It must have been an utter shock to the system for the Dallas Stars. Just seven seconds into their first penalty of the game, the Vancouver Canucks scored.
The Stars would have had good reason to believe they could take penalties with impunity against the Canucks. The Canucks were 1-for-20 on the power play on their homestand heading into this game and hadn’t scored a power play goal in four-straight games. In fact, taking penalties against the Canucks seemed like a surefire way to kill their momentum.
It wasn’t a momentum sapper on Sunday night against the Stars. Instead, like Frankenstein's monster, it shockingly came back to life.
When J.T. Miller scored the team’s first power play goal in five games, it wasn’t just that he scored. It’s that the Canucks made it look so easy to get a power play goal. It was just a faceoff win, two quick passes, and a shot with traffic in front. It was exactly the jolt of confidence they needed.
“Just to see one go in, I didn't really care I scored,” said Miller. “It's just everybody's like, ‘Oh thank God.’ We needed it.”
That feeling reverberated throughout the team.
“When we score right away, it just gave us the confidence — okay, we're gonna score. We're gonna score! Like, we just felt it in the unit,” said Elias Pettersson. “Start of the season, last couple of games, we haven't felt that.”
Pettersson was right: they were gonna score. They scored twice more on the power play, going 3-for-6 but it wasn’t just that they scored, though that’s obviously important, but how good they looked doing it.
There was so much more motion from the Canucks’ power play, which had looked so static heading into Sunday’s game. They were gaining the offensive zone more easily with crisp passing. Players rotated positions, pulling the Stars’ penalty killing formation out of alignment to open up passing and shooting lanes. And, when opportunities came to shoot, they didn’t hesitate.
It was the motion and movement that stood out the most because it so clearly opened up opportunities. The end result? Pettersson scored a power play goal from the point, in Quinn Hughes’s usual spot, and Miller scored a goal from the top of the right faceoff circle, which is typically Pettersson’s hunting ground.
“We weren't really having fun on the powerplay anymore,” said Miller. “We didn't want to be stagnant and robotic. We had to start throwing something in there and decided to throw a little bit more movement in today.”
The power play changes stem from a meeting the power play had with the coaching staff earlier in the day.
“We had a good honest talk, the power play group this morning,” said Pettersson.
“It wasn't so much a technical meeting as it was just talking, making sure that they understood a couple things,” said head coach Travis Green. “One, how good they can be and there were things that we talked about that we can change...I think our discussion this morning helped our group on the ice and in their own minds as well.”
It does feel like it’s taken a long time for the Canucks to try some different things on the power play, which seemed locked into a confining set of looks.
“I think we've been successful when we've been moving it around and not switching positions and now I guess opponents have figured it out a little bit,” said Pettersson. “So, we just tried to come up with new ways and get some movement and just let our skill take over and not just have set plays.”
That last part seems key: the Canucks have some top-end offensive talent on their power play but they seemed locked into certain roles and stale set plays. Simply introducing more movement forced them into situations where they had to rely on their creativity.
“I like to play with instinct and I think it showed today that it worked out great for us,” said Pettersson. “We didn't think, we just saw the play that was open and we took it and we shot the puck.”
“It was definitely more fun,” he added.
Is that it, then? Is the power play fixed?
“We'll enjoy this but we want to do it again,” said Miller. “Tonight we look like an elite power play but we can't just do it one time and feel good. Gotta come out with the same urgency next game.”
I look forward to watching them do it again, just like I watched this game.
- Another game, another incredible, save-of-the-year candidate from Thatcher Demko. Ho hum. It’s just so routine at this point. Yes, even though the Canucks were largely the better team in his game, Demko still had to repeatedly bail them out with incredible saves. That’s just what he does. No big deal.
- The tale of the first period for the Canucks was missed opportunities. In the first minute, Tanner Pearson set up Tyler Myers with an open net off the rush, but Myers put it wide. Then Conor Garland nearly scored coming out from behind the net on a backhand but Anton Khudobin robbed him. It was close enough that they briefly paused play while Toronto confirmed the puck didn’t cross the line within Khudobin’s glove.
- Höglander got spicy later in the period, deking his way into the slot before passing off to Pearson for a glorious chance, but Tanner was a fanner, getting just enough of the puck for it to bounce off Khudobin’s pad and the post instead of bulging the back of the net. Again, it was so close that the refs actually went back to review it three minutes later because even they couldn’t believe Pearson missed such a fantastic chance.
- Those kinds of missed opportunities happen all the time but when a team is struggling to score goals and keeps losing games by one goal, they tend to loom a little larger. So, when the Canucks went into the first intermission down 1-0 despite all their chances, there was a certain sense of, “Here we go again.”
- And then the Canucks utterly dominated the second period. Okay then.
- Miller tied the game on the power play but he was quick to credit Brock Boeser and rightly so. Bo Horvat “won” the faceoff, but really he just swatted the puck to the boards, where Boeser beat his man to the puck and moved it back to Hughes at the point. Then Boeser went to the net to provide a screen while Hughes shifted right to move the penalty kill, then set up Miller for the shot, which went top corner.
- “I just said I'm shooting this first one,” said Miller. “I want to say I didn't really aim, I just I knew I had to go short side because the defense is taught to take away the far side and I just remember releasing the puck and all I could see was Brock, which is a good thing.”
- There are a great many people out there who would agree that seeing Boeser is a good thing.
- The power play struck again four minutes later. Off a Pettersson zone entry, Hughes jumped down the right boards into Pettersson’s usual spot, leaving Pettersson at the point. Hughes moved the puck back to Pettersson and, between the Dallas penalty killers and his teammates, there were five players between him and Khudobin, who didn’t have a chance of seeing the puck.
- Not that it really mattered. Pettersson’s shot was pinpoint perfect, going off the post and in. That’s the type of shot we’re used to seeing from Pettersson.
- The Canucks wasted no time extending the lead. A minute later, the Horvat line with Pearson and Höglander was buzzing around the offensive zone. Pearson couldn’t beat Khudobin on one chance set up by Höglander but he got another and created a rebound with a surprising shot from a tough angle. Horvat pounced on the rebound like a cat on a laser pointer to make it 3-1.
- The Stars got one back on an absolutely baffling defensive breakdown by Travis Hamonic. As the Stars moved the puck up the right wing, Luke Glendening came up the middle of the ice. Instead of staying central as his partner, Kyle Burroughs, challenged the puck carrier, Hamonic was at the far boards, as far away from the puck and the play as humanly possible. Glendening, in alone, was able to pick his spot to beat Demko.
- The line of Conor Garland, Jason Dickinson, and Vasily Podkolzin had a great game, primarily Garland and Podkolzin, who kept winning puck battles and cycling the puck around the boards. The duo dominated in puck possession and Green rewarded them, with Podkolzin earning a career-high 14:29 in ice time.
- “He's got a great shot and has a knack for getting open. It's easy to play with guys like that,” said Garland. “He's a great young player, hopefully I can play with him for a long time.”
- The two combined for a gorgeous goal to make it 4-2. Horvat stole a mishandled puck on a Stars rush and sent Garland and Podkolzin in 2-on-1. Garland made a beautiful play, selling the fake shot like he was earning a commission, then firing a no-look pass over to Podkolzin, who stepped into the puck like Commander Riker into a chair and sent it top shelf.
- “You just use your peripherals, you can see him over there, he's a big boy,” said Garland when asked how he saw Podkolzin. Garland has been listening to Jay's advice from 40 Year Old Virgin.
- While the Canucks power play was clicking, the penalty kill once again gave up two goals. The Stars power play picked apart the penalty kill on the opening goal of the game, but the Canucks looked better on a 4-minute kill in the third period, even if the result was the same. After the Canucks killed off 3:43 of the power play, Jamie Benn tipped in a point shot to make it 4-3.
- “There were some mistakes on the first one, like when a faceoff doesn't get out, I let a seam through, Bails [Justin Bailey] and I take the wrong route. It wasn't a pretty goal, by any means, but there was a breakdown, I think,” said Miller. “But on the one to start the third, we were playing it textbook. We had changed probably five or six times in four minutes, maybe more than that and they couldn't even get set up and one wrist shot gets deflected.”
- “We take a lot of pride in our PK,” added Miller. “Stuff like this doesn't go unnoticed, we know we can be a little better.”
- The Stars pushed hard in the third period but Juho Lammikko drew another power play and the rotation went to work. This time Boeser rotated to the left side, freeing up Miller to loop behind the net and to the right faceoff circle, with Pettersson sliding to the front of the net. That movement opened up more space than a Heighliner with a Holtzman Drive and Miller sent a one-timer skittering through Khudobin’s five-hole.
- “I happened to hit it off the heel and he's obviously not expecting that either, so I got a little lucky,” said Miller. “But regardless, it's a play we wanted to try and I played, like, three or four different positions in the matter of 10 seconds and it opened up.”
- Sitting on two goals and with the Dallas net empty, Miller had a go at the hattrick from his own zone. “Honestly, I wasn't going to shoot it,” he said. “I had no speed. I was just going to flick it out and Brock yelled at me to shoot it right when I was gonna flick it. That was not a great attempt. Not very pretty.”
- Boeser did better on his own empty net attempts. First he hit the post from just outside the blue line, then he chased down the loose puck and made no mistake the second time, sliding it in from a tough angle to make it 6-3.
- This was a great game for the Canucks and hopefully a sign of things to come offensively, but there’s still some work to do on the defensive end. Demko may have only faced 28 shots but there were far too many five-alarm chances: breakaways, odd-man rushes, and cross-seam passes all contributed to making this a much tougher night for Demko than the shot totals would indicate.
- Not to put a damper on things, but the Dallas Stars are a team that has yet to win a single game in regulation this season. The Stars should theoretically be a good team but they haven’t been so far this season. This game could be a catalyst and a confidence builder but the Canucks have to build on it and start stringing some wins together.
