Canucks won last night, but that’s not worth celebrating

The Canucks returned to the ice last night, beating the Toronto Maple Leafs in overtime, 4-3. Which resulted in a predictable reaction from the hockey press:

The context of this shouldn’t be that the Canucks pulled off some heroic feat, or overcame some incredible odds. Though what their players did is impressive. The narrative should be why they were put in this position at all. The NHL is counting on people who should be something resembling their watchers to run this heroic storyline to gloss over the fact that Vancouver shouldn’t have been playing for at least another week or two and were only doing so last night so the NHL could still claim they got every game in on the schedule.

What happens from here is that the initial adrenaline of being back on the ice wears off a bit, and the Canucks spend the next couple weeks getting their asses handed to them. Except the various scribes are still focused on their “courageous” return from COVID, the long-term effects of which we still have no idea. It’s all ok because they beat the Leafs that one time, don’t you remember?