If the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Wild were going to play a morning game on a Saturday, the least they could do was make it an exciting game.
But no. That’s not what the Wild do. Their name has been a misnomer right from their inception, when Jacques Lemaire instilled safe, boring, trap hockey as the way the game is played in Saint Paul.
Ever since, it hasn’t seemed to matter who plays for the Wild or even who their coach is; games against the Wild are going to be a boring slog. Even if there are flashes of exciting hockey in Minnesota, that dreary style always seems to reassert itself before too long.
The early start time didn’t seem to help, as both teams seemed sleepy to kick off the game. Hockey players are creatures of habit and a game that starts at 11 a.m. Pacific throws off all of those carefully-practiced routines.
Fortunately for the Canucks, their goaltender was fully awake.
In Casey DeSmith’s last start, he made 26 saves to shut out the Wild and he once again had their number on Saturday morning, making 30 saves on 31 shots to ensure the Canucks got at least one point out of this dreadful, dreadful game.
“First game of the road trip, it always can be tough, you know, hopping off the plane,” said a magnanimous DeSmith. “I thought we defended well and we had some chances. Obviously, Gus [Wild goaltender Jonas Gustavsson] played well too.”
The Canucks have been able to rely on DeSmith all season, which has made a big difference for getting Thatcher Demko the rest he needs between starts. Once again, he credited goaltending coach Ian Clark for keeping him sharp.
“Clarkie’s helped me a lot,” said DeSmith. “We put in some extra time and we’ve just been kind of putting in hard work and that breeds its own confidence. That’s where real confidence comes from. It’s not really from the last game you played, it’s from the practices you put in and the hard work you put in and we’ve been doing that.”
These types of performances make an argument that DeSmith deserves more starts but he knows that won’t be happening.
“Demmer is one of the best goalies in the league, especially right now, he’s playing great, so I wouldn’t expect to play any game,” said DeSmith. “Why not ride him?”
Honestly, DeSmith deserves kudos simply for keeping his eyes open all game and not drifting off to sleep. That was a constant concern for me when I watched this game.
- I knew this was threatening to be a long game when a fortunate bounce in the opening minute gave J.T. Miller a chance alone in front and, instead of capitalizing, he tried to make a too-cute pass to Brock Boeser that resulted in not even a shot attempt. Look Miller, you already have Boeser and Nils Höglander on your line, which is already pushing the limit on how cute a line can be. Stick with being ruggedly handsome.
- Aside from a puck that squeaked through DeSmith and had to be cleared away by Filip Hronek, most of the action early on involved sticks getting knocked out of hands. Thrilling stuff, right?
- First, Miller had his stick knocked out of his hands on a blatantly obvious hook with no penalty called, which was frustrating and not the least bit funny. Then Teddy Blueger sent Marcus Johansson’s stick flying as he waited for Nikita Zadorov to move the puck, which was hilarious. Comedy really is all about timing and perspective.
- The Canucks' personnel changes on the penalty kill continued in this game, as Miller was no longer even on the third penalty kill rotation — he was bumped to the fourth. Dakota Joshua, Pius Suter, Teddy Blueger, and Phil Di Giuseppe all played over a minute on the penalty kill, while Elias Pettersson and Ilya MIkheyev were close behind as the forward pair on the third rotation. Miller played just 10 seconds shorthanded. It’s an intriguing development and it’s important to note the Canucks have allowed just one power play goal against in their last 14 kills.
- Miller’s line with Boeser and Höglander struggled quite a bit in this game, leading Tocchet to experiment by swapping in both Di Giuseppe and Suter for Höglander in the second and third periods. Höglander returned to the fourth line, likely thinking, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
- “The line’s been struggling the last two or three games,” said Tocchet. “Just wanted to switch it up a little bit. Suter deserved to get up there and see what he could do. I thought it actually was not a bad switch.”
- The Wild opened the scoring on a defensive breakdown by pretty much everyone on the ice except Höglander. Miller got his stick on a pass in the neutral zone but negated it by turning up ice instead of getting into a board battle with Pat Maroon. Boeser could have rushed to Maroon but was coasting. Hughes gambled to try to intercept Maroon’s cross-ice pass, leaving him out of position for Marcus Foligno’s feed to Frederick Gaudreau, who was wide open in front of the net because Hronek never picked him up. That’s what we call a disasterpiece of defending around these parts.
- At one point, John Shorthouse said, “Duhaime slow to get up in the slot, not sure what happened to him.” See, what had happened was, Tyler Myers wanted to make sure that Brandon Duhaime was wearing his athletic cup. Consider him a sort of safety inspector.
- The Canucks’ power play had plenty of opportunities to get the Canucks the win but went 0-for-5. There’s just something a little bit off with the power play right now. Like Bobby Hill, it ain’t right.
- “Same as the 5-on-5 play, the execution wasn’t there,” said Tocchet of the power play. “We were static. We’d shoot it with no one in front. We got a lot of shots blocked. I thought that was something — there were a lot of opportunities to make some plays, I thought we just shot it into the shinpads.”
- The top-six struggled in this game but the third line of Conor Garland, Teddy Blueger, and Dakota Joshua delivered. They’ve been good enough for long enough that they really ought to have a nickname. Taking the initials of their last names led me to the Good Job, Boys line but that’s a little too cute by half. I might just go with something simple: the Reliable Line.
- The Reliable Line reliably came through with the tying goal off the rush. Garland slipped a lovely pass through to Joshua down the right wing and he quickly swung the puck to the front of the net, knowing he could rely on Blueger to crash the crease. Blueger was right on time and chipped the puck over Filip Gustavsson to make it 1-1.
- Sometimes there are penalty calls that don’t make sense. Filip Hronek had to deal with a Joel Eriksson Ek breakaway coming out of the penalty box and did so brilliantly, leaning his stick on Eriksson Ek’s hip to throw him off balance without hooking him. But the referee seemed to think that such a strong defensive play was not even possible, as he took a long look and decided to call it, of all things, a slash.
- The worst part of this bad game was when Quinn Hughes hit Boeser in the foot with a shot, causing the Canucks’ leading goalscorer to hobble to the bench and down the tunnel in front of his family and friends. For several agonizing minutes, it seemed like a strong season by Boeser was about to again be disrupted by injury but he returned before the end of the period. The force of the air from collective sighs of relief from Canucks fans actually pushed Vancouver Island several more feet away from the mainland.
- Pettersson still doesn’t look like himself but he did have a game-high seven shots on goal and made a fantastic defensive play in the third period to keep the game knotted at 1-1. Johansson drove to the net around Noah Juulsen and seemingly had the whole side of the net to shoot at but Pettersson got his stick around him to tie him up and prevent the goal.
- The game went to overtime — the most listless, underwhelming overtime in NHL history. The Canucks got two shots on goal; the Wild, who had the puck most of the time, had zero shots on goal. It was awful, interminable, and dreary. It’s the kind of 3-on-3 overtime that makes you never want to see another 3-on-3 overtime ever in your life. It would have been better for the game to end in a tie than for those five minutes to have been played.
- The shootout wasn’t much better than the overtime. The Canucks’ three shooters — Andrei Kuzmnko, J.T. Miller, and Elias Pettersson — seemingly forgot how to do the shootout, perhaps because it was the first one of the season.
- “We’ve got about five or six guys, so that’s kind of the order we’re going to try,” said Tocchet. “In all fairness, we haven’t really practiced a lot of breakaway stuff. If they do it, they do it on their own. It’s something we’ll probably have to start practicing more.”
- It was honestly surprising that the Wild shooters didn’t just dump the puck in the corner and go off for a line change on their shootout attempts. Even the one attempt that went in was kind of dull. Mats Zuccarello didn’t make a move or do anything entertaining; he just caught DeSmith off-guard with a quick shot along the ice that slid five-hole. It was the most perfectly boring way to end this game.
- “We grinded it out, got the point,” said Tocchet. “You like that but the execution — we had a tough time handling pucks. You’ve got to learn how to play these tight games when things aren’t going your way. Try not to give them much.”
- One of the few positives to this game is that Canucks fans found out, through an intermission segment with The Athletic’s Michael Russo, that Boeser’s grandma — known as “G’ma” — sends Boeser a voicemail before every game and another voicemail after every goal, which is the most adorable thing. That’s 53 voicemails so far this season and you better believe I'll be thinking, "That's another voicemail from G'ma!" after every Boeser goal from now on. If you have an Athletic subscription, give Russo’s story a read. It’s very heartwarming and a great insight into Boeser and his family.
