Canucks Defeat the Sabres 4-2

In a first intermission interview with Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy, Chris Tanev essentially said that in spite of the 2-1 deficit that if the Canucks continued to play as they did in the first, they’d probably come out on top.
There was every reason to be confident from the Canucks perspective. They won the territorial battle at even strength and pinned the Buffalo Sabres in their zone for minutes at a time. The shots were 17-5 when the frame ended.
Sabres winger Justin Bailey opened the scoring a minute into the game, and Jack Eichel went end-to-end and snuck one underneath Canucks goaltender Jacob Markstrom’s pads for the second goal. Canucks winger Markus Granlund scored a goal of his own between the two Sabres tallies — his first of the season.
In the second period, almost as Tanev predicted, the Canucks continued to press, and the scoreboard started to reflect it. On a rare odd-man rush for the Canucks penalty kill, Brandon Sutter carried the puck into the offensive zone, fired a low shot for a rebound and Derek Dorsett was there to put it home to draw the game at two. About two minutes later, Daniel Sedin scored a controversial goal that involved a questionable offside call in the Canucks’ favour, sending his own rebound past Sabres netminder Chad Johnson.
From there, the Canucks cruised to the final horn. The Sabres pressed in the third, but the Canucks did a bang-up job of protecting the lead without completely going into a shell. Dorsett put away the game with an empty-net goal late in the third, good to give him the lead for goals on the Canucks with his fourth of the young season. Just like everyone predicted.
Jacob Markstrom stopped 20 of 22 Sabres shots. Opposite Markstrom, Chad Johnson stopped 37 of 40 Canucks tries.

Stats

Quick Hits

  • I’m not sure if Markstrom is ever going to be able to win the starting job for more than a week at a time if he keeps giving up an inexcusably soft goal in the first period of every game. Markstrom is a proud goaltender and thoroughly honest when assessing his own play — there’s no way he’s happy about this trend. It has to be driving Canucks head coach Travis Green mad as well. The Eichel goal today, while not a good look for the Canucks defence and Ben Hutton in particular, just can’t happen. Full marks to Markstrom bouncing back and playing an otherwise excellent game. He always — or almost always, rather — seems to bounce back from those ugly goals. But it’s bad practice to put your team in a situation where they’re always chasing. Hopefully, Markstrom can fix that part of his game.
  • Derek Dorsett is the Canucks leading goal-scorer. Yes, that Derek Dorsett — leads the Canucks in goals. Four of them. A year after potentially career-threatening neck surgery. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m a fan of his deployment. On the contrary, I don’t think there’s ever a good reason to play Dorsett anywhere close to the 18:02 he played tonight. He’s a fourth-liner, on the wrong side of 30, and I don’t suspect he’s going to improve his game at any point significantly. In fact, I think he’s the player the Canucks should sit on nights when they’re deciding between Brock Boeser, Alexander Burmistrov and Jake Virtanen. But, man, what a hell of a story. I have to hand it to Dorsett, to return to the Canucks lineup at all given his role and the injury he recovered from is an amazing feat unto itself. That he’s been semi-effective at even strength and led the team in goals for any period of time is really, really damn cool. I’m happy for the guy, even if I don’t necessarily agree with his usage. I mean, how couldn’t you be?
  • This was the Canucks best game of the year. Yes, it was against Buffalo, but it’s still worth noting all the same. As The Daily Hive’s Rob Williams pointed out at the end of the second period, they’d already bested their single-game shot record for the year by that point in the game. It was on the second half of a back-to-back. Real recognize real.
  • Ben Hutton has to get better in the defensive zone, full-stop. The way Hutton played that Eichel goal would leave most pee-wee coaches pulling their hair. There is absolutely no room or time to make a play, so Hutton shouldn’t take his eyes off the attacking forward to try and fish a puck out of his skates that he clearly can’t find. You have to take the body on that play. I can’t stress enough how painfully obvious that would — or rather should — be to anyone who’s ever played the position. There’s a lot to like about Hutton’s game; it’s just that the defensive side of it is not there yet. It doesn’t even look close most nights.
  • With Erik Gudbranson sidelined by a one-game suspension, Troy Stecher got to play a more significant role for the Canucks, and I thought he handled it really well. I like the way Stecher is jumping into the play to try and create offence. Let’s hope Green takes notice and starts to play Stecher in a larger role when everyone is there for the Canucks blue line. Stecher deserves too.
  • If you follow us on Twitter, you’ll notice that we’ve brought back CanucksArmy’s Money on the Board charity pledge. Here are the basics: you choose a prop bet and put money down for it. Here are my bets for the year: For every game Brandon Sutter finishes with an even or better Corsi rating, that’s two dollars. Same rules apply for Erik Gudbranson. And since I actually want to donate to this charity, I added another pledge: I would donate $2.00 for every Stecher point. It’s such a great cause. All proceeds go to the Make a Wish Foundation. I’d implore everyone with a little spare change to put their money down to make some kid’s dream come to life.