bushed and couldn’t get back to defend an Oiler counterattack. Viljami Marjala’s centring pass deflected off Jamie Oleksiak’s skate for an awkward rebound off Tolopilo’s pads to Quinn “Neither Hughes Nor Lane” Hutson, who was on the right side of Boeser to finish off the play.

  • Liam Öhgren has all kinds of confidence with the puck right now, which is delightful to see, even if he skated himself directly into traffic multiple times in this game and turned the puck over. I’d rather see a player have that kind of confidence and have to reel it back a little than to see a player entirely lacking in confidence — *ahem* Jonathan Lekkerimäki.
  • On an Öhgren-drawn penalty, the second power play unit went to work. A couple of rotations across the top of the zone opened up Zeev Buium on the left side of the ice. His shot ended up as more of a pass, as Linus Karlsson quickly pulled the puck to his forehand and tucked it past Tristan Jarry.

  • “I was focusing on getting used to the habits I had last year: go to the net, win puck battles, and all that stuff,” said Karlsson. “Yeah, I scored, but I also felt that there’s a lot about the timing and stuff that I need to get better at. But it’s nice. I tried to focus on those things and it paid off.”
  • Jamie Oleksiak looked a bit rusty with some of his puck touches, but there was nothing rusty about his protective insticts. When Connor Clattenburg went after Karlsson near the benches, Oleksiak casually skated over to Clattenburg and made it very clear that he would not be doing that again.

  • Look, this is the preseason. This is what you’re going to get. The players are shaking off the rust and trying to establish the habits that will carry them through a long regular season. It’s not always going to be pretty. You might hope it would be prettier than a loss to the Bakersfield Condors, but, as the saying goes, “Hopes and wishes are for dopes and fishes.”
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