There didn\u2019t appear to be much fight in the Vancouver Canucks against the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Not until late in the third period at least.<\/p>\n
Frustrations boiled over for a couple of young Canucks players late in their 4-0 loss to the Kings. After Tom Willander was moderately roughed up by 6-foot-6 Kings\u2019 centre Samuel Helenius, mayhem ensued behind the Canucks\u2019 net.<\/p>\n
Everyone partnered off, but it was young Canucks defenceman Zeev Buium who ended up dropping his gloves with Brandt Clarke.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ironically, Buium, Willander, and defenceman Elias Pettersson were caught practicing their fighting skills in practice earlier this week.<\/p>\n
The friendly rough stuff at practice continued on Wednesday, when Buium got into a couple of light wrestling matches with his former Minnesota Wild teammate, Marco Rossi.<\/p>\n
But mixing things up with your buddies in practice is very different from dropping the gloves in an NHL game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I think you lose like that, especially on home ice, it\u2019s never fun,\u201d Buium said postgame.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see your teammates getting kind of jumped a little bit, they\u2019re up four nothing\u2026I don\u2019t think that necessarily needs to happen, but I\u2019m glad that we all stuck up for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buium\u2019s frustrations can also be explained by the fact that the Canucks got dominated once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, you saw it like, just couldn\u2019t get anything going tonight. I think they pretty much dominated us for most of the game. So, it just sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what didn\u2019t suck was seeing young Canucks players standing up for each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was awesome,\u201d Brock Boeser said. \u201cWe loved it, and it just shows that you know they care and they\u2019re getting in there and sticking up for each other. It\u2019s great to see, and we got to make sure we maintain that mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boeser wasn\u2019t the only player this week to reference Buium\u2019s care level.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to win,\u201d Rossi told Daily Hive earlier this week. \u201cHe wants to get better every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for him at first, it wasn\u2019t easy. Especially when you lose, you think too much about it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he understands the situation more and more, and you can see it out there. \u201cLike, he doesn\u2019t play with as much pressure anymore. He just goes out there to have fun, and he tries to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you see him, you know he wants to compete every day, and that\u2019s really good to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buium and Willander are beginning to earn more ice time late in this lost Canucks season. On Thursday against the Kings, Willander played 21:29, while Buium skated 21:30.<\/p>\n
Both played more minutes than Marcus Pettersson (19:07) on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Since NHLers returned from the Olympic break, Willander has averaged 20:21 per game, while Buium has averaged 19:24.<\/p>\n
There are clearly moments when they\u2019re learning on the fly, which was evident during a second-period shift last night, where Willander was on the ice for over three minutes.<\/p>\n
But both defenders have flashed their ability to make plays though, particularly with Willander\u2019s ability to close gaps and Buium\u2019s shiftiness with the puck on his stick.<\/p>\n
Remember, Willander just turned 21 in February, while Buium was a teenager before turning 20 in December.<\/p>\n
In a lost season, at least both defencemen have flashed some promise and some fight in their games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There didn\u2019t appear to be much fight in the Vancouver Canucks against the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-564943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564943","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=564943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}