Three wins in a row is officially a streak.
That’s great for the Vancouver Canucks but I’d like to take a minute (just sit right there) to talk about Quinn Hughes. Do you have time to talk about the Canucks’ saviour, Quinn Hughes? It will only take a moment.
With an assist on both of the Canucks’ goals that were scored on a goaltender on Wednesday night, Hughes took over sole possession of the scoring race among defencemen in the NHL. He currently has 14 goals and 58 points in 46 games — two more points than Cale Makar in six fewer games.
His 1.26 points per game is good for ninth in NHL scoring and he’s on pace for 24 goals and 99 points, which would be the second most points by an NHL defenceman since Brian Leetch in 1992, behind only Erik Karlsson’s 101 points two seasons ago. Given the way Hughes is producing right now, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him pass Karlsson.
Notably, Karlsson had that season on a San Jose Sharks team that finished 35 points out of the playoffs and essentially only existed that season to get Karlsson over the 100-point mark. Hughes is doing it while dragging a dysfunctional team kicking and screaming into a playoff position.
Every single opposing team knows that the key to shutting the entire Canucks team down is to neutralize Hughes; they can’t do it.
The next highest scorer on the Canucks, J.T. Miller, has 23 fewer points than Hughes. Heck, Hughes is just three goals away from being the Canucks’ leading goalscorer too.
To top it off, Hughes has been carrying the Canucks on his back for the past three weeks while playing through a very obvious hand injury, which has been hard to miss given the large bandage/brace he’s wearing on his left hand.
Since returning from that injury on January 6, Hughes has 16 points in 12 games (a stat that would be even more impressive if I included the five points he had in the two previous games). The Canucks have scored 27 goals in those 12 games; of those 27 goals, Hughes was on the ice for 20 of them.
Look at it this way: in the Canucks’ three-game winning streak, Hughes has been on the ice for all but three of the Canucks’ 10 goals. Two of those three goals were into an empty net and the third was shorthanded.
Hughes is clearly the straw that stirs the Canucks drink but he’s also the glass, the ice cubes, and most of the ingredients for the drink itself — the expensive and exotic ones. The rest of the Canucks are the mixers. Maybe Tyler Myers is the muddler.
I got drunk on Quinn Hughes when I watched this game.
- It was perhaps a bit surprising that Thatcher Demko got the start over Kevin Lankinen in this game, not only because Lankinen was so good in the first two wins of this mini streak but also because this was Lankinen’s only chance to play in Nashville this season and face his former team. It’s hard to argue with the decision, however, when Demko had his best game of the season, making 31 saves on 32 shots.
- “I kind of needed that one,” said Demko. “It felt good to be on the winning side here and feel like myself a little bit again.”
- Lankinen did get a lovely tribute on the jumbotron midway during a commercial break in the first period. The best part was when the camera zoomed in on Lankinen sitting in the tunnel behind his Canucks teammates (because Bridgestone Arena doesn’t have enough room on the bench for the backup) and Lankinen raised his glove and gave the most adorable little wave.
- One game removed from his lowest ice time of the season, Elias Pettersson led all Canucks forwards in ice time on Wednesday night, playing 18:42. That’s in spite of his two wingers having the lowest ice time at 10:34 and 10:22. Pettersson deservedly got some extra shifts with other wingers, as he was one of the Canucks’ best players, though he did go a brutal 1-for-9 in the faceoff circle.
- Pettersson’s line with Nils Höglander and Linus Karlsson provided all of the non-empty-net scoring for the Canucks on Wednesday and they were the only Canucks line that did not get outshot by the Predators when they were on the ice. I wouldn’t give them a line nickname just yet (looking at you, people who were calling them the Swedish House Mafia on social media) but it was a nice night for that line.
- “It was nice to see Höggy [score]. Great shot. I thought he had some jump tonight,” said Rick Tocchet. “Obviously, Karly, that’s where he’s good: around the net. It’s nice to see that line producing for us.”
- The opening goal started with a shot block by Pettersson — one of two in the game, bringing him to 57 on the season, which ranks sixth in the NHL amongst forwards. He broke the other way for a 3-on-2 with Hughes and Karlsson, with Höglander joining the rush from off the bench to make it a 4-on-2. Pettersson delayed at the line and passed to Hughes, who found the trailing Höglander. He faked a shot to send Roman Josi sprawling to the ice like he was playing QWOP, then ripped a wrist shot past Karlsson’s screen to beat Juuse Saros.
- Höglander seemed pretty pumped to score, which makes sense given it’s just his fourth goal of the season. He screamed a celebratory “Woo!” right in the face of Steven Stamkos, who seemed somewhat taken aback.
- The Canucks didn’t get to enjoy the lead for long. Danton Heinen had a golden opportunity to extend the lead a minute later on the doorstep, but Saros stole it away with the right pad. Then Carson Soucy got caught deep in the zone and couldn’t knock down a clearing attempt, giving up a 2-on-1 behind him. Zachary L’Heureux forced Demko to give up a big rebound and it banked in off Tommy Novak’s trailing skate to tie the game.
- Heinen hasn’t lived up to expectations this season but he showed some flashes against the Predators that suggest he’s getting his game together. One of them was this excellent cross-ice pass to Tyler Myers for a grade-A scoring chance. It was a nice sequence for Myers too, as he protected the puck down low, chipped it free for Hughes, then galloped up the ice to create an odd-man rush.
- That last bullet point forced me to google whether giraffes gallop. They, in fact, do gallop. I assumed as much but animals are weird and you never know if they have some other method of locomotion. Maybe they tuck their necks between their legs and bite onto their tails to form a giant wheel to roll everywhere. You never know!
- You never want to laugh at someone’s pain but sometimes they make that pain look so comedic that it’s hard to avoid. Case in point: when Gustav Nyquist took a puck to the left arm and was in a great deal of discomfort on the bench, he appeared to misinterpret one of his Gen Z teammates telling him to “Touch grass” and decided to punch glass instead.
- It wasn’t just that he punched the glass, possibly startling Predators colour commentator Chris Mason between the benches, it’s that he paused mid-punch, as if considering whether he really wanted to do it, then decided, yeah, he really wanted to do it. That he also knocked over a bunch of stuff on the other side provided the perfect button to the scene.
- The Canucks only had three shots in the second period but the first came at the end of a dominant shift by Hughes, Myers, and the Pettersson line. They hemmed the Predators in and tired them out, allowing Myers to jump up the left side to take a pass from Hughes without fear of the Predators counter-attacking the other way. Karlsson smartly rotated off his man in front of the net and found space at the backdoor and Myers found him with a perfect pass, giving Karlsson a tap-in for his first NHL goal.
- “It was cool. I’ve waited for that one,” said Karlsson. “It was a great pass by Mysie and it was so nice to see it go in.”
- Likely because of Mason’s hot mic between the benches, you could hear some running commentary from the Canucks bench on the Nashville broadcast prior to the goal. Someone (possibly J.T. Miller?) said, “Yeah, get him: 36 is dead,” referring to Cole Smith, who had been on the ice since puck drop in the second period for a 1:28 shift before the goal. Then, when it looked like Myers was about to shoot from a bad angle, the same person (still sounds like Miller) said, “No, no,” and Conor Garland chimed in with, “Back up top!” before Myers’ perfect backdoor pass. Good thing Myers ignored them.
- “Karly works really hard,” said Demko. “He’s a guy that deserves it, so everyone’s happy for him. You see guys get their first and how excited they are and you think back to when you were in that position and playing your first games and getting your first accolades. Really special moment for him.”
- While the Canucks did well to get the 2-1 lead, they then sat back far too much to defend it, which is something Tocchet has railed against recently, saying he still wants to see his team attack up ice with the lead and force opponents on their heels. The Canucks had 13 shots in the first period, then just nine the rest of the game.
- “Now we’ve got to do it for three periods,” said Tocchet about how they attacked in the first period. “Not to be picky but we don’t want to back off. You still want to attack the interior, you still want to make a play inside. But one inch at a time.”
- The Canucks might have been able to get a few more shots and shift the momentum back their way if the officials hadn’t missed a couple of blatant high sticks. Soucy even had to leave the game for repairs, missing nine minutes of action, after he took a stick to the chops from Smith. Tocchet was incredulous on the bench and, like a severed employee of Lumon, he gave the officials a piece of his mind.
- John Shorthouse and Dave Tomlinson poked some fun at that moment shortly after. Shorty said a Canuck player sent a puck “just over the head of the ducking linesman.” “I beg your pardon?” Tomlinson replied, suggesting Shorty had dropped an F-bomb on the air. “Ducking,” replied a deadpan Shorty. “Getting his head out of the way. He was called something else in the last commercial break."
- Sometimes I reach to make something in a Canucks game funny. And sometimes Miller just skates right into a referee’s hand, which is funny all on its own.
- This just wasn’t Miller’s night. He was mostly fine but then had a couple of bad turnovers in the third period as the Canucks were trying to defend the lead. One on the power play gave Nyquist a shorthanded breakaway that Demko had to stop, then, with a minute left, put a puck right on Stamkos’s stick in the defensive zone. He was very fortunate not to be the goat in this game.
- Fortunately for the Canucks, the Predators sabotaged themselves, as Filip Forsberg took one of the most laughably obvious goaltender interference penalties of all time. It’s often a bit unclear exactly what constitutes goaltender interference but this — this was definitely goaltender interference.
- The best part is that Forsberg actually complained about the call, as if he didn’t just try to pole vault over Demko and landed directly on top of him. You were caught red-handed, Forsberg, and the Shaggy defence doesn’t even work in the song, let alone in real life.
- Miller made up for his earlier turnovers with a clutch faceoff win in the final minute, leading to Derek Forbort ringing the puck around the boards, where it popped out to Pius Suter, who hit the empty net from distance to seal the game away. It was a big faceoff win especially considering it was against Ryan O’Reilly, who dominated the Canucks on draws all night, going 17-for-23.
