{"id":560756,"date":"2026-03-25T23:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560756\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T23:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:14:09","slug":"canucks-hoglander-motivated-to-finish-challenging-season-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560756\/","title":{"rendered":"Canucks’ Hoglander motivated to finish challenging season strong"},"content":{"rendered":"

But for Hoglander, the 25-year-old whose National Hockey League career seems to be back where it started, every day has been a challenge since he broke his ankle in the Canucks\u2019 first pre-season game against the Calgary Flames on Sept. 24.<\/p>\n

After a disappointing season last year, when his scoring plummeted to eight goals from 24, the Swedish winger reported to training camp in Penticton as the best-conditioned Canuck. He looked excellent at camp, fast and direct and hungry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I was working my ass off the whole summer, then I had a really good camp,\u201d Hoglander told Sportsnet after Wednesday\u2019s practice. \u201cThen I scored in my first pre-season game. Then the next shift, I broke my ankle. And since then, yeah, it\u2019s been hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his sixth NHL season \u2014 and after signing a three-year, $9-million contract extension two years ago to be an important middle-six piece for the Canucks \u2014 Hoglander has one goal in 28 games and has become a semi-regular scratch on the league\u2019s worst team.<\/p>\n

The victim of an awkward, mid-ice collision that required surgery, Hoglander did not make his season debut until Dec. 8. Since his first three games, the left winger\u2019s ice time has surpassed 12 minutes in only six contests.<\/p>\n

Coach Adam Foote has removed the left winger from the Canuck lineup six times for a total of 13 games, including Tuesday\u2019s 5-3 loss against the Anaheim Ducks.<\/p>\n

Foote said that Hoglander will play Thursday\u2019s home game against the Los Angeles Kings, and the player is desperate to generate some positivity and confidence over Vancouver\u2019s final 12 games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if I can finish this off, then I can go into the summer with good confidence and have a good summer to just get back even more excited for next year,\u201d Hoglander said. \u201cThat’s the mindset you’ve got to have. Otherwise, if you get grumpy now and say just screw it, then you’re going to go into the summer with that same attitude.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think for every player, that’s the worst thing — when you go in and out of the lineup. You play two games and you’re out, and then you\u2019re back in and you don’t really get those minutes you used to play. That’s the worst for a player, the hardest thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoglander\u2019s only goal this season was March 4, his 22nd\u00a0game of the year.<\/p>\n

Hoglander\u2019s poorest season previously was 2022-23, which amounted to a remedial campaign as the Canucks sent him to the American Hockey League to work on some basics he didn\u2019t need to master before the organization rushed him into the NHL from Sweden as a 21-year-old rookie.<\/p>\n

The 2019 second-round pick had three goals and nine points in 25 NHL games in 2022-23. This season, he has one goal and three assists in 28 games.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing a lot of great things (but) he’s gripping it right now,\u201d Foote told reporters. \u201cIt’s not about the goals; it’s about managing the puck, managing his ice. It’s not because he’s not trying; he’s trying hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foote said the coaching staff is working with Hoglander to make better decisions with the puck, particularly when he\u2019s under pressure along the boards, and to shorten his shifts so he and the team aren\u2019t getting caught defensively.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not because he can’t do it; it\u2019s almost like he’s stuck in trying too hard to get the goals,\u201d Foote explained. \u201cHe’s so valuable down below (the faceoff dots) that when he’s going to just make the right decisions… that’ll help him but also help the group.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"3232 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n

Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.<\/p>\n

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Hoglander\u2019s decision-making with the puck was a talking point after last week\u2019s 6-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning when he twice was in excellent shooting positions on a two-on-one but forced passes that did not connect.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, that’s a confidence thing,\u201d Hoglander said. \u201cI was talking about it the other day, like, if you have confidence, you do something else there. You know you’re not trying to find the pass; you really want to score that one. That\u2019s a confidence thing, for sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like every time you get pulled out of the lineup, you know, (you feel like) you\u2019re not good enough and that takes your confidence down, too. And as a player, confidence is everything. You see it with every player. They talk to me; it’s details and small things I\u2019ve got to get better at. But then when you go in and out of the lineup like that, it’s hard to prove you can earn the trust to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foote said assistant coach Scott Young, who scored 342 goals as an NHL player, has been working with Hoglander.<\/p>\n

\u201cScott’s message was like. . . just don’t make it harder on yourself,\u201d Foote said. \u201cLike I said, he does so many good things below the tops of the circles, so it\u2019s just a couple of things that will help him be more predictable and have more consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n

ICE CHIPS \u2013 Filip Hronek<\/a>, Brock Boeser and Evander Kane were given \u201cmaintenance\u201d days Wednesday. Asked if Hronek, who has rarely practised recently, is managing an injury, Foote said: \u201cIf he was \u2013 and he\u2019s not \u2013 I wouldn\u2019t tell you\u201d. . . There were two Wild-on-Wild altercations involving defenceman Zeev Buium during battle drills near the end of practice. Marco Rossi exchanged sharp slashes with his former Minnesota teammate before a Canuck intervened, and Buium then caught another former Wild teammate, Liam Ohgren, high with a reverse hit. Buium downplayed the skirmishes, explaining it was just friends competing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But for Hoglander, the 25-year-old whose National Hockey League career seems to be back where it started, every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-560756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}