If you’re going to lose by four goals to the fourth-worst team in the National Hockey League, you may as well have your fourth-liner bust a slump a few seconds after throwing the biggest hit of the game on the referee.

Please, just allow us a little mirth. 

We are 72 games into what has a chance to be the Vancouver Canucks’ worst season in 50 years, the final stretch of which has become as bleak as Minsk in winter, and we can all use a little laugh. So thank goodness for Nils Hoglander.

The struggling Canuck, in and out of his last-place team’s lineup and with just one goal in 3 ½ months since returning from ankle surgery, beautifully redirected Victor Mancini’s shot-pass at 12:40 of the third period in Calgary after running over referee Graham Skilliter when the official got in the way of a forecheck.

The goal didn’t help the Canucks much, cutting their deficit to three in a game they lost 7-3 to the Calgary Flames, but it could help Hoglander, whose confidence has been shredded by his ordeal this season.

That’s something, at least.

Overall, as four-goal losses go — for which the Canucks have provided a decent sample size this season — Saturday’s latest Hockey-Night-in-Canada humiliation was actually not nearly as bad as it appeared on the scoreboard.

The Canucks outshot........

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