On Tuesday night against the New York Islanders, the Vancouver Canucks blocked just three shots in a 6-2 loss. That low number clearly bothered head coach Bruce Boudreau.
“We had three blocked shots; they had 18,” said Boudreau after that game. “We mention it every day, we talk about it every day, we put it on the wall every day — we understand it. I know that’s something that has to be done.
“I can’t go out and make them want to block shots.”
When asked where the will is to block those shots, Boudreau bluntly said, “You’re talking to the wrong guy.”
On Wednesday, the team had an intense, physical practice, presumably hoping to wake up that will in the players. Before Thursday’s game, Boudreau had the Canucks skip the game-day skate, instead focusing on a series of meetings in the morning.
Evidently, the lessons were hammered in hard. Against the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night, the Canucks blocked 24 shots. They also were credited with 29 hits, led by Will Lockwood, who threw eight hits in under ten minutes of ice time.
“There’s definitely a correlation,” said J.T. Miller. “When we block more shots, it seems to translate to our team game and our buy-in level.”
“That’s the way we have to play to win,” said Boudreau. “We have to do all of those things and when we do them all, coaches are talking — it’s pretty to watch from the bench.”
Only a coach would talk about blocked shots and hits being pretty to watch. But it had to be rewarding to see the message getting through.
“It’s really positive when you get that kind of response after all the stuff that went on in the last 48 hours,” said Boudreau and the players felt it.
“It was an awesome response, especially in light of the past 24 hours,” said Collin Delia, who made 30 saves in the win. “We had a come-to-Jesus moment and I think it served us well.”
“It was not really a lot of soul-searching, we’re just not doing our jobs,” said Miller. “You’ve got to take a look in the mirror at some point and realize that you get paid to do this and this is what we’re expected to do. Effort and commitment and blocking shots and playing physical — those are the easy things that we can control and every time we play that way, we get the results.”
Probably the most positive part of the Canucks’ postgame comments is that there was no sense among the players that they had figured everything out or solved all of their problems. Instead, there was a focus on taking what worked in their process to prepare for this game and doing it all again.
“I think we realize what it takes to prepare in such a high-quality way and perform in a high-quality way,” said Delia. “I think when we look back at the tape, we’ll see those habits — the good changes, the blocked shots, everyone coming back hard — and those are the things that we talked about…We’ll just look to continue to replicate that.”
Whether they are able to replicate their success will be determined when I watch those games. Thursday night, I watched this game.
- For the first time in a while, J.T. Miller was back on the wing with Elias Pettersson, skating with Andrei Kuzmenko on the opposite wing. The line immediately looked dangerous and the three players combined for three goals, albeit one on the power play and another into an empty net. It’s enough to make one wonder why Boudreau has been so reluctant to put Miller on Pettersson’s line.
- “Obviously, those guys have had good chemistry all year, so I was just trying to stay out of the way for the most part,” said Miller. “A lot of penalties, so it was kind of hard to get into the 5-on-5 game, but I think in the first, we were pretty good…Easy guys to play with.”
- Pettersson has 17 goals this season — on pace for 38 on the year — but hasn’t scored a single power play goal with opposing penalty kills cheating over to take away his shooting lane. On Thursday, the Canucks debuted some new wrinkles on the power play seemingly designed to get Pettersson off the schneid. He rotated up to the top of the zone in place of Quinn Hughes multiple times and also rotated to the front of the net. While he didn’t score, it’s always positive to see the power play adding more variety to their looks.
- Pettersson had ten shot attempts in this game, seven of them on goal. He was pretty unlucky not to get a goal, though he still finished the game with two assists.
- Kuzmenko had a major milestone against the Avalanche. Well, technically a minor one: his first minor penalty in the NHL. That he was able to stay out of the penalty box for the first 36 games in the NHL while adjusting to the pace and rink dimensions of a new league is actually quite impressive, but the streak ended with an interference penalty that took the Canucks off the power play.
- The Avalanche opened the scoring on a later power play with Tyler Myers in the box. After Nathan MacKinnon hammered a one-timer off the post, Mikko Rantanen sent his own shot off the post and in, slinging the puck past a screened Delia. Just when Delia thought he could trust his posts, they turned on him. Devious.
- Curtis Lazar, who Boudreau said had his best game of the season, delivered the biggest hit of the game, hammering Devon Toews into the Canucks’ bench. Perhaps he took inspiration from a song that plays prior to every game in Rogers Arena: “Head over Heels” by Tears for Fears.
- The Avalanche quickly made it 2-0 in the second period. Ilya Mikheyev lost track of his man, Samuel Girard, who looped around the zone back to the point. That left him open to fling a shot towards the net, where Delia had trouble picking it up past an accidental Schenn screen. All hockey players are opaque but Schenn seems extra opaque, so it’s understandable why Delia never saw it coming.
- The Canucks pushed back hard, piling up 19 shots in the second period alone, aided by the Avalanche’s inability to stay out of the penalty box. That’s more shots on goal in one period than the Canucks managed across an entire game earlier in the season against the Carolina Hurricanes.
- Boudreau credited the Canucks turnaround to one particular moment. “I think what set the tone of the whole thing was when [Jack] Studnicka won that icing,” said Boudreau. “The bench really jumped up on that and then ensuing, they got the penalty and ensuing, we got a power play goal. I think that was the start of us going good — not that we were bad in the first period but the emotional lift that gave us was big.”
- Studnicka drew the penalty on Toews, then they got some help from the referee on the power play. Andrew Cogliano tried to clear the puck around the boards and hit referee Michael Markovic instead. The puck stayed in the zone and Mikheyev fed Kuzmenko down low and he dazzled goaltender Alexandar Georgiev with his quick hands like a close-up magician before flipping the puck past him on the backhand like a piece of wadded-up toilet paper.
- Cogliano preceded to ream out Markovic after the goal and slam his stick into the boards, which felt pretty classless considering he’s the one who hit Markovic with the puck. He earned himself a 10-minute misconduct for his childishness.
- Kuzmenko was feeling it after the goal. On his next shift, he made a beautiful tip pass between his legs to Pettersson for the zone entry, a pass cheekier than a Kardashian in a string bikini. Kuzmenko then cut to the net to finish off Pettersson’s wraparound and the game was all tied up like water at its highest point on a beach.
- “Second goal is thank you for Petey, is good pass for me…I like it, thank you Petey,” said Kuzmenko and said he was more excited about his pass than he was about scoring. “Really, for me, I like it no goal — I like it pass. Because I score, I say, ‘Petey, Petey, did you see my pass?’”
- “You guys probably don’t even know how hard [Kuzmenko] shoots the puck yet,” said Miller. “He just fires it and has a nose for the net. If he’s going to play with Petey like that, he’s just got to go to there and it’s going to end up on his stick.”
- The Canucks have had decent games unravel because of a short stretch where everything went wrong. Against the Avalanche, the opposite was true: they had a three-minute stretch where everything went right. 34 seconds after Kuzmenko tied the game, Bo Horvat drove to the net after Brock Boeser caused a turnover. Horvat couldn’t tuck in the backhand, but the rebound popped out to Boeser for the finish.
- Georgiev momentarily lost his mind after Boeser’s goal, slamming his stick on the crossbar in frustration. Perhaps it’s mental fatigue from being overworked, as this was his tenth-straight start.
- Collin Delia was a lot more composed in the Canucks net, helped by his teammates playing a solid third period in front of him to defend the one-goal lead. When the Avalanche got their chances, Delia came up with the stops, including eight saves on Mikko Rantanen alone, though Delia made it clear that he didn’t know who he was stopping.
- “It’s kind of nameless and faceless out there,” said Delia with a chuckle. “You just kind of zone in on the puck.”
- His best save came against the terrifyingly faceless Darren Helm, who knocked a puck down with his glove to skate right up the middle between Ethan Bear and Travis Dermott and go in alone on Delia. Ignoring the void where Helm's face should have been, Delia focused on the puck and absorbed it, giving up no rebound.
- Pettersson, Miller, and Horvat were put together late in the third period to defend the one-goal lead and they put the game on ice — well, more on ice than the game, which is played on ice, already was. Oliver Ekman-Larsson cleared the puck up the boards, Pettersson skated onto it, and fed J.T. Miller for the empty-net goal to make it 4-2.
- “You see that and you go, let’s do that again,” said Boudreau about his team’s performance. “We’ve got to bottle that up and do it every game.”
