On Wednesday night in Colorado, Quinn Hughes took on Cale Makar in a battle of defenceman supremacy.
Makar took the lead with a point late in the first period but Hughes responded in the second to tie things up, only for Makar to pull ahead midway through the third period to earn the win.
Some other players may have also been on the ice.
Wednesday’s game between the Vancouver Canucks and Colorado Avalanche was hyped up as a bout between the two top defencemen in the NHL right now and it’s understandable why. Hughes leads the entire NHL in scoring but Makar is not far behind and is actually scoring at a higher point-per-game pace than Hughes. The two could be battling all season long for the Norris Trophy, if not the Art Ross, Hart, and Ted Lindsay awards.
So yeah, the first meeting between Hughes and Makar this season seemed like a potentially momentous occasion.
The game itself, however, reminded everyone that there are two teams attached to those two defencemen and those two teams played some highly entertaining hockey. The two teams punched and counter-punched, with momentum swinging wildly between the two teams. For most of the game, it felt like an even tilt between two heavyweights.
In the end, however, the Canucks fell to the more experienced fighter: an Avalanche team that won the Stanley Cup just two seasons ago and possesses that most insidious of hockey clichés — they know how to win. And it was Makar who provided the knockout blow, scoring a breakaway goal that sent the Canucks tumbling to the mat for the ten-count.
“I think we played all right, we did some good things tonight,” said Quinn Hughes. “They just capitalized a little bit more on their looks in the third. We had our looks as well but sometimes you’re just going to lose a close game.”
Makar and the Avalanche may have won the first bout but all that did was set the stage for a highly-anticipated rematch…which won’t happen until late February. Come on, who made this schedule? I can’t be expected to delay my gratification that long.
I wanted to watch more games between the Canucks and Avalanche immediately after I watched this game.
- There was some questionable officiating in this game that threw off the playoff-esque vibes of a game that was humming along nicely at 5-on-5. A couple of weak calls on the Canucks in the first period sapped some of their momentum and then the second period saw a cavalcade of calls that led to some very strange special teams situations. I’m the last person to want the officials to swallow their whistles — I think every game, including the playoffs, should be called by the book — but the referees definitely could have stayed out of the way in this game.
- Elias Pettersson hasn’t looked like himself recently and not just because of his moustache, but he’s still as diligent defensively as ever. He provided some great back pressure on a first period sequence to pick a pocket, then quickly turned that into a shot in transition at the other end of the ice.
- J.T. Miller also led by example with the back pressure Rick Tocchet loves to see, skating hard from the faceoff dot in the offensive zone to get back to the middle of the ice in the defensive zone to pick off a potentially dangerous cross-ice pass. A big reason why the Canucks have been successful to start the season is efforts like this from their leading scorers.
- This might have been Anthony Beauvillier’s best game of the season, which is, unfortunately, not saying much. Beauvillier has been far too invisible early in the season, with more attention paid to how Tocchet mispronounces his name as “Beaulivier” than how he plays on the ice. But he was legitimately good in this game and picked up the primary assist on the opening goal.
- Sam Lafferty kicked off the play by getting the puck into the Avalanche zone, then fending off two checkers along the boards. Beauvillier swooped in like Uncle Jack to take the puck, cut to the left faceoff dot, and fire a sharp shot that Alexandar Georgiev couldn’t handle. Nils Höglander went hard to the net and kicked the rebound up to his stick, sent a bank pass to himself off the post for style points, then fired the puck top shelf.
- After a weak call on Conor Garland, the Avalanche power play went to work, pulling the Canucks penalty kill up high in the zone to create a 2-on-1 against Filip Hronek down low. It appeared to be a missed read by Pettersson but Hronek played it poorly as well, defending a passing lane into the slot that didn’t exist, leaving the backdoor pass wide open for Mikko Rantanen to set up Valeri Nichushkin for the tying goal.
- A minute later, the Avalanche took the lead. I’ve been trying to look for the good in Noah Juulsen’s game since I raked him over the coals earlier in the week but there’s no ignoring how badly he botched his coverage on the 2-1 goal, completely losing sight of Jonathan Drouin and allowing him unfettered access to the front of the net to tip in a Cale Makar point shot. I guess I’ll have to get out my coal rake again.
- Dakota Joshua had a strong game even if he couldn’t buy a goal if he had an American Express Black Card. In the dying seconds of the first period, he was robbed by Georgiev on a point-blank chance set up by Teddy Blueger, then sent the rebound behind the goaltender but right through the crease and out the other side.
- The penalties got a little weird in the second period. It started with Brock Boeser battling Josh Manson in front of the net. The two got coincidental crosschecking penalties, but upon review, Manson’s stick in the face of Boeser earned him a five-minute major and a game misconduct. No one was more stunned by the call than Manson, who spent his brief time in the penalty box acting out an impression of Boeser’s supposed embellishment.
- Honestly, it should have just been a two-minute minor and not a major but it barely mattered: the Canucks didn’t spend any* of the five-minute major on the power play. Boeser’s penalty canceled out the first two minutes, then Anthony Beauvillier took an interference penalty just before Boeser’s penalty ended, then Tyler Myers took a slashing penalty a minute-and-a-half later. The Avalanche spent more time on the power play during the major than the Canucks did.
- *Okay, technically they spent the first six seconds of the major penalty on a 4-on-3 penalty, as it was the tail end of a previous tripping minor on Nichushkin. But that’s a technicality.
- During some of the 4-on-4 time, J.T. Miller tied up the game with the most beastly goal since “Find someone to truly love me before the rose drops its final petal.” Just look at this. Look at this!
- Miller coasts diagonally through the neutral zone, looking like he’s going to set up a criss-cross play with Pettersson on the zone entry. Instead, as soon as Devon Toews has committed to the middle, Miller cuts back to the outside with a burst of speed to get a step on Toews. He leans into Toews and pulls the puck into his skates, taking his stick off the puck in the process to prevent a stick check from knocking the puck loose, then kicks the puck back up to his stick and fires a dart short side past Georgiev. Simply incredible.
- I’m just going to say it: that’s a better skate-to-stick goal than Pavel Bure’s. Now I’ll just wait for the comments to light me up like Four Leaf Tayback.
- Despite the five-minute major never actually putting the Canucks on the power play (aside from the aforementioned six seconds), you have to wonder if that call made the referees hesitant to call anything else against the Avalanche the rest of the game. At one point, Nichushkin threw Mark Friedman to the ice, smacking him across the head with his stick in the process, but no penalties were assessed. Friedman, with blood spattered across his visor, left the game and didn’t return.
- The Avalanche took the lead early in the third period when a Miles Wood shot went through Pettersson’s legs in the shooting lane, then deflected in off Riley Tufte’s leg. It was the type of bounce that the Canucks just couldn’t get in this game, also known as “regression.”
- I like Höglander a lot and feel he’s an essential part of the team’s bottom-six right now but this is the type of play that must drive Tocchet up the wall. He comes down low to support his defence, which is great, but when he gets the puck, instead of turning to the boards and protecting the puck with his body, he tries to pass it through a forechecker, turning the puck over for a scoring chance. He’s got to learn that there are times when the boring, safe play is the right play.
- Of course, he’s not the only one who needs to learn that lesson. Miller got burned by Makar when he made a risky spin play at the Avalanche blue line. Makar poked the puck free and was off to the races like Anakin Skywalker. Thatcher Demko got a piece of Makar’s shot with his glove, but not enough.
- Here’s something that might be cause for concern: Tyler Myers appeared to take a puck off his left hand with about six minutes remaining in the game and went to the bench hunched over in pain. He didn’t play another shift. Hopefully, that was just precautionary, as Myers has played quite well of late and the Canucks can ill afford to lose another defenceman with Carson Soucy already out and Friedman leaving the game to boot.
- Rantanen added an empty net goal to make the final score 5-2, which has been a pretty popular score for the Canucks this season. Six of their 20 games have ended in a 5-2 score, winning three of them and losing three of them. Does it mean anything? Probably not. But it’s a thing that happened.
