It’s hard to know how a team will react after they’ve been eliminated from playoff contention.
Except, in the case of the Vancouver Canucks, we know exactly how they will perform: they’ll suddenly become of the best teams in the NHL.
As pointed out by @Hamalytics on Twitter, the Canucks are 16-9-5 since 2017-18 after being officially eliminated from the playoffs. That’s a 101-point pace over a full 82-game schedule, which would be tied for the seventh-best season ever in franchise history.
If only the Canucks could capture a little bit of that post-elimination performance the rest of the season.
This season, at least, the Canucks can’t do too much damage to their draft position by going on a late-season run. They’re pretty much guaranteed to be picking somewhere in the 14-16 range in the first round. So, why not win a few more games?
“We don’t want to take a single game in this league for granted,” said Kevin Lankinen to the Canucks’ Olivia McDonald. “I think it’s a great opportunity to grow and keep building here.”
The Canucks, at least, still believe they have something to play for, whether it’s personal pride, the love of the game, or, especially for the younger players, proving to the team’s leadership that they have what it takes to become part of the team’s core.
“I keep saying, there’s a lot of people watching us,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “The effort’s there — continue to give the effort. I try to play some guys in certain situations. The guys that have played well for me, I think they deserve to keep playing too. There’s some guys that can get 20 goals, which is nice.”
Whatever the motivating factor, the Canucks gave everything they had on Thursday night against the Colorado Avalanche, a team with 100 points and Stanley Cup aspirations. The Canucks were the better team, as they have been all season against the Avalanche, sweeping the season series 3-0-0 while outscoring them 10-to-2.
If only the Canucks could have played the Avalanche all 82 games of this season.
But alas, they only played the Avalanche three times, the third time being when I watched this game.
- The first period was extremely uneventful, so please forgive me for jumping straight ahead to the second period. In fact, the first period was so uneventful that the uneventfulness itself was almost an event. But Kevin Lankinen did make a couple of decent saves, so those almost events prevented the first period from being an event, if you follow my meaning.
- It is on the record that I picked Kiefer Sherwood as my breakout candidate for this season, so it’s been particularly rewarding to see him excel all year. He had a fantastic game with a goal and an assist but, shockingly, he didn’t record a single hit. It’s not just the first time all season he’s had a game with zero hits; it’s the first game with fewer than two hits.
- Sherwood helped the Canucks open the scoring off the rush. He burst up the left wing and toe-dragged around Sam Girard before slipping the puck to the front of the net on the backhand. The backchecking Sam Malinski got inside position on Jake DeBrusk, but DeBrusk still got his stick on the puck. He didn’t so much shoot the puck as stab it, jabbing at the puck toe-first to chip it over Mackenzie Blackwood.
- Three minutes later, Sherwood made it 2-0 for the Canucks. Derek Forbort fired the puck around the boards and got a friendly bounce to spring Sherwood and Dakota Joshua on the rush. Joshua snuck the puck through to Sherwood and he sent a bullet by Blackwood with the quickest release since Trevor Milton.
- Sherwood’s shot was very impressive but the work of Aatu Räty on the goal should not be overlooked. He not only won the faceoff in the defensive zone after an icing — he went 10-and-5 on draws overall — but he also hit the NOS to accelerate up the ice and turn the rush into a 3-on-2. His drive to the far post forced Cale Makar to respect the possibility of the pass, which gave Sherwood some extra space to get his shot away.
- The Avalanche got one back before the end of the second. For some reason, defenceman Devon Toews ended up as the net-front presence during a shift, battling with Victor Mancini. Toews picked the right time to disengage from the battle and pop into the slot, freeing him up to tip a Charlie Coyle point shot past Kevin Lankinen.
- That’s Toews’ second goal on a tip this season. Just 20 defencemen have scored a goal on a tip this season and Toews is the only defenceman who’s done it twice.
- Joshua added a goal to go with his assist to make it 3-1 in the third period. Räty once again won a faceoff, this time in the offensive zone, and Sherwood relayed the puck back to Filip Hronek. The defenceman set up Marcus Pettersson for a one-timer that Räty tipped in front, forcing Blackwood to give up a rebound. Joshua outmuscled Toews to get to the loose puck and smacked it into the net.
- It was a strong performance for the line of Joshua, Räty, and Sherwood, who have shown some chemistry down the stretch. It’s a particularly good sign for Räty, who will be looking to make the Canucks out of camp next season, but it’s also a nice boost for Joshua, whose season didn’t go as planned for reasons entirely out of his control.
- “I thought that line was really good,” said Tocchet. “They’ve been really consistent the last bunch of games I played them together. This is big for Dakota. I think he can have some strong games down the stretch, give him some confidence going into the summer, work on some things, and mentally for him too, recharge himself again. Because when he plays like that, he’s a difference-maker.”
- That might have been Elias “Junior” Pettersson’s best game and not because he dropped the gloves with Logan O’Connor. Shot attempts were 14-to-7 for the Canucks when Pettersson was on the ice at 5-on-5, as his mobility and physicality made the middle of the ice a no-go zone for the Avalanche.
- Pettersson’s physicality is what led to the fight. He rode O’Connor into the boards and pinned him there, then unceremoniously dumped O’Connor to the ice in the slot. When O’Connor threw a gloved punch at his face, Pettersson didn’t hesitate, dropping the gloves and chucking knuckles with wild abandon. Like getting help from a ghost while playing pinball, it was a spirited tilt.
- “He’s been looking for it for a little bit,” said Sherwood of Pettersson’s fight. “We kind of talked about it last night, actually. I thought he looked like Mike Tyson: just throwing them and taking them and throwing them more. I’m sure he’s going to have to brush up on some technique but it was great. He plays a hard game and it’s probably the first of many because he’s going to get under guys’ skin a lot with his physicality.”
- Nils Höglander added an empty-net goal to give the Canucks a three-goal lead with two minutes remaining. Hronek chipped the puck out into the neutral zone to Conor Garland, but the puck rolled on him as he tried to shoot and went wide. Fortunately, it caromed off the boards and Höglander tucked it just inside the post.
- Kevin Lankinen had an outstanding game, making 31 saves on 32 shots, including some real dandies. When the Avalanche pushed hard in the third period with 15 shots, Lankinen stopped them all, whether they were from point-blank range or off cross-seam passes, ensuring that the Canucks held onto their lead. There’s some irony to the fact that Lankinen’s best save came in the final seconds when the game was entirely out of reach.
- Lankinen saw Artturi Lehkonen on the other team and said, “No, you will not score today.” His countryman with the extremely similar name hasn’t scored in 15 games and seemed like he was desperate to end his slump, but Lankinen wouldn't let one in for Lehkonen, stopping all four of his shots on goal, with the best coming with 20 seconds remaining. The Avalanche pulled Blackwood to go 6-on-4 on a late power play and Martin Necas set up Lehkonen at the backdoor for what the French call le tap-in but Lankinen stretched across his left pad to make the save.
- At the very least, maybe the Canucks can rattle the confidence of a couple of rivals ahead of the playoffs. This Avalanche team certainly didn’t look like a contender on Thursday night. Yes, okay, they were missing Nathan MacKinnon, who sat out to recover from a minor injury ahead of the playoffs, but MacKinnon doesn’t make that big of a difference, does he? *checks the statistics with and without MacKinnon* Okay, so maybe he does.
