Courtesy: Matthew Henderson

The Vancouver Canucks celebrated Vancouver Grizzlies night on Monday, baffling Philadelphia Flyers beat writers and Canadian Press national reporters with a discordant sort of celebration of a team that left the city 15 years ago.

Shareef Abdul-Raheem was in attendance! So was the original Grizzlies dance squad! Alex Burrows played his 700th game! Henrik Sedin recorded his 1000th career point – cumulative between playoffs and the regular season. And Bo Horvat and Jake Virtanen, respectively, had the strongest games of their respective seasons. So there was a lot to like.

“It’s pretty special getting your first one on home-ice in front fo the fans, pretty special,” Virtanen told reporters of scoring his first career goal on Monday, somehow forgetting to mention that it was special because the goal occurred on Grizzlies night…

The Philadelphia Flyers are a pretty bad defensive team and it showed early as Bo Horvat, Jannik Hansen and Sven Baertschi needed just 70 seconds or so to manufacture the opening goal. The goal was a beauty, but the Flyers made several mistakes in the neutral zone to set it up (and Philadelphia’s defenders didn’t exactly distinguish themselves on the goal either:

(Courtesy: NHL.com)

By the time the Flyers came up for air and found their balance, the Canucks had outshot them 8-1 and were firmly in control of the proceedings.

That sense of control slipped away from the Canucks in the games middle frame, as the Flyers began to assert themselves and outshot the home side by a wide margin in the second period. Claude Giroux put a lovely goal past Ryan Miller to level the score, and for a minute, the outcome was in serious doubt.

(Courtesy: NHL.com)

The sense of it being a close game didn’t last for too long as Bo Horvat scored a wraparound-type goal off of a faceoff that followed a mystifying – an unintentionally game altering – penalty call. During a battle along the boards both Daniel Sedin and Claude Giroux hit the ice, and the referee five feet away from them didn’t raise his arm. The on-ice official at centre ice did, however, and ended up calling offsetting minors on Daniel for hooking and Giroux for holding the stick. It was all pretty weird, which was appropriate for Grizzlies night.

It worked out for Horvat though, who managed to score his second goal of the season in a 4-on-4 situaton shortly after the ensuing faceoff. Basically Horvat doubled his production on the year in 30 minutes on Monday night.

While the production has been slow in coming for Horvat in his sophomore season, it’s worth noting that he’s being relied on to do so much more defensively this season than he was in the past. On Monday, for example, he was tied with Jannik Hansen with the most short-handed ice time among all Canucks forwards and handily led the club in defensive-zone draws. Perhaps most notably, Willie Desjardins trusted Horvat to take five draws in 5-on-4 situations. In contrast, Brandon Sutter took none.

While Horvat played well on Monday, Virtanen stole the show with his first career goal.

(Courtesy: NHL.com)

It’s hard to remember the last time Rogers Arena sounded so loud, isn’t it? 

You’d have to say that it’s a pretty good sign that Virtanen made a quality defensive play to set himself up for the rush chance that led to his first career goal. The 19-year-old forward has actually been Vancouver’s best shot suppression forward, and looks to have the ‘driving play as a winger by being a big guy who skates like the wind through the neutral zone’ thing down pat. 

Though Virtanen’s underlying numbers look stellar – he led the club in shot attempt differential at 5-on-5 again on Monday – he only played 10:50 in the contest. He also didn’t have a shift longer than 30 seconds until after he’d put the game away. 

Whatever. Big Country scored on Grizzlies night, which is hilarious. He was all smiles, understandably:

Courtesy: Stefan Virtanen

Though Vancouver’s other 19-year-old forward didn’t score on Monday night, I thought Jared McCann had a solid game on the fourth-line with Adam Cracknell and Derek Dorsett. Cracknell protected McCann in the faceoff circle (the 19-year-old only took four draws in the context, losing all of them), and that line played solid low event hockey. I also thought the Sutter line with Burrows and Virtanen looked good in this one.

On defense, Edler and Tanev were their typical selves, which is extra impressive tonight since they bumped into one of the most dynamic forward lines in hockey and acquitted themselves ably. Matt Bartkowski was victimized by Giroux on his highlight reel goal, but I thought his pair with Dan Hamhuis looked quiet and solid for the most part. Ben Hutton and Yannick Weber, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired. It seemed to me that they were pinned in their own end repeatedly in this one, something the underlying numbers back up, and had a few iffy defensive shifts. 

Hutton had some excellent moments carrying the puck, and Weber and Hutton were very good together on the club’s recent road trip through Dallas and Glendale. It was tough sledding for that pair tonight.

Finally Ryan Miller stayed hot, stopping 33 of 34 shots faced. He’s been really good and he made some tough saves on Monday, though to my eyes, this was one of Vancouver’s better defensive efforts of the season.

And to cap off Grizzlies night, the Memphis Grizzlies celebrated too by suffering their single biggest loss in franchise history:

Swish!