Sometimes, all you need is one. One pass to go the right way. One hit to change the momentum. One fan who was distracting you deciding to head upstairs and grab a hot dog instead. One of something, it doesn’t quite matter. Tonight, it was one well-placed shot which pulled the Canucks out of a sticky situation and into the victory books.

Honestly, this game didn’t look very winnable in the early goings. The Canucks put themselves at an early disadvantage just forty-six seconds into the game, when Jake Virtanen caught Nicklas Grossmann up high with his stick. It didn’t lead to a goal, but put the early momentum in Arizona’s favour.

It was momentum they carried for quite some time, even as they were killing penalties. By the time the third period came along, Arizona had a 24-10 lead in the shot count, making their Corsi charts look like the exact opposite of their quarterly revenue reports. Needless to say, not what the Canucks were hoping for.

Thankfully, Jacob Markstrom was lights out, and when the third period came along, the players found their stride and started giving Mike Smith a hard time. When Kyle Chipchura headed to the box midway through the period, the team capitalized. 

Alex Burrows left a puck for Ben Hutton, who set up Jared McCann for a powerplay snipe that took a lot of patience and precision. The Canucks, knowing that relying on a shutout was a bad idea, kept pressing, and while they couldn’t pick up an insurance tally, they didn’t end up needing it.

This one is easy – you have to give it to Jacob Markstrom. If this is what we’re going to see from the 25-year-old during the regular season, you better believe we have yet another year of goaltending controversies ahead of his. While he had a couple of near slip-ups, Markstrom was composed and played a very, very strong technical game to get the shutout. If he isn’t lights out, the Canucks easily lose this game.

It looks like rookie phenoms aren’t the only murder targets on Jake Virtanen’s hit-list. The young power forward threw this hit on Antoine Vermette just seconds into the game and managed to high stick Luca Sbisa at the same time. You better treasure this play, soldiers; this may be the only one that delights both the “passion will keep these boys going” and the “the books say this team is probably bad” crowd.

Also, why in gods name is Sbisa even there on this play?

Cracknell was quick to return to the ice, but for a few seconds, he looked visibly hurt. Scary stuff, but now that we know nothing bad happened, we can point and laugh at how these two apparently had no idea where the other was.

The Canucks return to the ice tomorrow night to take on the San Jose Sharks at 7:30 PM PST.