There’s nothing like a road trip early in the season to get a season on the right track.
Last season, as much as the Canucks kicked off the season with a dominant win over the Edmonton Oilers, things started to go awry in their next few games. Fortunately, on a road trip that travelled through Florida and Philadelphia, the Canucks got their act together and honed in on the style of play that carried them to the top of the Pacific Division.
This season, things got off on a sour note, as the Canucks dropped their first three games. Fortunately, on a road trip that travelled through Florida and Philadelphia, the Canucks seem to have sweetened the sourness and will return home on a three-game winning streak, evening out their wins and losses.
The Canucks capped off their road trip and streak with a dominant win over Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks, aka. Mostly Just Connor Bedard.
Like in their first game of the season, the Canucks scored four goals in the first period. Unlike in their first game, the Canucks didn’t let up the rest of the way and cruised to a comfortable win.
You know what that is? Growth.
It wasn’t a perfect game, mind you. The Canucks still got a little loose with the details at times and gave up some dangerous chances in the middle of the ice.
“I don’t think we were as good as we were in Philly. Philly was a good game for us,” said Conor Garland. “Tonight, we were pretty sloppy, so we’ve got to get back to playing our style. But when you can win in this league, you take it. It’s a hard league to win in, so it’s good execution tonight but we’ve got to find our game a little bit.”
So yes, there were lessons to learn and still more room to grow, which is a good thing. And it’s always better to learn those lessons while also putting some points on the board.
“It’s nice because we’re not playing up to our standard right now and we’re coming up with wins,” said J.T. Miller. “It was a hard road trip but it was good for the guys to get together. I think we’re all itching to get back home. We’ve got a little bit of time before the next game to regroup and go over some stuff.”
I also had a little bit of time to regroup and go over some stuff — stuff that I will tell you all about — after I watched this game.
- The Canucks got off to a stupendous start, scoring just 21 seconds into the game as the third line went to work. Kiefer Sherwood and Danton Heinen pressured on the boards to force a turnover to Filip Hronek, who whipped the puck down low to Sherwood. He made a sick slip pass to Teddy Blueger, who provided the “tac” in the tic-tac-toe, and sent the puck back to Heinen, who beat the scrambling Petr Mrazek for his first as a Canuck.
- I just want to take a moment and appreciate the absurdity of Teddy Blueger deciding against shooting the puck. Seriously, look at how much net he had available. It’s literally the entire net. 99% of the time, Blueger passing instead of shooting in this situation would be a horrible mistake. This was the 1% of the time where it was still a horrible mistake but it worked out and looked really cool.
- “Great job by Teddy’s line tonight,” said Garland. “Probably our best line by a mile…they got us started and carried it throughout the rest of the 60 — they played really well for us tonight.”
- J.T. Miller was a game-time decision for the Canucks and, when it was time to decide, Miller was in the game. Though he was in the game, he wasn’t in the faceoff circle. Brock Boeser took the bulk of the faceoffs for that line, including the one right after Heinen’s goal. It’s a good thing Miller was in the game, though: he had a three-point night.
- If Miller can’t take faceoffs for a bit, the Canucks are going to have to figure something out. They went 8-for-22 in the defensive zone, which didn’t hurt them against a rebuilding team like the Blackhawks but could come back to bite them against a team that can actually take advantage after winning a faceoff in the Canucks’ end of the ice.
- Conor Garland got bumped up to the first power play unit in place of Jake DeBrusk and it’s probably not a good thing for DeBrusk how much better the power play immediately looked. After several games of struggling to gain the offensive zone and get set up, the power play looked significantly more dangerous and went 2-for-3, with Garland picking up an assist. The shark-loving winger is transitioning from a secondary scorer to a primary scorer early in the season.
- Garland’s puck protection on the boards kept the play alive that led to the Canucks’ first power play goal. He moved the puck up to Quinn Hughes, who played catch with J.T. Miller before firing a shot that tipped off Mrazek’s glove as Elias Pettersson cut in front as the screen The puck banked off the end boards to Miller at the side of the net and, like someone who has never hammered a nail before, Miller put it in at a terrible angle.
- The Canucks’ messy defensive coverage reared its ugly head a few minutes later as the Blackhawks got on the board, with almost everyone at fault. Tyler Myers and Carson Soucy both got caught below the goal line, Jake DeBrusk blindly followed his man to the point, skating right out of the slot where the goal was scored, and J.T. Miller, covering for DeBrusk, got caught puck-watching and didn’t spot Ryan Donato sneaking in. Boeser gets a pass — he just stayed on his check as he pinched down the boards until Myers threw an unnecessary hit on the guy he was already checking.
- Heinen quickly restored the two-goal lead with his second goal of the period. Once again, Sherwood crashed in on the forecheck to create a turnover, then relayed the puck to Hronek at the point. Hronek spotted Heinen heading to the backdoor and fired a hard pass that tipped off Alex Vlasic’s stick, then went in off Heinen’s skate in a motion that didn’t resemble kicking in any way, shape, or form.
- The Blackhawks challenged the goal for offside and, at first, it looked like they had a case. The puck did come out over the blue line while Sherwood was in the Blackhawks’ zone but what they missed — and what John Shorthouse immediately spotted on the Sportsnet broadcast — is that Sherwood tagged up. Sherwood played the puck back into the offensive zone but then didn’t touch it inside the zone until his skate had touched the blue line, putting himself back onside. Turns out that Sherwood has brains to go with his brawn.
- Of course, Sherwood still has plenty of brawn. His 12 hits in this game — a new career high — tied Luke Schenn’s franchise record for the most hits in one game by a Canuck. He had 10 and 9 hits in his previous two games and now has a whopping 44 hits through six games, easily leading the league. He’s on pace for 601 hits, which would obliterate the NHL record of 383 hits in a single season.
- A Tyler Myers gaffe gifted Taylor Hall a goal, as the behemothian defenceman overskated a bouncing puck in the defensive zone. Hall was all over the loose puck like curly hair on Kenny G’s head and sniped it past Kevin Lankinen’s glove as smoothly as a soprano saxophone solo.
- The following should be read sotto voce, so as to not cause a panic: Tyler Myers and Carson Soucy have been really, really bad to start the season, but it’s still very early, so it’s probably going to be fine, right? They’ll be fine. Tell me they’ll be fine. The Canucks very badly need them to be fine.
- Once again, the Canucks quickly restored the two-goal lead. Garland got the puck in deep, then Pettersson moved it to Quinn Hughes at the point. His shot was tipped on net by Miller, then a Pettersson made like Kim Kardashian and crashed the net, shoveling the rebound to Garland for the open net while being tripped by Seth Jones.
- The goal came with a pinch of controversy — a soupçon of scandal. Just before the goal, the Canucks had six skaters on the ice. In fact, on the subsequent line change to fix the situation, they temporarily had seven. I blame the proliferation of images made using generative AI, confusing people as to how many fingers should be on a human hand — obviously, NHL referees have to count using their fingers, everyone knows that.
- The real key to winning this game was shutting down Conor Bedard, a task that fell to Elias Pettersson and his linemates, who were hard-matched against the Vancouver wunderkind. Pettersson handily won the match-up at 5-on-5, with the Canucks out-shooting and out-scoring the Blackhawks. Pettersson even helped shutdown Bedard on the penalty kill, picking off a centring pass to save a goal and then, when Tyler Myers failed to clear (sigh), playing the body on Bedard to keep him to the outside.
- Kevin Lankinen had a strong game despite giving up three goals. He still made 31 saves and came up with some big stops in the second half of the game. His best came on a Blackhawks power play, as Craig Smith found a soft spot in the Canucks’ penalty kill coverage for a grade-A chance. Lankinen made like Jacob Trouba and threw an elbow at the puck’s head to turn it aside.
- “[Lankinen] says he likes the system but we’re not there quite yet — we’re giving up too much stuff in the middle,” said Tocchet. “But he’s an unflappable guy.”
- There was a neat moment on the Canucks’ penalty kill where Vincent Desharnais broke his stick. Typically, a forward will hand the defenceman a stick — tying up sticks in front and clearing rebounds is pretty important — but when Pius Suter offered his stick to Desharnais, the big defenceman shouted, “No, keep it, keep it!” Desharnais seemed to realize that Suter was covering Bedard; Suter keeping his stick to take away Bedard’s passing and shooting lanes was far more important.
- The Canucks padded their lead in the third period, first with a power play goal on a neat play at the point. Miller skated out of the zone to curl overtop of Hughes, who dropped the puck at the blue line for him. The rotation opened up a massive passing lane to Boeser in the slot, who redirected Miller’s hard pass into the net past Pettersson’s screen in front. Mrazek never even saw the puck leave Miller’s stick.
- The saying, “Act like you’ve been there before” — a quote attributed to legendary football coach Vince Lombardi — means to not overly celebrate after scoring a goal, as if it’s the only one you have ever and will ever score. It does not, Brock Boeser, mean you should fully dissociate and lose conscious connection with the waking world.
- Like a lot of food in Hell’s Kitchen, the Canucks weren’t done and had to keep cooking. Less than a minute later, Nils Åman won a faceoff back to Erik Brännström and his point shot hit Andreas Athanasiou and bounced straight to Pius Suter for an open net. That’s Brännström’s first point as a Canuck, potentially the first of many given how he’s trending.
- “I thought this was [Brännström’s] best game,” said Tocchet. “I thought he distributed the puck well, he was really good — he skated the puck out. A couple of nice passes. I was pleased with his game tonight, especially on the breakouts.”
- After a very soft slashing call on Filip Hronek on a penalty kill gifted the Blackhawks a 5-on-3, Tyler Bertuzzi found the back of the net to make the score look a little more respectable for the Blackhawks. But even though it was a weak call on Hronek, in fairness, the refs missed the too many men on the ice call on Garland’s goal, so it all evens out.
- One of the nice things about keeping and holding a multi-goal lead for most of the game is that Rick Tocchet and Adam Foote were able to spread the minutes around. For the first time all season, Hughes finished with fewer than 20 minutes, playing 19:45. Considering he was averaging over 26 minutes per game before this, 19:45 is like a mini vacation for Hughes.
- Hughes was utterly dominant in those minutes, incidentally. When Hughes was on the ice at 5-on-5, the Canucks out-attempted the Blackhawks 23-to-9, out-shot them 14-to-4, and out-scored them 3-to-0. Since Hughes also assisted on both of the Canucks’ power play goals, that means he was on the ice for 5 of the Canucks’ 6 goals and wasn’t on the ice for any goals against.
- “Hughes is the type of kid where he’s chasing perfection, right?” said Tocchet. “I don’t think he ever sits back. He’s thinking, “Teams are going to gameplan, so what do I do if they do this?” That’s how he thinks. We actually talk about that, like, if a team’s going to be high on him, what’s the next play? He’s chasing perfection.”
