53 years ago, Orland Kurtenbach scored the first hat trick in Vancouver Canucks history as part of a 5-2 win over the California Golden Seals on December 12, 1970.
53 years later, Brock Boeser scored the 150th hat trick in Canucks history as part of a 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on December 12, 2023.
It’s part of a stunning start to the season for Boeser, giving him 21 goals in just 29 games and tying him with Auston Matthews for the league lead in goalscoring. It’s an impressive accomplishment considering he scored just 18 goals all of last season.
It’s also something that Boeser is trying to mostly ignore.
“It’s obviously really awesome, especially after last season,” said Boeser, “but with that being said, if I focus on that too much, I feel that I get away from my game. I’ve got to continue to focus on what is giving me success and that’s all those little details.”
It makes sense. As much as Boeser would surely love to pile up goals to win the Rocket Richard trophy, thinking too much about scoring goals naturally leads to cheating: flying the defensive zone early, sneaking into the slot instead of working to win a board battle, or trying to force a shot instead of making the smart pass.
It might even help Boeser that he’s been deployed in a match-up role on J.T. Miller’s wing, regularly facing the top lines from the other team. Beyond the fact that it’s a role that Boeser craves, it forces him to keep his focus on the details because if his focus wanes for even a moment, those top lines could immediately make him pay for his inattention.
“When my line’s matched up against the other top line, that’s our main goal,” said Boeser earlier in the season. “We take a lot of pride in that and that’s all I’m worried about.”
The reasons for Boeser’s goalscoring outburst are many and multi-faceted but pulling focus away from scoring goals might be the best thing for him.
Meanwhile, Canucks fans aren’t the only ones happy for Boeser.
“Brock and I are really tight, we’ve been really good friends for pretty much our whole careers,” said an obviously proud Thatcher Demko after the game. “It’s awesome to see, I know how much work he’s put in — physically, mentally, spiritually — just trying to get to his full potential. Obviously, you’re seeing him take huge steps in that direction, so it’s awesome.”
Personally, I took very small steps physically, mentally, and spiritually when I watched this game.
- Sometimes, lightning strikes unexpectedly and that’s also true of the proper noun version. The Lightning opened the scoring just over a minute into the game. Elias Pettersson just missed picking off a pass in the neutral zone, which turned into an odd-man rush behind him. Nikita Zadorov didn’t play the rush well, but the real problem was Nils Höglander’s non-existent backcheck that left Mikhail Sergachev wide open to set up Brayden Point’s backdoor tap-in.
- “He’s a little bull,” said Tocchet of Höglander. “Saying that, we’ve got to work on his defensive game. I thought he was a little out of wack a couple of times but I wanted to stick with him. I could’ve pulled him off there because there were a couple of times where he was directly involved in the mishap [defensively] but I thought that by sticking with him, he had a good third period.”
- Höglander responded by drawing a penalty with his speed and the power play went to work. The snakebitten Andrei Kuzmenko hammered a one-timer from the top of the left faceoff circle to tie up the game like it was Anastasia Steele. Kuzmenko’s celebration was less happy than it was emphatic.
- “[Kuzmenko] had some energy tonight. [Sergei Gonchar] is here and he’s been spending time with Gonch, shooting a lot of pucks,” said Tocchet. “He shot a lot of pucks the last three days and it’s no coincidence to him shooting that puck and he scores. We’re getting him to shoot the puck more in practice, now we have to translate it to the game. I just thought he had more energy tonight and it’s a good little building block for him.”
- Beyond the goal, Kuzmenko caught some attention for a defensive play in the first period, as he bailed out Filip Hronek after a defensive zone turnover by getting back to lift Steven Stamkos’s stick. That’s a good way to get out of a coach’s doghouse and back on the couch.
- This game saw penalties both rare and all-too-common. Elias Pettersson took his very first penalty of the season, which is pretty remarkable. The Canucks also took their fourth too many men on the ice penalty in their last four games, which won’t cost anyone a Lady Byng trophy but is still pretty embarrassing.
- “Yeah, I know,” said Tocchet with a sigh. “I don’t know what to say about that. We addressed it and I think it was Brock’s fault, he came to the bench and took ownership [saying] it’s his fault. It’s on high alert now, that’s way too many. Usually, you have five for the year and I think we have our quota — we’re done, hopefully for the year, because it can cost you games.”
- The Tampa Bay Lightning have the third-best power play in the NHL right now but the Canucks’ penalty kill held them off the board on three opportunities. As has been the trend of late, Miller and Pettersson were not on the first or even second rotations of penalty-killing forwards, with Nils Åman, Dakota Joshua, Teddy Blueger, and Phil Di Giuseppe leading the team in shorthanded ice time.
- “We’re giving more ice time to some other guys: Teddy and Åms, obviously, leading us and Dakota,” said Tocchet. “But I thought our gameplan — what are they, a 30% power play, that’s a helluva power play — I thought we protected the middle pretty well. They got a couple of good looks and Demmer was obviously there for us.”
- Demko was outstanding on the penalty kill, robbing Stamkos multiple times, including twice in the final minute of the first period. The nice thing for Demko, though, is that he didn’t have to carry the Canucks on his shoulders. He made some nice saves but he only had to make 28 saves in total. The Canucks only allowed five shots on goal in the second period. For a guy like Demko, this game was a walk in the park.
- Boeser gave the Canucks the lead with his first goal of the game. Filip Hronek fired a puck towards the net that Miller tipped, hitting Höglander in front. Miller jumped on the loose puck for a shot that Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped but Boeser, open because Eric Cernak blew a tire, swatted in the aerial rebound on the backhand. John Shorthouse gave the goal a legendary call, echoing the greatest goal call of all time with a “Look at that! Look at this! Look at that!”
- Höglander, after his defensive miscues in the first period, was a catalyst for the rest of the game, constantly making things happen when he stepped on the ice. His only point was the assist for the puck hitting him but hey, sometimes pucks hit you when you’re doing the right thing.
- “He’s just a quick little guy out there,” said Boeser of Höglander. “He knows what he needs to do on our line and he’s done a great job at that: getting in on the forecheck, creating those turnovers, and even when we get the puck and get some zone time, he’s so good at protecting it down low. He’s been great and hopefully, he can keep it going.”
- Boeser made it 3-1 later in the second period with a cracker of a shot. Tocchet called it a set play: Boeser rotated to the top of the zone while Hughes carried down low around the net, drawing all five Lightning skaters below the hashmarks. Instead of crashing the slot, Boeser made like Cheech and Chong and stayed high the whole time. Hughes found him and Boeser blasted a one-timer through traffic.
- “I was just kind of scanning the ice and saw most guys were watching Quinn — I mean, he’s a hard guy not to, I think we do the same thing with [Nikita Kucherov] when he gets the puck, you just naturally start looking at him and don’t scan the ice for guys,” said Boeser. “I just thought the high ice was open for a one-timer and it worked out.”
- Boeser’s point about Kucherov is interesting. His line with Miller and Höglander was hard-matched against the Kucherov line and managed to keep him off the scoreboard, which isn’t an easy task. Kucherov and his linemates still had some dangerous shifts but Kucherov himself didn’t have a single shot on goal all game, as the Canucks repeatedly got in his shooting lanes to block shots. Maybe they did get overly-fixated on Kucherov like he suggested but it worked out for them this time.
- The Canucks played a physical game, led by their sizeable defence corps, and the Lightning didn’t seem to have a response. When Ian Cole tossed Anthony Cirelli to the ice, Stamkos tried to respond with a hit but only glanced off Cole and tripped over Cirelli in slapstickian fashion.
- Also in the above gif, Nikita Zadorov threw a crushing hit on Mitchell Chaffee, who seemed chafed rather than chuffed about the hit. As a Twitter follower said, it’s better to be the chafer than the chafee.
- “Listen, I love big hits but I’ll take anybody just getting in front of people,” said Tocchet. “That’s one of our staples is chipping the body.”
- Tocchet brought up a hit Höglander threw on Kucherov multiple times after the game, so I thought I better track it down. If it made such a big impact on Tocchet, then it seemed likely that Höglander made a big impact on Kucherov. To be honest, I was whelmed by the hit but, as Tocchet said, it's more about chipping the body.
- This was the 16th time this season the Canucks have entered the third period with a lead and the 16th time this season the Canucks won after entering the third period with a lead. It feels very strange to be watching a Canucks team that is actually good at holding leads. It feels like a Twilight Zone episode where it’s about to be revealed that the entire Canucks team is secretly a collection of toys owned by an all-powerful child who wants the Canucks to win the Stanley Cup but it’ll all go away when his attention drifts elsewhere.
- “I think, just with some more off days and not playing every other day, I think we’ve regrouped and we — well, I definitely feel better in the last couple periods,” said Boeser, providing a somewhat more sane explanation for why they’ve played well late in games: careful attention to rest.
- Boeser made it a hat trick with an empty net goal, though he first missed on a shot from the neutral zone set up by Höglander, sending the puck sailing over the net. When Höglander got the puck again, he shot it himself, looking off Boeser in the slot as if to say, “Look, I gave you a chance.” Boeser got another chance a moment later and didn’t make the same mistake twice.
- “Bad shot on the first one,” said Boeser with an embarrassed chuckle.
