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Loui Eriksson’s first season with the Vancouver Canucks can pretty much be summed up by an unfortunate sequence in the first period of his first game.

The effort was there. The results? Not so much.

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Fresh off signing a six-year, US$36-million free-agent deal in July 2016, the veteran winger was protecting the puck from four Calgary Flames on a delayed penalty in Vancouver’s opener when he threw a blind pass from centre ice back towards the Canucks’ zone.

Eriksson was expecting a teammate to be there. None were, and with goalie Ryan Miller at the bench for an extra attacker, disaster struck as the frozen disc slid into the vacant net for an agonizing own goal in front of the home fans.

“As soon as I put it up there I saw it was an empty net and I was like, ‘What is going on here?”‘ Eriksson said after the game. “It slowly just glided in.”

Vancouver came back to win that night in a shootout to save Eriksson further embarrassment — he actually assisted on the tying goal late in the third period — but the season was, for both the player and his team, a dud.