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Canucks Army Post-Game: Tank Buster
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Photo credit: SGT PAUL L. ANSTINE II, USMC
J.D. Burke
Mar 22, 2017, 01:26 EDT
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Canucks Defeat Blackhawks 5-4 in Overtime Thriller

Whether it was the initial Chicago Blackhawks surge which set the course for a dynasty or Duncan Keith’s elbow after they established their empire, that team has long haunted the Vancouver Canucks and their fans. Tonight was no different.
The Canucks needed a loss this evening; hell they need one each and every night they’re playing, and if it breaks that way enough times, they can catch the Arizona Coyotes for 29th place in the NHL. That matters because finishing third this year doesn’t mean as much as it would in most. You can thank the Vegas Golden Knights for that.
Arizona did their part. They beat the surging Tampa Bay Lightning, and pulled within two points of the Canucks. All the Blackhawks had to do was run their winning streak a game longer, and that leaves ten games for the Canucks to slip another two points. Easy enough, right? Wrong.
Call it a rekindling of an ancient rivalry, and the Canucks jumping at the spark it lit under them. Hell, maybe it’s just blind luck. Most nights, you’re not going to score five goals on fifteen shots. That didn’t stop the Canucks, who chased Corey Crawford from the Blackhawks net about two minutes into the third.
In a rare twist, Brandon Sutter’s line, with a returning Jack Skille and the much maligned Jayson Megna led an unexpected, improbable offensive surge, to put the Canucks in the driver’s seat with a 4-1 lead and less than a full period to defend it. The Blackhawks steadily upped the ante, adding goals along the way, until a Ryan Hartman goal with just over a minute left and Scott Darling on the bench knotted things at four a side.
That tie didn’t last long. The Canucks pulled ahead of a Sedin-to-Sedin connection, and it was Daniel on the finishing end of that equation deftly putting the puck past Darling and securing a victory his team did everything to throw away in the third.

Stats

Quick Hits

  • Goaltending optional! Tonight’s game featured nine goals on 59 shots from both club’s. There was a goalie change. No matter how you spin it, this wasn’t a banner night for either goaltending. In fact, there were three times as many goals tonight as there should have been according to Corsica.Hockey’s expected goals model. You know the funniest part? I don’t think any of the goals stick out as especially bad.
  • Maybe all the Canucks needed when their season fell apart was Jack Skille? It doesn’t seem so bizarre a thought as the dust settles on tonight’s game. In just a hair over eight minutes of even strength ice-time, Skille was noticeable, dynamic even, and it reflected in his plus-six shot attempt differential at even strength and the assist he contributed on the second of Brandon Sutter’s two goals.
  • Sometimes, I get the sense that Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins is daring management to fire him. Okay, perhaps not seriously, but you can’t blame me for jumping to that conclusion on a day where he plays Alex Biega out of position as a forward rather than suiting up a healthy and ready to go Joseph LaBate. Play the kids? Hell, I’d settle for playing available players at their natural position. And before you go “Ah, but the expansion draft, you see” I’d suggest you go to Ryan Biech’s article on that very topic and how it pertains to the Canucks perplexing usage of Biega.
  • On the one hand, I notice Reid Boucher has just over twelve minutes, and I want to pump my first and declare victory for the #PTK (play the kids) movement. Then I see a Jeff Paterson tweet which shows Boucher as benched for the last ten minutes of the game. I just don’t get it. The kid scored. He’s played well enough defensively as a Canuck. At no point did he have any egregious turnovers, and if that even mattered, try explaining that as a negative to someone who watches Luca Sbisa play top four minutes nightly. It’s a step in the right direction, I guess? It’s just that I wish for more than one night at a time Desjardins could play Boucher without giving the sense he was doing so at gunpoint, and ready to bench him the second his assailant lets the rifle down.
  • That was a hell of a night for Sutter. Two goals and none of them were ticky-tack garbage goals. In both instances, Sutter used one of his best assets, his hands, to deftly deke out Crawford and leave him undressed in his wake. I don’t know if the #ExposeSutter2017 ever had legs in the Canucks front office, but if it did, I get the sense tonight swept the rug from under them.
  • I don’t hate Michael Chaput with the Sedin twins, but I sure as hell don’t like it either. There are things Chaput does well. I like Chaput as a fourth line forward, and I’ve defended him accordingly as apt at filling that role. I just don’t know how keen I am on watching the first line experiment with Chaput. The Sedins looked fairly toothless tonight and drowned at even strength.

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