Welcome back to Stars of the Week at CanucksArmy.com/Daily Faceoff Vancouver! Every week, we’ll be bringing you our Top Three best and brightest performers on the Vancouver Canucks that week. Disagree with our picks or have your own stars to nominate? Let us know in the comments below! Last week, I asked the question of whether Aatu Räty would ever play consecutive games again or remain in permanent centre purgatory. Well, the answer turned out to be ‘never’ within the Canucks organization, as Räty was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs last week. Take this as a lesson learned about asking pressing questions regarding Canucks roster management: they will not hesitate to turn around and say, “Bet?” With Räty first waived and then traded, and Filip Chytil reactivated from IR, the Canucks continued on their East Coast swing down to Long Island and the Sunshine State this week. Their lineup looked a little different game to game, giving more players chances to step up and make their case as standouts, or at least dig themselves out of early-season holes they’ve ended up in. EP40 is on a point-per-game pace, EP25 has already scored 3 goals after scoring 3 through 70 games last year, and Chytil is playing heavy even-strength minutes and has two points in his two games back thus far. The ingredients to win games are there; they just aren’t coming together as a full meal quite yet. This takes us to the present. The Canucks haven’t won a game in two weeks (the rebuild is going to plan) but they did pick up a merciful overtime point against the Florida Panthers. Like Al Gore in 2000, the Canucks left Florida technically-but-not-totally winless.
Elias Pettersson (Defenceman)
D-Petey gets first star honours again this week, and will continue to as long as he keeps playing the way he has been. His strong run of games cannot continue forever, since it’s wise to remember he is still a young, developing defenceman and prone to mistakes, but he’s long been due a run like this. Luckily, when you’re on a team still in the early stages of a rebuild, you have the room and grace to make those mistakes, especially when you are particularly thriving under a new head coach. He scored his second goal of the year after Tom Willander and Brock Boeser worked to get the puck free for Filip Chytil to get it over to EP25, who gets right into the slot. Florida’s players are nowhere to be seen until it’s too late, all still stuck on Willander and Chytil down low. Pettersson does a fantastic job here as the key player amidst this cartoon: “Quick, create a diversion while I get up to mischief!” method.
Tom Willander
Willander deserves to be the second young blue liner to earn a star this week. He’s comfortably played himself into a top-four spot and has perhaps shown the most growth in the limited games the Canucks have played so far. It’s easy to forget this is just his sophomore season.
Willander got into a board battle with former first-overall pick Aaron Ekblad that directly led to D-Petey’s aforementioned goal thanks to it. Willander was offensively dominant against Florida, and given the Panthers’ penchant to blatantly disregard the concept of rules and discipline in the game and perhaps human life in general, this is no easy feat for the young defenceman. While the defensive core has been a mixed bag in terms of finding their footing, with Buium and Hronek broken up this week after failing to spark as a top pair and Jamie Oleksiak really having a difficult go of it, it’s been nice to see what is working out for some of the younger players, as opposed to what isn’t. Kevin Lankinen
It is no secret that Kevin Lankinen has struggled to start the season. While sharing netminder duties with Canucks newcomer Leevi Meriläinen, he’s put up a 6.40 GAA and .807 SV% through 7 games, while Meriläinen carries a 2.51 GAA and .925 SV% in 6 games. That’s enough to make any Canucks fan nervous.
And yet, Lankinen put up an excellent performance against the Tampa Bay Lightning this week. In the previous game, Meriläinen had done a significant job of keeping the Canucks in the game long enough to squeeze out an overtime loss, so when Lankinen started in net the following game, many of us held our breath. But surprise: Lankinen was able to rise to the occasion.
The Lightning have been a baseline level of good since Elias Pettersson, the forward, was still a rookie. While the Bolts didn’t have superweapon Andrei Vasilevskiy in goal, they had Dennis Hildeby, and Tampa is still a team that could easily lap the current Canucks. It was a far closer game than it had any business being, thanks to Lankinen.
Lankinen held his own against the likes of Nikita Kucherov and Jake Guentzel while making some genuine highlight-reel saves. Despite the loss, it’s still the kind of game for him that might help boost his confidence.
While Lankinen may not have played his way back into complete confidence yet, there is simply no way for Lankinen to find his game again if he’s not playing.
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