The Vancouver Canucks’ best players went from playing like they were already at the All-Star Game to playing like All-Stars.
In the first two periods of Saturday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Canucks’ five All-Stars simply weren’t good enough. The second period was particularly egregious, as they were all too casual and lackadaisical, with far too many turnovers. They were skating with the same intensity that fans will likely see in the 3-on-3 All-Star tournament in a week.
The poor effort saw the Canucks down by three goals going into the third period. The Canucks have a sterling 29-0-1 record when leading after two periods but their record when trailing wasn’t quite so shiny: they were 1-7-1 when trailing after two periods, coming back to win just one of those games.
Of course, that’s a pretty positive statistic: they’ve led going into the third period 30 times and trailed just 10 times after Saturday night’s game.
The Canucks’ All-Stars came alive in the third period, coming up with three goals in the third period to tie the game and then one more in overtime to complete the comeback, while Thatcher Demko shut the door to keep the Blue Jackets off the board. They looked like a completely different team — a team deserving of having five All-Stars.
It was a win that came with a wake-up call.
“We played probably two good periods today,” said J.T. Miller. “Obviously, I was a lot to blame there, but that second period we just turned the puck over way too much and got away from our game.”
According to head coach Rick Tocchet, his team’s main issue was trying to do too much. While I’m less certain — it seemed like they fell asleep and weren’t trying to do enough — but it’s a fair point when it comes to some of the team’s turnovers, where the Canucks were often guilty of trying to force a play that wasn’t there.
“You don’t have to hit a home run every shift. When we got to 2-1, we were looking for home runs instead of just letting the game [come to us],” said Tocchet. “If you can’t hit a home run, sometimes you just have to let the play happen. We learned a valuable lesson with winning, which is great.”
The win also sends the Canucks into the All-Star break on a high note, still in first place in the NHL with a 33-11-5 record. They’re four points up on the next-best team in the Western Conference and seven points up on the next-best team in the Pacific Division.
Most importantly, Brock Boeser scored a hat trick to finally reach the 30-goal mark that has been so elusive in his career. He came one goal short in his rookie season, but now has set a new career high with 33 games still remaining in the regular season. He’s on pace for 50 goals
I’m convinced he’ll make it. Why? I watched this game.
- The Canucks did a lot of things right in the first period but, when they couldn’t hit the net on their best scoring chances, it raised some red flags. You need to make hay while the sun shines, as they say, and when the Canucks didn’t turn their lopsided sun surplus into a lopsided hay surplus, you could practically see the team’s second-period hay surminus coming.
- “I really liked our game to start. We missed a lot of nets,” said Tocchet. “I thought we could’ve came out of the first with a couple goal lead.”
- I thought Nikita Zadorov was a lot better in this game because his physicality was more contained, even if he did take an undisciplined penalty. He wasn’t throwing hits just to throw hits but was more purposeful when he played the body, such as this great open-ice hit on Jack Roslovic where he led with his stick first to separate the puck, then sent Roslovic flying like Gimli.
- Noah “Run The Juuls” Juulsen had a fantastic game, throwing both big hits and heads-up outlet passes. Shots on goal were 12-to-3 for the Canucks when he was on the ice at 5-on-5 and he played a big role on the Canucks’ excellent penalty kill. He even kept the first period from being a disaster when he picked off a backdoor pass with his broken shot-blocker dangling from his skate, then calmly sprung the breakout to get everyone a line change after a long shift.
- “He’s one of Footey’s favourites, because he listens to Footey, he’s a sponge,” said Tocchet of Juulsen. “You tell him to do something and he does it…He was terrific tonight.”
- The second period could have gone very differently if Miller had finished on one of Juulsen’s excellent passes, which is not a sentence I expected to be writing earlier this season. Juulsen slipped a perfect pass through the neutral zone to hit Miller in full flight and send him in on a 2-on-1 but Miller missed the net on the short side instead of trying to pass to Brock Boeser.
- Special teams played a major role in the Canucks’ comeback but it first played a major role in giving the Canucks a deficit from which to come back. The Blue Jackets opened the scoring with a shorthanded goal after Elias Pettersson tried to force a pass and turned the puck over. Alexandre Texier bolted the other way for a 2-on-1 and fired a wristshot past Thatcher Demko’s glove.
- Like an excitable jack russell terrier on a retractable leash, the Blue Jackets quickly extended their lead. Teddy Blueger got caught puck-watching instead of taking his man and ended up getting neither of them, as Texier’s pass deflected off Blueger and right on to the tape of his check, Sean Kuraly, who fired it short side.
- The Canucks responded thanks to Tyler Myers, who didn’t get a point on the play. He used his reach to knock down an aerial pass in the neutral zone and Pius Suter jumped onto the loose puck, a play that would have been a hand pass if Zach Werenski didn’t play the puck with his skate. Suter sent Miller the other way and this time Miller set up Boeser, firing a hard pass to the net-charging Boeser, who tipped the puck top shelf where the bartender keeps the good stuff.
- Unfortunately, Miller undid his excellent assist two minutes later. He was too slow to move the puck in the defensive zone and got his pocket picked by Yegor Chinakhov, then failed to get either his stick or body in Jake Bean’s shooting lane as he drove into the slot to beat Demko. In his defence, it was at the end of a long shift, but that only heightened the importance of getting the puck out when he had the chance.
- The Blue Jackets got a bounce to make it 4-1 before the end of the period, as Johnny Gaudreau’s power play pass was tipped off the post by Kirill Marchenko, then hit Demko’s skate and slid into the net. A minute later, Miller also hit the post on a Canucks power play but didn’t get the same bounce, leaving the Canucks trailing by three heading into the third period.
- Shout out to this Canucks fan behind Tocchet, who basically summed up how every Canucks fan felt at the end of the second period.
- The Canucks entered the third period with a purpose and struck early on the power play that wrapped around from the second period. Miller snuck a cross-seam pass through to Pettersson and Elvis Merzlikins got caught up on his own defenceman, Ivan Provorov, while trying to come across. Like a ninja improvising nunchaku out of feminine hygiene products, Merzlikins could only flail wildly with his pads and Pettersson patiently put the puck past him.
- The power play went back to work immediately. Miller beaver-tailed for the puck and Quinn Hughes faked the pass to Miller. Like Steve Martin, Kuraly bought the fake, taking him completely out of position, which opened up a lane for Hughes to fire a shot-pass to Pius Suter. The puck took a double deflection, first off Suter’s stick, then Boeser’s at the top of the crease.
- Conor Garland quickly drew yet another penalty and the power play — and Boeser — struck a third time. Miller again sent a cross-seam pass to Pettersson, who flung the puck on net. The puck squeaked through Merzlikins’ pads into the crease and Boeser made like The Grateful Dead at the end of a concert and jammed it home.
- “Finally!” said a relieved Boeser about reaching 30 goals. “It’s been a long time. I’m just trying to play the right way every night and that’s just the cherry on top.”
- “He should have had it already if I wasn’t the issue,” quipped Miller. “He’s playing great. He’s going to spots to score goals. He’s not on the perimeter as much as he used to be, he’s inside the scoring area. When you’re in there all the time, the pucks are going to bounce on your stick. A lot of those today are just because he’s there and he’s got really good hand-eye.”
- Here’s where things got weird. A kerfuffle in the corner of the Canucks’ zone resulted in Kuraly coming up with a bloody nose. The referees grabbed Ian Cole and sent him to the sin bin, announcing a major penalty in the building that they would review. Only, they got the wrong guy: Cole arguably hit Justin Danforth in the numbers but it was Tyler Myers who bloodied Kuraly’s nose with a spinning elbow to the face.
- After a lengthy video review, the referees sent Cole back to the bench and announced a five-minute major and a game misconduct for Tyler Myers, which was arguably the right call. Only, you can’t do that. Rule 20.6, which governs video reviews for major penalties, allows for just three outcomes of a review: confirming the major penalty, downgrading the major to a minor, or rescinding the penalty entirely.
- “I just went into the pile and I didn’t really do anything. I just kind of pushed the guy and took the puck,” said Cole. “[The referee] comes out, like, ‘You! You buried him from behind!’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything.’ So, we went in there and I was kind of talking to him, saying, ‘I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything.’
“They looked at it and said, ‘Yeah, you didn’t do anything.’ I was just confused because I didn’t know — they were obviously looking at my penalty to see what happened and then they pulled Mysie out and I wasn’t sure how they can change players and just pull a penalty out of here or there. Maybe they just got it wrong or whatever. They tried to say, ‘I don’t know why you’re in here,’ and I’m like, ‘You told me I got a penalty.’ It was weird. A very weird situation.” - Meanwhile, Myers looked absolutely baffled at the bench after being told he was kicked out of the game, which is understandable, as he had been led to believe he wasn’t even getting a penalty. His look of befuddlement is kind of endearing.
- Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reached out to the NHL about the penalty switch-a-roo and said, “I asked if it was legal and they said, ‘Just get the call right.’ At the end of the day, the review is about getting the call right.”
- I mean, sure, you want to get the call right, but that’s not what the rule says. The rule, unlike many other rules in the NHL rulebook, is completely clear and only allows for three specific outcomes. What the referees did on Saturday night wasn’t one of those three outcomes and opens up a whole can of worms. The point of video review isn’t to find a completely different penalty and call that instead.
- That gave the Canucks a five-minute major to eliminate to maintain the tie game and they made like they had a licence to kill. The Blue Jackets’ power play managed just two shots on goal in the entire five minutes, as the Rogers Arnea crowd roared for every clearance, and the Canucks even managed a shot of their own, as Nils Åman got arguably the best chance of the five minutes.
- “I just like the rotation we had. Guys were 20-second shifts — we were buzzing,” said Tocchet. “The crowd, every time we iced it, they were on their feet.”
- Pettersson contributed to the buzz with a couple of solid checks on the penalty kill, first sending Johnny Gaudreau toppling to the ice, then sideswiping him again along the boards. This is Pettersson at his best, when he’s physically engaged and going through you when he can’t dangle around you.
- Quinn Hughes played nearly the entire overtime. He had a shift that lasted over two minutes — 2:08, to be precise — and he looked like he had as much jump at the end of it as he did at the beginning. In the end, he played 2:59 of the four minutes of overtime and finished with a total of 29:20 in ice time. He’s a beast.
- This was my favourite moment of overtime. After a Miller power move to the net was stopped, Boeser skated to the blue line as if he was going to exit the zone to regroup. That’s become such a go-to move across the NHL — it’s one of the things killing the excitement of overtime — that the Blue Jackets immediately relaxed. That’s when Boeser suddenly turned back and flipped a pass to Hughes in space for a 2-on-1. Hughes probably should have taken the shot instead of forcing a pass to Boeser but it was still nice to see such a creative play to produce a scoring chance.
- Hughes, Boeser, and Pettersson combined for the game-winner, bringing back memories of their first-ever overtime shift together back in 2019. Boeser came off the bench, took a pass from Hughes, and burst around Kent Johnson with a quick drag move to create some space. Meanwhile, Pettersson quietly looped behind the net, popping up at the backdoor for Boeser’s backhand pass. Pettersson whiffed completely but the puck banked off his skate and beat Merzlikins five-hole.
- There’s just something about this team. This game had all the makings of a disaster — a disheartening loss to a below-.500 team that would send the Canucks into the All-Star break on a low note. Instead, they rallied and won in thrilling fashion, complete with a hat trick. Heck, it was the second comeback hat trick to force overtime in as many games. That’s bonkers.
- The win means the Canucks finish January with a 10-1-2 record, their best month of the season, which is wild given how good they were before January. So far in 2024, the Canucks have just one regulation loss. That’s, to quote Brennan Lee Mulligan, incredible.
