The Arizona Coyotes have been creators of chaos in recent games.
They dropped eight goals on the playoff-bound Nashville Predators last week. On the weekend, they traded goals with the Eastern Conference-leading New York Rangers, nearly pulling off a late comeback before a couple of empty-net goals gave the Rangers the 8-5 win. That’s not to mention their 6-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
That’s 19 goals in their last three games, each of them wildly high-event affairs — Rick Tocchet’s worst nightmare.
Wanting to avoid that type of run-and-gun game, particularly on the second half of back-to-back games, the Canucks might have overcompensated a little, choking out their own offence as much as they did the Coyotes’. Still, you can’t argue with how much they limited Arizona, at least in the first two periods.
The Canucks allowed just three shots on goal in the first period. They allowed just four shots on goal in the second period. They forced the Coyotes into a grinding, low-event game that played against the Coyotes’ strengths but it also meant they scored just one goal themselves.
“I thought we managed the puck really well and didn’t give them much,” said Tocchet. “They’ve got some good players over there. Keller, he’s world-class, Schmaltz — those guys are good players, so to keep them off the sheet is tough.”
It was only in the third, as the effects of fatigue started to set in for the Canucks and the Coyotes pushed hard, that they gave up 14 shots on goal. Even then, the Canucks and goaltender Arturs Silovs only allowed one goal.
“I think we maintained two great periods and didn’t give them too much,” said Silovs. “Then it was really logical that they were going to push back in the third period because it was a one-zero game, right? They scored and then we pushed back and we managed to win the game.”
It certainly would have been less nerve-wracking if the Canucks had put the game away earlier and left less room for the Coyotes to tie it in the third period. That’s how they operated to start the season, piling up goals until a comeback was an impossibility. But that approach required a lot of bounces to go their way and Tocchet has emphasized the need to be able to grind out wins in the playoffs.
So, this is the result: low-event, low-scoring hockey. Will it be more effective in the playoffs than their early-season approach would have been? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.
I do know that it works a lot better when you have a goaltender shutting the door behind you.
“It’s just being an anchor for the team,” said Silovs. “They can trust me and I want to get all of that, so the players are more comfortable to play in front of me.”
He’s earned the trust of Conor Garland, at least, who is much happier having him on his team than facing him in the opposing net.
“He beat me at Worlds this year; he stood on his head and took a medal from us,” said Garland. “It’s good to see him playing for us and playing great. He’s a talent and he’s just going to keep getting better.”
Silovs continued to make an argument for being the Canucks’ backup goaltender next season when I watched this game.
- Tocchet shook up the Canucks’ lineup a little heading into this game and healthy scratched Pius Suter, who has just one goal in his last 27 games. He replaced him not with a forward but with defenceman Mark Friedman. It was the most unexpected substitution since an online shopper in the UK ordered tampons but got mushrooms instead.
- “If you’re going into a game like, ‘I’ve scored one goal in 30 games, I’m struggling to get my shot off,’ right away you’re thinking negatively,” said Tocchet in the morning. “I think if you go into a game — this is just my experience from telling players — pick one thing. If that’s my man, I’m going to make sure I go through him; he’s not going to get above me. If I get the puck down low, if somebody’s open, give it to them, if not, hold onto the puck, don’t throw it blind.
“If you just do those two things early in your game, it’s amazing how all that positive good stuff comes from that. But if you’re looking at it negatively, like you’re struggling, then you’re just throwing hope plays and you lose your man because you don’t go through him, and you’re going to struggle even more.”
- It was a very quiet first period, as the Canucks’s few shots were largely point shots from their defencemen, while the Coyotes barely got shots at all. The Canucks’ power play contributed to the silence with one of the worst performances we’ve seen with the man advantage since Juwanna Mann, though much less offensive.
- The Canucks’ second power play of the game, on the other hand, was absurdly better, to the point that I had to double-check that it was actually the same players on the first power play unit both times. The Canucks were all over the Coyotes like an ACME anvil, culminating in Quinn Hughes beating goaltender Connor Ingram past a Conor Garland screen.
- Garland may not seem like a prime candidate to screen a goaltender but his small stature evidently tempted Ingram to look over the top of Garland, causing him to take a fraction of a second too long to drop into his butterfly, allowing Hughes’ shot to slip under his pads.
- The Canucks were much better in the second period than in the first, creating more offensively with some diligent forechecking to create turnovers. Both the line of Dakota Joshua, J.T. Miller, and Conor Garland and the line of Nils Höglander, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser were buzzing and were a bit unlucky not to create another goal or two in the second.
- Vasily Podkolzin had the Canucks’ best chance to score at 5-on-5 in the second period, as he jumped to a rebound off a Tyler Myers shot with an open net, but he got practically bear-hugged by Dylan Guenther and tackled to the ice. Podkolzin probably hasn’t been held like that since he was a child in his mother’s arms but somehow it wasn’t deemed a holding penalty.
- Jack McBain absolutely lit up Elias Pettersson with a clean open-ice hit midway through the second period and J.T. Miller responded by dropping the gloves with the big Coyotes winger. I’m of multiple minds on this one. On the one hand, it’s great to see Miller stand up for Pettersson and it could be a galvanizing force for the Canucks room; on the other hand, the last thing the Canucks need is Miller breaking a finger just before the playoffs; on a third hand, the fight ended a Coyotes scoring chance; on yet another hand, that chance might not have happened if Miller had just kept backchecking instead of stopping to fight. There are many hands involved, is all I’m saying.
- Arturs Silovs didn’t face a heavy volume of shots but he came up with some big saves, with his best coming on Michael Kesselring in the second period. Clayton Keller made a gorgeous cross-crease pass but Silovs read it perfectly, getting his left pad across to make the save. That’s the benefit of being 6’4”: Silovs still had his right skate on the post as he stretched his left skate to the opposite post.
- “[Silovs] looks like a veteran in there,” said Tocchet. “Very solid, looks big in the net. You’re looking from the bench, you’re looking at shots, he just looks big. Really like the poise in the kid…Even some shots and the rebounds, he’s right there. He’s not flipping and flopping, he’s right there. He looks like he’s been watching [Thatcher] Demko tapes.”
- Late in the second period, Brock Boeser hustled to take away a dangerous scoring chance after a bad change by Teddy Blueger, which was crucial considering how many times the Canucks have given up late goals heading into the intermission over the past month or so. Like the subject of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s biggest hit, Boeser got back.
- The Coyotes pushed hard in the third period and finally got the puck past Silovs on the power play. It was a well-executed bumper play, with Keller and Alex Kerfoot passing around Nikita Zadorov’s attempts to take away the passing lanes, while Blueger was a second too late to lift Guenther’s stick to prevent the shot from the slot.
- The tying goal was scored on a Quinn Hughes penalty — his second of the period — that he strongly felt shouldn’t have been called. Hughes seemed to take it on himself to make it right with a dazzling shift where he skated an entire circuit of the offensive zone, dancing around Coyotes like a lightning storm in the Sonoran Desert, until he fired a shot looking for a tip and instead saw the puck ricochet off the backboards to Conor Garland, who provided the thunderclap to Quinn’s lightning, one-timing the puck top shelf.
- The win, combined with a loss by the Edmonton Oilers, further solidified the Canucks’ place at the top of the Pacific Division. They’re now seven points up on the Oilers and ten points up on the third-place Vegas Golden Knights. Sure, the Oilers have two games in hand and the Golden Knights have one, but the Canucks have essentially put the Pacific out of reach.
