The theme postgame was not what you would expect from a Vancouver Canucks team that had just thwomped the Arizona Coyotes 5-1.
One might expect some satisfaction or pride in a job well done. Instead, the common theme was a lot less positive, focused on a simple phrase: “not good enough.”
“I don’t think we were good enough tonight,” said Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who had a three-point game.
“Today wasn't good enough,” said J.T. Miller, who scored one of the best goals of the season. “We got the win, that's fantastic, but we know we've got to be better.”
The bulk of the dissatisfaction had to do with the way the Canucks started the game. They were out-shot 15-to-7 in the first period — not a good sign against the team with the fewest shots in the NHL — and were frequently hemmed into the defensive zone, unable to transition the puck up ice.
“We got out-skated, out-worked, out-executed,” said Miller. “They drew penalties because they played with the puck and we chased them around. It’s not good enough.”
“They outplayed us and they probably deserved a goal or two in the first period,” said Ekman-Larsson.
“The first period I thought was as bad a period as we've had and I was pretty surprised because we had a really good practice yesterday and we had an upbeat morning skate,” said head coach Bruce Boudreau. “Then we came out and it’s like we were in quicksand and we couldn't get anything done.”
Thankfully, Thatcher Demko played like an All-Star and kept the score knotted at 0-0 through twenty minutes and the Canucks evidently did some soul-searching during the intermission and realized they were playing against the Arizona Coyotes.
“Usually if I’m really upset, I’ll go in right after the period, but I didn’t do that,” said Boudreau. “I tried to be calm, myself, and when I went in, I just told them, in no uncertain terms, that we had to be better and that this game was really important to us and it really didn’t mean a lot to Arizona.”
The message evidently resonated. In the second period, the Canucks came out firing on all cylinders and even some spheres, cones, and cubes. They scored three goals in just over two minutes, effectively ending the game in half the time it takes to watch the music video for their former goal song, “Holiday.”
“I don't think that was a perfect game by any means,” said Miller. “I know that we're going to need to be a hell of a lot better tomorrow to win the game.”
But that game is in the future and this game was in the present, which means it’s now in the past and, if it wasn’t perfect, that means I can’t use the past perfect tense to describe it. So I cannot say that I had watched this game before writing about it. I shall simply say I watched this game.
- Demko was outstanding as per usual, making 35 saves on 36 shots. He had to be sharp in the first period in particular, as the Coyotes top player, Clayton Keller, created chance after chance. At this point, it feels like saying, “Demko was good” is akin to describing water as “wet” or the Coyotes’ arena situation as “troubled.”
- “I feel like I say the same thing about Demmer all the time — he’s so good,” said Miller. “When we don’t have our best, he always keeps us right in it and buys us another period to get our crap together…We feel so comfortable and have so much confidence when he’s back there.”
- Demko’s best save — or two saves, really — came in the second period after the Canucks took a three-goal lead. Call it desperation or luck — I call it Big D(ominik) Energy, as Demko did everything in his power to keep the puck out of the net, much like Dominik Hasek in his prime.
- Conor Garland, facing his former team for the first time, bumped a six-game scoring drought with a fantastic one-timer. Noah Juulsen deserves a ton of credit — he activated aggressively off the point, drawing the attention of the Coyotes, who left Garland wide open in the slot for Juulsen to find with a pass from below the goal line. Garland went to one knee and proposed a goal; the net said yes! She said yes!
- Less than a minute later, the Canucks were on the power play, quarterbacked by Oliver Ekman-Larsson in the absence of Quinn Hughes. Ekman-Larsson seemed rejuvenated by facing his former team, as he smoothly walked the line into the middle of the ice and sent a wristshot zipping towards the net that deflected in off Bo Horvat’s knee.
- Ekman-Larsson said he wanted to step up with Hughes out of the lineup in COVID protocol and he did just that, putting up three points. But, in keeping with the “not good enough” theme, he wasn’t satisfied with his performance and found it difficult to face a team for which he had played for 11 years.
- “It was tough, to be honest with you. A lot of emotions and just seeing the guys on the other side — I thought it was going to be easier,” said Ekman-Larsson. “I didn’t feel good at the end of the game tonight. I thought I probably had more tape-to-tape passes to their team than our team…It’s funny how it works. You’re feeling good and you don’t get rewarded…then you have an off night and you end up with three points.”
- Not long after Horvat’s power play goal, Elias Pettersson made it 3-0, with assists from his young linemates, Nils Höglander and Vasily Podkolzin. The entire play was like a properly-enjoyed corona — sublime. Höglander sent a lovely bank pass ahead to Podkolzin to get through the neutral zone, then Podkolzin made a gorgeous one-touch, blind, backhand pass to send Pettersson in alone. Pettersson’s shot was the Platonic ideal of top corner, sending the puck sailing over Karel Vejmelka’s glove and in.
- The Coyotes pushed back and finally got the better of Demko. It took a shot tipped right in front of him for Demko to give up a rebound, then neither Horvat nor Kyle Burroughs could clear the puck before Lawson Crouse banged it in. But that’s the only puck the Coyotes would get past Demko.
- This pass by Boeser could have been the play of the game. The only problem is Tanner Pearson didn’t score after the pass and J.T. Miller scored a goal-of-the-year candidate a few minutes later. This is simply superb: it’s an aerial backhand pass into space while under pressure and it is perfectly placed for Pearson to skate onto it and get a breakaway chance. Honestly, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to call this one of the best passes I’ve seen since the Sedins retired.
- Miller’s goal was the exclamation point on the entire game, a piece of punctuation so emphatic that it turned the rest of the supposedly “not good enough” game into a picture of perfection. How could this game be “not good enough” when it produced a goal like that?
- It was the easiest assist of Ekman-Larsson’s career. He settled the puck behind the net and Miller looped back and picked it up — Ekman-Larsson’s job was done. They even granted a secondary assist to Juulsen. It seems patently unfair that Boeser didn’t get an assist for his incredible pass, while the two defencemen incidentally on the ice for Miller’s incredible solo effort do get assists.
- Miller took the puck from behind the net and went coast-to-coast, slaloming through Coyotes that seemingly provided no more resistance than the gates on a ski hill at the Olympics. Once he gained the zone, he tucked the puck under Janis Moser’s stick as the Coyotes defenceman haplessly reached for the puck, then similarly evaded Vejmelka’s poke check with a quick move to the forehand and tucked the puck into the open left side. Incredible.
- That’s one of the best goals of the season. And yet, as is his wont, Miller still found a way to describe his incredible goal as “lucky.”
- “I tried to catch them in a change and I don’t think their D could gap as good as they wanted. Obviously, that doesn’t happen very often, so I got a little lucky,” said Miller. “I wouldn’t look too much into it.”
- I had to call Miller on once again finding a way to use the word “lucky” when describing an incredible play he made on the ice. “Well, it's a much better story if I turn that over and they go down and score, right, for you guys?” joked Miller in return. “In fact, I'm just trying to keep it up in the air for you guys.”
- “Honest to god, I’m just trying to, when I slip it under his stick, I’m just trying to get to the net. Not every day for it to work like that, that’s where I think it’s lucky,” added Miller. “It’s lucky that they were in the middle of a change…it’s four-on-four, not five-on-five, so a little bit more room for me to skate. It worked out, it doesn’t happen every day.”
- “No, no, that's not a lucky goal. That's pure skill and talent and desire,” said Boudreau. “The deceptive speed that he went around the defenseman and still had the wherewithal to pull it around the goalie was pretty impressive… You’re right, he doesn’t like to take a lot of credit when he does the good things but that was a good thing.”
- Tyler Motte’s third-period high-sticking penalty is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on the ice in some time. Motte’s stick was sent flying out of his hands by an impressively violent stick lift by Ilya Lyubushkin, sending it somersaulting through the air until the blade slapped Jakob Chychrun in the face like a Monty Python fish.
- I can’t even be mad at the referees for that penalty call. Yeah, it’s a terrible call, but it’s also hilarious that Motte got called for high sticking when he wasn’t even holding his stick. That is objectively hilarious and I respect the referees for committing to the bit.
- To make up for the awful call, the referees ignored a blatant Canucks slash to the hands of Phil Kessel, ensuring that the Canucks got the next power play. Pettersson leaned into a pass from Horvat as if he was going to shoot and instead sent a pinpoint pass to Boeser’s backhand at the top of the crease for the tip-in goal to extend the lead to 5-1.
- Fighting may not accomplish much in hockey but you still have to respect a guy like Kyle Burroughs, who roused the Coyotes’ ire with a steady stream of hits all game, fighting a much larger opponent like Crouse. Crouse has four inches and 20+ lbs on Burroughs, who hung in and gave as good as he got. It’s no wonder he was pumped up after and hyped up the crowd.
