I love a boring game.
I should clarify.
You might be able to tell from the general vibe I give off, but I used to do a lot of comedy improv. One of my favourite improv games to play was one that we always called the Boring Game. It’s also known by other names: the Not Funny game, No Laughs, Serious Switch, or Dead Serious.
It’s a pretty simple game. You get a suggestion from the audience — the more outlandish, the better — and you play out a scene. The catch is, if the audience laughs, the improviser who made them laugh jumps out of the scene and is replaced by another improviser.
What a lot of improvisers get wrong is they take the name “Boring Game” too literally and try to avoid laughs by being boring. Unfortunately, that approach isn’t particularly entertaining for the audience and often falls flat. That makes the game a challenging one even for experienced improvisers.
But improv doesn’t have to be limited to just comedy, which is why I like the Boring Game so much. You can take an outlandish suggestion from the audience — a scene about mammoths with rocket boots, for example — and play it completely straight, aiming for drama, tragedy, or romance. When done right, playing it straight can often end up being way more funny than trying for a silly joke and there will be plenty of laughs to keep improvisers rotating into the scene.
So yeah, when done right, I love a Boring Game.
When a boring game is done wrong, it's less fun. The Vancouver Canucks game against the San Jose Sharks on Thursday night was the wrong kind of boring game. It was so bad that it had me reminiscing about comedy improv.
It was a dreadfully dull, uninspired performance from both teams. There were long stretches of time where nothing of note happened. The Canucks had two power plays in the first period where they didn’t get a single shot on goal. It was like their strategy was to lull the Sharks into a catatonic state, like when you turn an actual shark upside down.
Since the Sharks are last place in the NHL, it’s a little bit concerning for the Canucks that they struggled so much to beat them. But at least they did actually beat them, even if it took overtime and a penalty shot.
“It wasn’t pretty but we found a way to stick together and come out of there with the two points,” said Dakota Joshua. “That was an important win for us. We need all the points we can get here down the stretch.”
The Canucks have managed to get points out of six of their last seven games, going 5-1-1 in that time, so it’s probably not worth getting too bent out of shape about one ugly win, especially when it came without the team’s best player in the lineup.
Unlike the show that introduced most people to comedy improv, the points did matter when I watched this game.
- The first five minutes of this game were deceitful. The Canucks looked dangerous and dynamic, swarming the offensive zone like angry bees. Then it seemed like those bees got a healthy does of smoke to calm them down, as the rest of the game felt downright docile. It was false advertising, like the trailer for a Zach Snyder movie.
- The most exciting thing that happened in the first period was Conor Garland crushing Mario Ferraro with a heavy hit. Garland game him the older Ferraro Rocher, as he slammed into Ferraro like a rocher, which is French for “a large rock or boulder.” Work with me here, this was a very dull game.
- It was encouraging to see Elias Pettersson get some shots on goal in this game. No, not the forward — he didn’t have a single shot on goal despite playing 6:21 on the power play — but the rookie defenceman had three shots on goal. His willingness to fire away is a sight for sore eyes. It would be nice to see the other Elias Pettersson adopting a similar shoot-first attitude.
- In an interesting twist, the original Elias Pettersson was taken off the first power play unit in the second period. To be fair, Pettersson had just been on the ice for a nearly minute-long shift at the time of the penalty, so maybe that’s the only reason he was off the first unit. On the other hand, so had Jake DeBrusk and he was on the first unit. So…maybe a wee bit of message-sending.
- Look, am I concerned about Elias Pettersson (#40)? Yes. Absolutely. But I also fully believe that he's going to come out of this funk. The effort is there, it shows up in his still-strong defensive game, but the offence has gone AWOL. If he's not playing through an injury, then he's just got to get out of his own head.
- Conor Garland left the bench late in the second period and didn’t return to the game until about six minutes into the third period. He seemed to injure his right arm in some way on a hit by Jake Walman. The fact he returned to the game might be a good sign but we’ve seen multiple Canucks return in-game from an injury only to miss multiple games after, such as Dakota Joshua and Quinn Hughes.
- Nils Höglander was one of the few Canucks with some energy in this game, as his line with Teddy Blueger and Nils Åman had some jump in their fourth-line minutes. Shot attempts were 14-to-6 for the Canucks with Höglander on the ice at 5-on-5, for a team-high 70.0% corsi. Some of that came when he filled in for Garland with DeBrusk and Pettersson (#40) and the chemistry was immediately apparent between the two Swedes. It’s honestly kind of baffling that Tocchet hasn’t gone back to Pettersson and Höglander at all.
- “I thought Höglander was really good tonight, I thought Åman gave us a job — Teddy’s line was good,” said Tocchet. “I thought those guys really did a nice job for us."
- It took until the very last second of the Canucks’ last of four power plays, but they finally got a power play goal. It wasn’t anything complicated: just a shot on goal with traffic in front. Pius Suter gained the offensive zone down the left wing, Dakota Joshua went to the net, and Joshua tipped Suter’s shot past goaltender Vitek Vanecek. Shooting the puck on the power play; what a novel concept.
- Thatcher Demko was outstanding in this game, making 33 saves on 34 shots, none bigger than his outright robbery of Carl Grundstrom. Demko couldn’t absorb a point shot through traffic and Grundstrom kicked the rebound up to his stick and seemingly had Demko dead to rights but Demko stretched out his left leg and made the best toe save since Dolly Parton’s mom.
- Demko couldn’t stop them all, however. Late in the third, with the Sharks pulling the goaltender to go 6-on-5, Filip Chytil undercut all the good will he’d earned early in his Canucks tenure with an absolutely dreadful turnover in front of his own net. Under pressure, Chytil chopped the puck right to Tyler Toffoli, who can’t help but score against the Canucks. With Demko on his game, it took Toffoli three shots to do it but the turnover gave him the time and space for three shots.
- Tocchet gave Chytil the chance to redeem himself by starting him in overtime. At first, it looked like it backfired, as Chytil got caught up-ice and didn’t seem to realize he needed to backcheck hard on a Sharks 2-on-1. But then it all worked out: Demko made a save on Macklin Celebrini and Chytil broke the other way and set up Drew O’Connor, who was hooked by Celebrini for a penalty shot.
- O’Connor’s penalty shot looked awfully familiar, as he did his best J.T. Miller impression by skating out wide on the left side, then slowly coming across the slot to get the goaltender moving in micro-adjustments before snapping the puck under Vanecek’s glove. It’s like Allvin heard a segment of Canucks fans saying, “We want J.T. Miller” and he said, “We have J.T. Miller at home.”
- “I kind of had an idea that’s what I wanted to do with it,” said O’Connor. “It’s a little bit easier when you can come in slow and pick your spot like that.”
- That’s only the second penalty shot goal in overtime in Canucks history. The first was scored by Ben Hutton back in 2016. So, there’s some fun trivia for the future: Ben Hutton and Drew O’Connor, the only Canucks to score an overtime penalty shot goal.
- “Demmer was great, so was their goaltender,” said Tocchet. “We had some possession time, some blocked shots. I think we could’ve got the puck to the net a little bit more but it’s a grindy game. It was one of those games. I don’t think we gave them a lot but, when we did, Demmer was there. He made some great saves for us. In an 82-game schedule, you’re going to have these games where you have to grind it and find a way to win.”
