Game recap: An impressive weekend for the Canucks

Posted on by

Nabbing three of a possible four points on a back-to-back in week three? Who the hell are these guys?

If you’re a Canucks fan, get excited. Yes, I’m being dead serious.

I am as pessimistic about this team as just about anybody you’ll meet, and this level of optimism certainly comes with a considerable amount of caution, don’t get me wrong. But man, we Canucks fans aren’t really used to having fun little stretches like this, so revel in it while you still can.

With all that said, the last three games have showed some really promising signs that the Canucks’ current form might actually be sustainable, but more on that later.

Vancouver had a back-to-back this past weekend, and they grabbed three out of a possible four points. We can talk about how the second game ended after, but looking at it from face value, getting three of four points on a back-to-back is awesome.

GET HYPED, VANCOUVER!

Alright, let’s properly analyze each game that happened this weekend. It was a fun couple of nights in Canuck land.

Game 1: Vancouver 5 – 0 St. Louis 

Going into this one, I personally felt like this was a really good matchup for Vancouver. They had just come off a dominant 3-2 win against Nashville, but it was just the second time this season where the Canucks totally controlled the pace of play at 5v5.

St. Louis has been the worst team in the entire NHL at creating chances at even-strength, so going in, I was optimistic that the Canucks would carry the momentum from their last game.

To say they did would be a complete understatement.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cy7SMmcrMQW/

The Canucks came out of the first period with a 1-0 lead, but the score did not tell the full story in that period.

The only way to describe this period was that the Canucks absolutely, positively thwomped the Blues. A display of power that, frankly, I haven’t seen from this team in at least a decade.

The Canucks outshot St. Louis 19-2 in the opening 20 minutes, with the shot attempts being 35-4 in favour of Vancouver. Like I said, there was only one goal to show from it, which came off the stick of Quinn Hughes, who let go a perfect wrister past Jordan Binnington.

The Canucks’ level of dominance was felt on the scoresheet in the second period. Quinn Hughes got things going once again with a rather fluky goal, as he sent a backhander towards the net, which hit Blues forward Kevin Hayes and found its way into the net.

Phil Di Giuseppe would continue his great play with a goal just over a minute later. Tyler Myers shuts down a Blues rush opportunity, and sent Di Giuseppe on a breakaway where he made no mistake.

J.T. Miller would eventually score on a shorthanded breakaway (man, the Blues are not great at defending) and that basically all but sealed the deal for the Canucks. Ilya Mikheyev would put salt on the wound in the third period making it 5-0, which would end up being the final score.

Thatcher Demko nabbed his first fourth career shutout, with a 22 save performance. He wasn’t particularly busy on Friday, but he’s earned it. He’s been unreal to start this season.

That is now two-straight games where Vancouver took an opponent that had been previously grouped in the same tier as them, and absolutely toyed with them.

Canucks fans felt more encouraged than ever following that performance, and for good reason. The top players were clicking, the defence was rock solid, and Thatcher Demko is doing Thatcher Demko things.

The good vibes were aplenty on Friday night, but it was up to the boys in blue and green to carry that over to the following night, as the New York Rangers were in town. The Rangers have been a great team over the last two seasons, finishing in the top three of a stacked Metropolitan division in consecutive years.

Everyone knew this would be the Canucks’ biggest test of the season so far, but I felt pretty good going in, and here’s why…

The Rangers have been a low-key bad team at 5v5 for the last few seasons.

The reason they’re so successful is due to great special teams, a heavy reliance on high-end finishing talent, and, well, they have a literal god in net known as Igor Shesterkin. Having all of these is obviously great, but usually teams don’t win a Stanley Cup without being a top-end 5v5 team.

On top of all that, the Canucks were really starting to click at even strength. The combination of these factors lead me to believe that the Canucks had a genuine shot, here.

And they played awesome all night.

The Rangers would score first on the powerplay thanks to a perfect wrist shot from Artemi Panarin, who has had a great start to this NHL season, and that would be the only goal in the first period.

The game would remain 1-0 throughout the majority of the second frame, but it was J.T. Miller with a powerplay goal of his own, tipping a beautifully placed wrist shot from Filip Hronek to tie the game at one apiece.

Rangers’ netminder Igor Shesterkin was lights out in this one, so it was relieving to get one past him before the third period began.

The Canucks would continue to find themselves in penalty trouble, but for the second straight game, they’d tally a shorthanded goal.

Sit down for this one. Oh man.

Now, before I get into the goal, its no secret that Tyler Myers has been the center of a lot of criticism over the past few weeks, with most of it being completely justified in my eyes. He clearly knew he wasn’t playing well, and it was getting to him. Unforced error after unforced error.

I don’t know what happened leading up to this weekend, but Tyler Myers played the best hockey I’ve seen him play in a Canucks uniform. Full stop.

Myers makes a great play in the neutral zone to disrupt a Rangers zone entry, which created a two-on-one with Sam Lafferty the other way. Even though it looked like he was thinking pass, there was no way he wasn’t shooting that puck. An absolute beauty to put the Canucks ahead.

And then the Canucks took a too many men penalty…

Awesome!

Adam Fox would tie the game on the 5-on-3, and Mika Zibanejad would bury one shortly after to steal the lead right from the Canucks’ hands.

The building that was electric just moments before became silent, every ounce of energy was sucked out of the Rogers Arena. Carson Soucy then kicked down the door, slapped ~18,000 people square in the face, and purposely screamed in their faces all at once.

This is actually a wicked play from Soucy. Hronek sends him a pass that he has to reach for. He then briefly looks up, sees a lane to shoot, and absolutely staples that thing to the top right corner past the glove of Shesterkin.

More of that, please.

The fans are buzzing, the period winds down, overtime is on its way. Hands down the most entertaining game Vancouver has played this year, at least from a fan’s perspective.

It just sucks that it had to end like THAT.

Elias Pettersson gets tripped in the offensive zone, which directly leads to an odd-man rush for New York.

Take a guess as to what happened next.

For a league that prides themselves on referees that don’t directly impact the game, it sure does feel like referees directly impact the game a lot.

This non-call was so egregious that non-Canucks fans and media said their pieces on social media. Like, how on in the world does that not get called?

Even though they lost, the Canucks had a rather successful weekend in my eyes. Let’s hope that they can keep the good times rolling, because it really is nice to be watching winning hockey for a change.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *