Price is Right: Likeable Kuzmenko sure to be a big story for Canucks this season

Do you love Andrei Kuzmenko? Rhetorical question. Of course you do. And you’re not alone.

Rink Wide’s coverage of Kuzmenko, and one clip in particular, went viral over the weekend. The NHL itself using it, TSN’s Bardown, and others.

Andrei Kuzmenko jokes about communicating with Elias Pettersson before Petey’s goal:

“Petey, not shoot, pass to me, pass to me. Petey shoot, goal, okay, it’s a good goal!” 😂 #Canucks pic.twitter.com/3uAbVwLo1B

— Rink Wide: Vancouver (@rinkwidepodcast) October 8, 2022

He’s a character, and people love characters. It has the potential to be one of the big stories of the Canucks season. Win or lose. And I’m talking about the team there. Let’s assume for now, he is what we think he is. Well, the big stories write themselves.

Because if the Canucks are winning, and he’s a big part of it, then they will move heaven and earth to make sure he’s a part of future success too. They’ll be forced into it, because trading him at the deadline would be ridiculed during a winning season and nonsensical if he’s the kind of success they hope he is.

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But if he’s good and the Canucks don’t get the season they hope for in the standings, well that’s a very different, and still important, story. Because the future of Kuzmenko would get very interesting, given that they’d likely have other obvious holes that would need to be filled and he would be an obvious way to do that.

Win, he’s a cornerstone of that success. Lose, he’s a way to fix things.

And yes, all of this is cart before horse because we haven’t seen a single regular season game from him. But it was just today I saw The Athletic’s Michael Russo in Minnesota tweeting about his first Kirill Kaprizov preview story, asking whether he might be one of the greats. Well, they got a pretty clear answer in Minny. The Canucks might very well too.