OK we’ve done a lot of these this season, where we talk about how the Vancouver Canucks started off strong, before wilting away into the night.
And on Wednesday night, it really felt like it could have gone down that same path. Despite having one of their best first periods in a long while, the Canucks found themselves down 1-0 after a fortuitous bounce went in the Anaheim Ducks favour.
It was at this point that the Canucks could have easily folded. For a team that has lacked confidence this season, the simplest thing to do would have been to let the frustration sink in. To let the anger take over. To commit to a dump-and-chase life until the end of time.
Except this time, the Canucks tried something different. They tried this novel thing called “fighting back”. They found a way to claw back into the game, and ultimately walked away with a 3-2 victory.
Was it a perfect game? Not by a long shot.
Should we be over-celebrating a win against the Anaheim Ducks? Of course not.
But if the end goal for this team is to float through the trade deadline without selling or buying too much and still have a shot at the playoffs, this game was probably the blueprint of how it’s going to get done.
With Quinn Hughes missing the game due to injury, the weight of the world once again fell on Elias Pettersson’s shoulders, and to be honest, he had one of his best games in a long time.
Now, he didn’t get any points in this game, so I know the “Loui Eriksson” talking point is on the tip of your tongue. But he did everything in his power but score a point to help win this game for Vancouver.
You want faceoff dominance, including winning a crucial draw in his own zone with six seconds left? He went 20/25 in the circle on the night.
You want to tilt the ice in your team’s favour when he’s out there? He was second in Corsi on the team at evens with 17 for and four against. The eye test alone would have told you that every time he was on the ice, he was forcing the puck down the Ducks’ throats.
Three shots, five hits, some dingles, some dangles, and baby, you’ve got a stew going.
Now, does he need to start scoring some points soon? Damn right he does.
But if this Elias Pettersson shows up for every game in the rest of the season, those points will come.
It was the kind of game that makes you think that maybe this team can find a way into the playoffs. The type of game that if they had more of these, that maybe this season wouldn’t be such a mess.
Of course the key to this team is consistency. It’s great that they won a game, but they need to do this every single night for the rest of the season. They’ve fooled us before, so all we can do is wait and see how it plays out.
But for one night, the Canucks played a hockey game where they stuck to the game plan. Where Coach Tocchet didn’t seem disappointed after the game. A night in which Conor Garland decided enough was enough so he beat up Trevor Zegras. It was about as entertaining a game as we’ve seen in a long time around here, which was a much needed reprieve.
Let’s see the gifs, shall we?
Best tinker town
The lines felt like they made more sense this time around, unlike last game in which I was convinced my cat had randomly chosen who played with who based on which treats it ate first.
Elias Pettersson and Conor Garland back together with a Dakota Joshua who looks like he might be rounding back into form? I am here for that. That’s two-thirds of the greatest third line of all time from last season. That’s two absolute defensive monsters in Garland and Pettersson being told to terrorize the Anaheim Ducks much like the content of a risqué Lonely Island song.
The only downside to that line is if Elias Pettersson doesn’t want to shoot the puck. Then you have Garland and EP40 taking turns passing the puck into the corner and seeing who can throw the most devastating back-check.
But with an Elias Pettersson looking to shoot the puck, this line delivered in terms of winning the Corsi wars, generating chances the entire game, and was clearly the best trio on the night.
Best you’re a wizard John Gibson
Brock Boeser’s line did not dominate by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, they were the worst line on the night in terms of losing the matchup against their competition. They did, however, manage to score a crucial goal on the night for a team who sorely needs offensive production from its best players.
And were it not for Gibson dipping into his bag of tricks he learned from watching Robert Angier, Brock’s line could have had two goals on the night:
With the trade deadline approaching, I assume John Gibson would enjoy a chance to be a part of a playoff team. And what better way to signal to a contender that hey, you kind of enjoy making saves that cause Kevin Woodley to lean forward in media row with a mixture of amazement, confusion, and panic.
Save aside, it underscores an important fact: The Canucks came out flying in this game. Conor Garland, in fact, hit a post 11 seconds into the game, and were it not for post PTSD, I would have shown that to you.
The fact is, the Canucks were generating shots, but more importantly, they were generating high-danger scoring chances. In fact, they ended the night holding the edge in high danger, scoring chances at 24 to 13, which, in a year where they usually struggle to hit double digits, feels revolutionary.
Damn it, they were sticking to the game plan, and it was glorious.
Best little things are still real to me, damn it
He might not have scored, but by god, Elias Pettersson ripped a one-timer in the first period and a small child burst into tears beside me, claiming he finally believed in God again:
I know the bar of “hey he shot a puck!” feels patronizing in nature, but it’s truly not. Elias Pettersson is fully in his Hook storyline arc, and we’re all out here waiting for him to finally believe in himself and eat the damn imaginary food so we can see Peter again.
Best you could feel it coming
As with most games in which the Canucks should be up a couple of goals, I just naturally assume the other team will score on a random play the other way. That’s just how life works in Vancouver, where the second you think something good might happen, ha ha ha, just kidding, can I interest you in atmospheric floods and your basement suite?
So it wasn’t too shocking that the Ducks almost scored five minutes into the game, but it was surprising that it stayed out:
The posts have not been kind to the Canucks as of late, which I assume is covered in the Kevin Costner documentary The Postman. But on this night, they were most neutral, which is about a big of a win as we’ve had around these parts in some time.
Which speaks to the Canucks efforts on the net because they kept pushing the puck down the ice. Anytime Anaheim tried to skate the puck out of their zone, the Canucks hounded the Ducks, causing turnovers and counter rushes, much like this one ending in a Kiefer Sherwood shot:
In what is pretty much a must win game, the Canucks certainly brought one of their better efforts of the season.
Best power outage
For all the good the Canucks did on the night, their power play continues to be a bag of garbage that you promised you were going to throw out last week.
As such, I have next to no highlights of offensive chances to show you, so I will instead summarize their power play woes with this Fil Hronek breakout:
Sometimes it’s like JT Miller never left us.
5-on-5, though? The Canucks looked great. Hronek might not know how to run a drop pass, but the guy can certainly skate into a brilliant pass from Brock Boeser to get a high-danger scoring chance:
What was nice about this game was that there were actual rush chances being generated. On other nights, Brock takes that puck and dumps it into the corner. His line fights to the death to win a board battle, and finally gets the puck back a minute later. Exhausted, they simply pass the puck to Derek Forbort at the point. He bobbles the puck and shoots it into the crowd, while John Shorthouse does his best to pretend it was an exciting play that had a chance of scoring. Then Fin jumps into the glass, reminding us that all mascots are not created equal, and that eventually the sun is going to explode, killing us all.
Not Wednesday though. Not in front of Dave Foley.
Best if luck were a pie
The Ducks finally got their goal against all odds near the end of the first period, when a seemingly harmless shot from Cutter Gauthier deflected in off of Sam Colangelo:
And Drance is right, this is just bad luck at play here. The Canucks have struggled to box out the crease all season long, but not here. Fil Hronek? He did everything right. He played asshole hockey, the kind of hockey you need to deploy in the blue paint. He got behind Colangelo and hammered away at his back, whispering about the years of back pain awaiting the Ducks forward should he continue this life style.
But Sam stayed and battled, and, yup, the joy of luck in sports went against Vancouver, bouncing the puck in behind a Kevin who hasn’t been this befuddled since waking up to find that his entire family had disappeared during Christmas.
Best here comes the pain
Defensive Elias Pettersson had a relatively solid night with a few hiccups here and there, but the main takeaway from his game was that this kid is tough.
First he got run by Radko Gudas and hit in the face with a stick:
And then he blocked a shot and could barely walk off the ice:
He was later seen on TV footage being helped down the Canucks hallway, looking like he’d lost a limb in a season ending episode of White Lotus.
The good news is that kids are made of rubber, so while picking up a shoe too aggressively puts me out of commission for three weeks, getting blasted with hard objects meant D-Petey merely needed to rub some dirt in it before playing the rest of the game.
Best small recession
I will admit, the Canucks did kind of slow down to end the first period, and at times during the second. There were a few points where I started pre-writing my intro with “The Canucks failed to step up in key moments” that I have been copy and pasting for three weeks now. I even exchanged a sad knowing look with the Moj at one point.
But as we spoke about in the intro, the Canucks kept pushing and didn’t just park the bus and pray that the other team would take pity on them and hand them the win.
Best boink bros
Fil Hronek might hate drop passes, but stretch passes? Oh baby, those are his absolute jam:
And as Jake DeBrusk pointed out, literally, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that pass from Brock Boeser. Boeser made that pass as if to say “how could you not re-sign me, I have been here so long, we’ve been through so much together. You barely know Kevin and he’s buying a new house, while I’m still wondering if you love me. I wrote you a letter for 365 days. It’s not over, it’s still not over.” or something to that effect.
Best great save Fil
With the Ducks on the power play, they almost got their second goal of the night, when Fil, not Kevin, made a stacked pad save:
Fil went full Tyler Myers on that play, setting up shop in his crease, taking up real estate, and with the first sign of danger, busting out a stacked pad save animation.
No Hughes, no problem, which might sound in jest, but it’s not. This was one of Hronek’s best games of the year, one where he wasn’t merely a passenger, but was instrumental in creating two of the three goals the Canucks scored.
Heck, if he keeps this up, we might even have to request a media scrum one of these days from him.
Best stretched thin
Hey, you know who loves stretch passes? Fil:
That shot doesn’t score 99 times out of a 100, but that’s the beauty of taking shots in volume; you never know what can happen.
And in this case, that puck deflects off of Jackson LaCombe, with the assist, of course, going to Hair Gel.
If anything, this game represented what sticking to the game plan for the majority of the game can do for you. The Canucks didn’t fold under pressure, they found a way to keep generating offence, and yes, actually generate shots.
For once that guy who pounds the glass and screams “SHOOOOOT” was right.
Best run the numbers
Again, no goals for Elias, but he was an absolute force on the ice Wednesday night. Defensively, the Ducks couldn’t find a way to get away from this guy as it felt like every time they finally managed to get into the Canucks zone with the puck, there was Elias to take it away from them:
The Ducks got into the zone for a second or two only to have Elias Pettersson draped all over them like a forgotten musty jacket on the skytrain, only to watch as he skated back the other way and attempted to set up Conor Garland for an Alex Burrows wraparound special.
And while I know some fans will dislike clips of Pettersson passing instead of shooting, watch again as Elias Pettersson first shuts down a zone entry, and then later in the shift, skates into the offensive zone and almost feathers a pass over to Kiefer Sherwood for the tap-in:
And while this play required an alarming amount of belief in himself, Carson Soucy steps up to help Elias Pettersson out after he got walked, which EP40 then tried to feather through another pass for Soucy to skate into and get a shot on net:
I know, the people who want him to shoot will see this and angrily quote “11.6” at me, and believe me, I get it. I have been one of his harshest critics the last couple of weeks.
But Wednesday night, Elias Pettersson was a force on the ice for the Canucks.
Best admission of guilt
Speaking of trade deadlines, the timing of an injury couldn’t be worse for John Gibson, who had to leave the game after a collision with Drew O’Connor:
Now there was a lot of debate about whether Doc was pushed into Gibson or not, and even Drew himself said after the game that he’d have to check the tape and see if he got shoved. But he himself admitted he got a good piece of Gibson and it should probably have been a penalty, which I agree with.
At the very least, Doc tried to skate real hard into a tiny window of space to tap-in a puck, and that was reckless enough to cause the collision with Gibson. In a league that should be worried about injuries, I am ok with erring on the side of caution by trying to penalize players that skate a little too hard into the crease.
Unless it’s 2008 and it’s Roberto Luongo, because then you’re allowed to do anything you want to him. Kick him in the nuts? Go for it, who does he think he is wearing that jock strap. Want to shove him and the puck into the net with your stick? Have at it. What else are pads for if not to be shoved at?
Best stepping on a rake repeatedly
The Canucks scored their third and final goal of the game off of a Carson Soucy shot. Yes, noted sniper Carson Soucy scored, but that was mostly because the Ducks decided the best way to protect Lukas Dostal after the Gibson collision was to…shove Kiefer Sherwood into the crease behind him?
The Ducks challenged this for electrical infetterence goaltender interference, which I felt was a stretch, but this is also the NHL we’re talking about; you could run a goalie over with your car, and I’d still give it a 50/50 shot of whether the refs would call it interference.
So I get why the Ducks maybe challenge that, as their fighting for their playoff lives, so maybe you roll the dice and pray you can knock the goal off the board.
But when you watch that back, you see Jacob Trouba come in near the end almost as if to make sure Kiefer isn’t going anywhere, and guides Teddy Blueger into the crease as well. If you wrote up a plan of how to make sure the other team scored on your goalie, they would excitedly bring this video up during the team meeting.
It should be noted that the Canucks were now leading in shots 24 to 10 through two periods, which again, is something we’re just not used to around these parts.
Best feeling the flow
Look, you know Elias Pettersson is feeling it when he falls to the ice on his knees, hesitates with the puck to draw in a defender, and then makes the perfect pass leading to a zone exit:
Or when he actually does his dekes to bring the puck up the ice, and amazingly, shoot the puck on net:
This is the Pettersson the team needs more of. This is the EP40 who can boast about wanting all of that pressure on his back. This is the Elias who would list off speed, power and agility as things he is a fan of.
Best don’t forget about Kevin
Hey, he might not have had to make a lot of them, but he was there when called upon:
That represents the second best scoring chance the Ducks generated in the third period.
Best last gasp
The Ducks last goal of the night came on their best scoring chance of the night which was off of a rebound that got away from Kevin:
To Anaheim’s credit, they crashed the net hard and got their hands greasy. But it also felt like the Canucks had gotten a bit passive at this point, and I wouldn’t say they had parked the bus, but they for sure slowed down and were seeing if any spots were available.
Which is why it was refreshing to see the Canucks respond to that goal by pushing back and continuing to generate offensive zone time.
Best did he just do what I think he did
The second best thing Conor Garland did with his hands on the night was use one hand to lift the stick of Frank Vatrano while simultaneously using the other hand to scoop the puck forward so he could skate into it:
The end result was one of the angriest “you piece of sh!t, how dare you embarrass me like that” retaliation hooks from Vatrano, where it’s clear he is panicking about being YouTubed for life in a highlight reel goal. If Garland scores on that rush, Frank is done, his life is over. He simply becomes “that guy Garland undressed with literally one hand”. That’s all he’s thinking as he hooks Garland and literally lets Conor pull him along for the ride, not moving his feet an inch.
It’s the kind of play that small king Garland would think to do because he lives that mini-stick hockey lifestyle. You park yourself beside the post for tap-ins, and you use your stick with one hand to lift up other sticks, and sure, why the heck not, let’s punch some pucks on the ice to give us some distance between us and our check.
Yet somehow, even after seeing the magic in those hands, a warning didn’t go off in Trevor Zegras’ head that maybe you don’t want to dance with those magic mittens.
Which takes us to…
Best moment of the night
Look, Rick Tocchet has talked a lot lately about the Canucks not stepping up in key moments over the last month. About having a player stand up to embrace the moment and deliver when it matters most.
So what if you had one shot or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment? Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?
Well my friends, let me tell you, Conor Garland stepped up to the plate and hit an absolute bomb of a home run to close out this game.
No, he didn’t get any empty netter. He did something much more valuable; He beat the sh!t out of Trevor Zegras:
So there is a lot to break down in this fight.
First, we have the fact that Trevor Zegras lives an Ike Clanton lifestyle, preferring to do his dirty work from afar and running at the first sign of trouble. We saw this earlier in the game when he tried to spear Doc after running into John Gibson:
Zegras didn’t drop the gloves because Doc is taller than 5’9″, you see, so his preference was to poke with a stick and then wait for the referees to protect him. Zegras has yet to meet a fight he hasn’t dream of running away from to start a new life with. He is absolutely the guy who gets beat up in beer league but then spends 10 minutes screaming at you from the other bench about meeting you in the parking lot after the game.
And hey, I get it, he’s a skilled player. He’s a lover, not a fighter; those hands were made for caressing a puck and talking about getting a cat together, not throwing bombs in a brouhaha.
But the problem with Zegras is he has quite a mouth on him, which means he’s out there chirping people left, right and centre but refusing to back it up. He’s the YouTuber that hires a bodyguard so he can pull off stupid pranks on people without the threat of repercussion. He’s the guy who asks the waiter to re-enter the bill because he tipped too much by accident.
Which is why it was so amusing to see Conor Garland step up, drop the gloves, and motion to Zegras that his reckoning had come. It was like a scene out of a Bruce Lee movie with everything slowing down as we watched Garland give the universal sign of “come get some.”, creating his own road to Wrestlemania in the span of three seconds.
And you could almost see Zegras eyes light up with excitement. He’s no fighter, but surely he can beat up this small player from the other team! If ever there was a fight with Trevor’s name on it, it would be against a guy 5’9″ or smaller. Finally Zegras could show the world what a bad ass he is, a guy who can talk AND fight! Think of all the internet comments congratulation for finally putting on his big boy pants!
Except Corolla Garland is no regular man. They say it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog that matters, and Trevor found that out very quickly as he held on for dear life, unsure of what he’d stepped into. All he knew was his face was hurting and he just wanted it to be over.
Garland threw some hooks. A jab. A couple of uppercuts. Then took Zegras to the ice and got top control just for good measure. With the crowd roaring and chanting his name, Garland even took time to dap up with Kevin Lankinen after the victory:
N0w, will this moment matter in the grand scheme of trying to win a Stanley Cup? Not really.
But in a sport that remembers big moments, in a sport that celebrates players stepping up and defending their team, Conor Garland entered the Canucks history hall of fame of bad ass moments.
Tomorrow, people will be talking about this fight in excited tones, despite the fact that this season has been a bit of a sh!t show. Maybe someone will motion someone over, mimicking the Garland hand gesture. Years from now when a Canuck player has a barn burner of a fight, people will wistfully talk about how it reminded them of that time Garland whooped Zegras ass.
There is a reason wrestling is popular. Because sometimes you need to see the good guy win. Sometimes a storyline that plays out and showcases a hero winning the day is just something our soul needs.
And on Wednesday night, Corolla Garland gave Canucks fans something they’ve had so little of this season. Excitement. Passion. Hope.
Again, it’s a small moment in a long season. But it was also one of those times where you could audibly hear the fans connecting emotionally to what was happening in front of them, coming alive in a way Rogers Arena has rarely hit this season.
And for a team in dire need of getting the juice or whatever word you want to use for confidence and momentum, who knows, maybe this will help get them back on the path of putting together some wins for a playoff push.
And if not? At least he beat up Trevor Zegras for the entire NHL.
Best jersey Botch
This was a sign of things to come this night. The Kassian jersey knew.
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