For a second game in a row, the Canucks were without Elias Pettersson, who is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. And, for a second game in a row, the Canucks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, the best team in the all-Canadian North Division.
On Thursday, you could point to the Leafs being a tired team playing their second game on back-to-back nights, but Saturday there were no such excuses available. With Pettersson out of the lineup, the rest of the Canucks’ star forwards took it upon themselves to fill the void.
“It's just kind of a next man up mentality,” said Brock Boeser, who had a three-point night. “Obviously Petey's such a big part of our team but we know that we need to find ways to create offense and be difference makers and I think we did a good job of that tonight.”
With no Pettersson, J.T. Miller has slid into the middle, centring Boeser and Nils Höglander on the first line. It has resulted in his most effective hockey of the season.
“I think I'm more engaged in the game at centre,” said Miller. “It makes me really work back into my own end and make sure I win my battle or have good coverage.”
Most importantly, the Canucks’ best players stepped up on the power play, which has so often focused on setting up Pettersson for his deadly one-timer. Instead of suffering without that option, the power play was a major difference maker, scoring two big goals.
“When you're missing one of your best players and a lethal guy on the half-wall on the powerplay, other guys got to step up,” said Horvat, who scored one of the two power play goals.
“It sucks to not have his shot right there,” said Miller. “We didn't really score one from a set. It was a good break-in and then it was a pretty scrambly power play in the third, really, and we just got a puck to the net — Bo's one of the best middle guys in the league, in my opinion, and got a great tip.
“We understand that we're trying to fill a missing spot there but I think we're ready for the challenge.”
So, for the first time since January 30, the Canucks won two games in a row, and they did it without their star player, Elias Pettersson. Is this a turning point for the season? Did Pettersson’s absence galvanize the lineup, forcing them to realize that each of them needs to step up and play better? In two months, will we look back at this moment as when the 2020-21 Canucks season was saved?
“It could be a big turning point but we're not going to look too far ahead,” said Miller. “We're just gonna enjoy tonight and get ready for the next.”
That’s probably for the best. It’s important to live day-by-day. Period-by-period, I watched this game.
- The Canucks couldn’t get much going 5-on-5 in the first period, but it didn’t matter much because their power play was firing on all cylinders. They were snapping the puck around right off the faceoff on their first period power play, with everyone but Tanner Pearson at the net front getting a touch on the puck to create a fantastic chance for Horvat in the slot.
- The power play cashed in a moment later after the Leafs cleared the puck down the ice. Quinn Hughes hit Horvat with the breakout pass and he swung the puck out to the wing for Miller in full flight. While Miller drove up the left wing, Brock Boeser made like Han Solo and snuck in at the back door to blow up the shield generator. Er, I mean, finish off Miller’s pass.
- “It doesn't always work like that,” said Miller about the perfectly-executed goal. “[The Leafs] have been doing a really good job this whole year we've played them really of clogging our drop breakout up, so we had to change it up.We've worked on that before, it's one of our options that we go to if we need, and obviously caught them off guard a little bit with the speed on the outside with Brock there, and myself on the other side.”
- Quinn Hughes has looked fantastic in the offensive zone in recent games, ripping around the top half of the zone with extreme confidence. Witness this little shimmy at the blue line that completely flummoxed Mitch Marner, allowing Hughes to walk in and get a shot on net.
- The Leafs tied up the game on a perfectly-placed shot by John Tavares coming down the left wing. It beat Thatcher Demko on the short side and he’d surely want it back, but sometimes a great player beats you with a great shot.
- Justin Holl accidentally took the brunt of Demko's disgruntlement after the goal. Demko flipped the puck towards centre ice and hit Holl in what hockey commentators euphemistically call the "midsection."
- Demko was otherwise fantastic in the first period, keeping the score knotted at one heading into the first intermission. “He gives us a chance to win every single game he plays,” said Miller. “The last two games, with the volume of shots from talented players that he's getting, he's been unreal.”
- Demko couldn’t do much about the Leafs’ second goal — he couldn’t do much because Tyler Myers didn’t do much. A bad line change by Antoine Roussel resulted in a 4-on-3 that led to a 2-on-1 against Myers, who took away neither the shot nor the pass, but instead just bent over and swung his stick around so that only the heel of his blade was on the ice to prevent an impediment to the puck. Shockingly, the innovative defensive move of bending over didn’t work.
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- The goal by Jimmy Vesey meant the Canucks were heading into the third period down by a goal and they had yet to win a game this season when they were trailing heading into the third period. With how well they played in the second period, they were unlucky to be down by one.
- “There were stretches where I thought we really controlled the game, especially the last 15 minutes of the second period,” said Travis Green. “I thought the first period was a pretty even period — they had some more shots than we did, maybe controlled a little bit of the play. I thought the second period we really pushed and dominated.”
- The Miller line with Boeser and Höglander were easily the Canucks best line on the night, buzzing around the offensive zone, particularly in the second period, even when they couldn’t get a goal. The way they were pressuring the Leafs and forcing turnovers, it seemed like just a matter of time before the puck went in for them.
- “Us three talked a lot on the bench. We knew we kind of had them on their heels there,” said Miller. “We were playing simple. Sometimes there's room to make plays but sometimes every time you get it deep and you move your feet, you create turnovers and that's a strong suit of our team. Nothing that we created was really a skill play — it was all from moving our feet and creating the turnover and then we have the skill to make a play after that.”
- When I asked Boeser about how Miller has played at centre, his eyes darted to the side and he smiled, so I had to ask if Miller was listening in. “Yeah, he’s listening in right now,” said Boeser, laughing, before saying, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, “He can win draws sometimes, or get kicked out a lot.”
- The comeback started on the power play after William Nylander cleared the puck over the glass. As the Canucks tried to get set up, Boeser got the puck at the point and decided a quick shot couldn’t hurt. Horvat got tippier than a drunk man standing in canoe, deflecting Boeser’s shot under Frederik Andersen’s arm to tie the game.
- Less than a minute later, the Miller line had a bounce go their way after controlling possession most of the game. Boeser stutter-stepped past T.J. Brodie to create a shot that deflected off Brodie’s stick into Morgan Rielly’s skates and bounced right to Miller like he was Captain America and it was his shield: that thing does not obey the laws of physics at all. He suddenly had an open net to make it 3-2.
- “We were creating a lot and we kind of just felt like we needed to just stick with it and hopefully get a bounce and that's kind of what happened on my goal,” said Miller. “Honestly, I probably should have drove the net. I thought Brock and I were going to criss-cross or something and once I realized he was going to shoot, I just angled that way and it's nice to get a bounce.”
- There were still nervous moments until Höglander added an insurance marker late in the third. Mitch Marner made a dreadful drop pass in the neutral zone, giving Boeser, Höglander, and Nate Schmidt a 3-on-1. Schmidt fed the puck to Höglander on the right wing and he fired it upstairs like Warren Mears.
- “Högs has an unreal shot, an unreal release,” said Miller. “I think he's got more goals to come like the insurance goal tonight.”
- Höglander notably played this game and the last with ö replacing the o on the back of his jersey. While some have called it an umlaut, there’s technically no such thing in Swedish. Instead, ö is a separate letter in Swedish, not just an o with an accent. There are 29 letters in the Swedish alphabet, with three accented letters — å, ä, and ö — coming after z.
- Travis Hamonic was an unsung hero, playing his best game of the season. In over 21 minutes of ice time, he made some strong defensive plays, blocked four shots, and connected on breakout passes. He even saved a goal in a play that flew under the radar, swatting away a puck in the crease that Demko didn't see just before Zach Hyman could poke it in.
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- If Hamonic doesn’t make that play, then the Leafs would have taken a 3-1 lead, making it a lot harder for the Canucks to come back. It’s a small play, but a crucial one. Instead, the Canucks stormed back and can feel positive about a big win over the top team in the division. Now they just have to keep it going against their kryptonite: Tyler Toffoli and the Montreal Canadiens.
