British Columbia had a delight on Saturday, with Hockey Day in Canada in Victoria and a back-and-forth goals fest in Vancouver between the Canucks and Maple Leafs.

VANCOUVER - You know the history.

No Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't hoisted the chalice since 1967, when the league had just six teams. And the Vancouver Canucks are still waiting for their first championship, 54 years into their existence.

During the season, the Cup regularly makes special appearances at major events. On Saturday, it was in Victoria, B.C., for the 2024 installment of Hockey Day in Canada. Ninety-nine years ago, in 1925, the Victoria Cougars earned the trophy by beating the Montreal Canadiens in a best-of-five series. It's the last time the Stanley Cup was awarded to a team outside the NHL.

Seventy miles northeast of the Cup's location on Saturday, the Leafs made their lone visit of the year to Vancouver.

After finally reaching the second round of the post-season last spring, the Leafs are struggling to take another step forward. Toronto is in the midst of a four-in-six trip through Western Canada and snapped a four-game losing streak with a 4-3 win in Calgary on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Canucks have surged to the top of the NHL standings. They came into Saturday's game riding a 7-0-1 point streak and boasting a home-ice record of 15-4-1 that's one of the best in the league. 

With a massive fan base spread across the country, the Leafs are a big draw when they come to Western Canada. In Vancouver, that leads to plenty of duelling cheers and chants, which makes for a raucous atmosphere.

On Saturday, Toronto's supporters were silenced early as the Canucks surged out to a 3-0 first-period lead. Nils Hoglander's 13th and 14th goals of the year had him on hat-trick watch by the six-minute mark of the first before the Leafs were credited with a single shot on goal. Conor Garland extended the advantage with his seventh of the year.

"We just didn't start at a good pace," said Mitch Marner after the game. "They obviously did."

But the Leafs began to chip away. They outshot Vancouver 18-6 in the middle frame and tied the game with three goals in a span of 3:26 — a pair of long-range tallies by William Nylander from opposite sides of the ice bookending Jake McCabe's third of the year.

"I knew (Marner) knew I was coming on the back side," McCabe said. "So I just put my stick on the ice."

Just like that, the "Go Leafs Go" chants were back and louder than ever.

The Canucks were briefly on their heels. But they re-took the lead with a minute to go in the second, when Garland finished off a speedy, hard-working shift with his linemates Dakota Joshua and Teddy Blueger.

"They're a system line," said Canucks coach Rick Tocchet. "They're in the spots that we want them to be in and they're getting rewarded."

Usually dangerous with the man advantage, Toronto had scored just one power-play goal in its last five games heading into Saturday. The Leafs went 0-for-2 in the first two periods, but when Vancouver got its first power-play of the game early in the third, Marner re-tied the game at 4-4 when he picked off a pass attempt to create a shorthanded breakaway.

Maybe that emboldened the Leafs to keep taking penalties. The game was hard-hitting, and players were emotionally engaged throughout. Vancouver's big defensemen Filip Hronek, Tyler Myers and Nikita Zadorov made life difficult for their opponents, and even unlikely participants like Morgan Rielly and Pius Suter found themselves in the midst of the mayhem on more than one occasion. 

But while the Leafs had done a good job of containing the Canucks' dangerous 'Lotto Line' of Brock Boeser, J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson at 5-on-5, they weren't as fortunate while shorthanded during the third. With Max Domi in the box for cross-checking Boeser, Miller deflected a Quinn Hughes shot past Jones for what proved to be the game-winner at 7:11 of the third. Less than three minutes later, Mark Giordano cross-checked Suter in the slot, and this time, it was Pettersson with the tip of a Miller shot, with Hughes drawing the second assist at 10:42. 

To their credit, the Leafs kept the pressure on. And the Canucks took more penalties of their own, to the point where the final 27 seconds of the game were played 6-on-3 with Martin Jones on the Toronto bench. 

"Sometimes those last two minutes feel like they're an eternity," said Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko, who finished with a season-high 42 saves. "It's a great job by the guys in front of me, limiting their scoring chances and letting me make some pretty easy reads."

Tocchet commended his group for keeping its cool.

"I thought a key moment, after Marner made that great shorthanded goal, I liked the calmness of 'Millsy,' " Tocchet said. "They said, 'OK, we got it, we got it.' And they got it.

"There wasn't a lot of panic, so I give them a lot of credit for not getting pissed off, and then getting frustrated."

On the other side, Sheldon Keefe commended his group for parts of its game, including outshooting Vancouver 46-21. But the lapses on the penalty kill were "little details that cost you games," he said.

In the end, Keefe's main takeaway was simple. "Zero points."

Now sitting in the first wild-card spot in the East, Toronto's road trip concludes in Seattle on Sunday. The Canucks will continue their homestand against the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday.

In the end, hockey fans learned one key thing on Saturday. If, somehow, these two squads manage to meet up in June in the first all-Canadian Stanley Cup final since the Calgary Flames vanquished the Canadiens back in 1989, they should prepare to be entertained.