Canucks Army Post-game: The Matt Bart-wow-ski Show

Matt Bartkowski has played in 137 NHL games. 

Sure, he only has one regular season goal… but we all start somewhere, right? Praise be the new defenseman. 

Matt Bartkowski, when with the Boston Bruins, was a magical mystery to watch every night. 

He’d make some really weird choices for an offensive-minded blue liner, lose the puck (in a very Keith Yandle kind of way, which is not a good thing), then never actually score – but with his first regular season goal only two weeks into his first season with Vancouver, you have to hope things are turning around for the Pittsburgh native. 

Plus, he looked really excited. Let’s take that excitement and run away with the Pacific Division on pity points, shall we?

The Edmonton Oilers got pretty outplayed by Vancouver throughout the entire game; I actually watched the whole game (and didn’t even check the stats graphs until regulation had ended), and the eye test pretty much matched the numbers. 

Brandon Sutter was fairly invisible throughout most of the game, Luca Sbisa and Justin Schultz cancelled each other out, and Ben Hutton was a perfect piece to the blue line puzzle who deserves much, much nicer things than Sbisa as a defensive pairing. 

I don’t want to further the sentiment that goaltending is voodoo, but Ryan Miller came dangerously close to extending his streak of never losing to the Oilers – despite being the less effective of the two goaltenders tonight. Anders Nilsson, who was a struggling hot mess express while with the New York Islanders a few years back, had eyes on the puck throughout the entire game – while Ryan Miller made 22 floppy Ryan Miller-esque saves and somehow eked out a pity point for his team. 

Edmonton had a few flashy looks from Connor McDavid throughout the game – including one that translated into a goal for Russian interview legend Nail Yakupov – and Taylor Hall looked great. The Canucks managed to outpossess and outshoot Edmonton by a wide margin, though, and it was really only Anders Nilsson’s weirdly incredible game that kept this from being a 7-1 score in favor of the Canucks. 

Oh, wait… there was also that one thing: 

Anyways, Lauri Korpikoski scored the overtime-winning goal and Daniel Sedin seems to have forgotten how to be clutch. 

As I said, Vancouver should have won this game. Anyways. 

Can I mention one more time how much I loved Ben Hutton tonight? I mean, this is quickly becoming just “I love Ben Hutton”, but we’re still early in the season – so I’ll try to slow my roll for now.

Kid did all the work of two defensemen, since nothing totally disastrous happened when he was out on the ice and he spent a nice chunk of time with Luca Sbisa. 

I know that our good friend and fellow Canucks Army writer Josh Weissbock said that if we’re surprised by Hutton, we haven’t been paying attention – but it’s still a pleasant surprise to see a rookie looking so confident and effective right off the jump. He looked great all night, and that’s becoming an extremely regular thing. 

Canucks still sit in second in the Pacific Division, but they’re now tied points-wise with San Jose (thank you, pity point!). They’ve lost two in a row (as have the Arizona Coyotes), but the rest of the division started off the season by diving headlong off a cliff – so with good possession numbers and that nice points buffer that they, Arizona, and San Jose built, things are still fine in Vancouver. 

On to the next one.