There’s something about Saturday night tilts that really brings out the best NHL storylines.
The Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins might not have played the most exhilarating contest these two clubs have put on (that was the last game!), but there was still a little something for everyone in the Bruins’ 3-2 overtime victory. Great goaltending from future Olympians Kevin Lankinen and Jeremy Swayman, a dominant effort from the new Elias Pettersson line, and local kid Fraser Minten has a career night against his hometown team.
This was also the rare night when the Canucks deserved a better fate. They were far more aggressive on offence than the Bruins, as Boston opted to sit back and let Vancouver bring the attack to them for the vast majority of the night. But when they did get pucks on net, Swayman was there to shut the door. Add in the fact that the Canucks had played the night before against the Seattle Kraken, and lost that one in extra time too, and it’s hard to be disappointed in the effort tonight. During a season where we’ve been hard-pressed for interesting games to talk about, this Canucks loss was at least a little easier to stomach than most.
the #canucks beating the bruins would make it 2-0 over the city of boston just today
Izzy 🪿
@izzycheung37
First road win for the Vancouver #Goldeneyes with a 4-3 win against the Boston Fleet in Detroit.
Four-goal effort is BIG for a team that hasn't found much goal-scoring success on the road.
If you didn’t watch the Goldeneyes game earlier in the afternoon, you really missed out. The Ducks were down 3-1 to the league-leading Sirens 19 seconds into the third period, then scored three unanswered goals from Claire Thompson, Sophie Jaques, and Izzy Daniel for their first road victory of the season. In a roller coaster first 10 games for the expansion team, they really saved their gutsiest win for last.
Maybe some of that magic will rub off on the Canucks today?
This is a classic “don’t get pre-mad” situation.
#Canucks in the Rutherford era have historically circled back on veteran pending UFAs with an offer (Horvat, Motte) before executing a trade.
Tyson Cole
@tyson_cole
.@FriedgeHNIC reporting that that the #Canucks have made a new offer to keep Kiefer Sherwood.
Mentions there’s still a sizeable gap between both sides, but they’ve talked about an extension.
Before we could even get to the game, we got an Elliotte Friedman report that the Canucks had offered an extension to Kiefer Sherwood. That news sent a lot of fans into an uproar, and for good reason, considering the team is second-last in the NHL and not a group you should be trying to “run it back” with.
As Drancer astutely points out, this is likely a bargaining tactic to keep potential buyers in the FOMO stage and get them to pony up that first round pick and better prospect, and a move they’ve made before with past trade chips like Bo Horvat. But the real issue is that even if that turns out to be the case, people do think extending Sherwood is something the Canucks front office would do.
I love Kiefer as much as the next guy, but extending him on a team that won’t be competitive for a while and needs all the draft capital it can get makes zero sense. So even if it doesn’t happen, it tells you how little people trust the ‘hybrid rebuild’ concept that they’d immediately buy into the theory that the Canucks still think their veteran UFAs are worth keeping.
Best Dead Puck Era Impression
Right after the opening puck drop, it looked like we were about to watch a game straight out of Guy Boucher and Jim Hiller’s dreams. A moment that would make anyone who remembers hockey history think, “Oh. Oh no. Oh no no no no.”
The Canucks took possession in the first minute of play and watched as the Bruins set up the 1-3-1 neutral zone trap. Zeev Buium and Fil Hronek countered with… nothing. A good few seconds were wasted waiting for the Bruins to even attempt to attack the puck carriers to no avail.
John Shorthouse, the fountain of knowledge, referenced a similar incident in November 2011, in which the Philadelphia Flyers, coached by Peter Laviolette, essentially mocked Boucher for coaching his Tampa Bay Lightning to play the same boring defensive style. The Flyers refused to move the puck forward into the Bolts’ trap several times in the first period, bringing the game to a grinding halt and making everyone at the St. Pete Times Forum hate themselves.
Thankfully, sanity prevailed today, and this was the only such incident. If I’d had to cover a neutral-zone trap game, I would’ve fled the country.
Best Triple Threat
The Bruins had three truly dangerous forwards in this game, and two of them got all the best chances for the B’s early.
Morgan Geekie hasn’t scored since the last time Boston and Vancouver linked up before Christmas, and he seemed destined to fix that early. His first attempt, where he beat Tom Willander to a puck in the Canucks zone, beat Kevin Lankinen cleanly, but not the inside of the post.
David Pastrnak got a breakaway a few minutes later, which is as close to an in-game shootout attempt as you’re going to get. A mistake against the King of Shootouts!
Then Geekie got another chance on a 2-on-1, but this time Lankinen wasn’t about to let him near the post.
We’re only five minutes in, and the Bruins are already wondering if they need to hire an Etsy witch to solve Lankinen.
Marcus Pettersson has really struggled defensively this year. And tonight he had a shift that felt like a microcosm of his season. And it all started when he high-sticked Pastrnak in the Canucks end around the 6:35 mark.
The ref’s arm goes up, Jeremy Swayman heads to the bench for an extra attacker, and the Bruins proceed to hold onto the puck for another minute and a half. The Canucks weren’t able to get a line change in, so the only way to stop Boston? MPetey tripping Pavel Zacha, earning himself a second penalty on the same shift.
We talk a lot at Stanchies Inc. about the crazy situations Tyler Myers creates on a given night. On Saturday, Marcus said ‘hold my beer’ and evolved into the Chaos Dragon.
Fraser Minten grew up a few clicks down the road from Rogers Arena in Yaletown, a neighbourhood I also spent a lot of formative years in. I remember getting pregame meals at the Yaletown Brewery with my dad before jumping on the special red trolley that took you right to what was then called GM Place. (Side note: they should bring that service back!)
This homecoming game brought the best out of Minten, who took advantage of Pettersson’s pair of penalties and a wide-open lane in the slot to bury the opening goal past Lankinen.
The Bruins were able to take advantage of a very raw penalty killing pair of Willander and DePetey to open up the space for Minten, and it looked like we were going to be in for another long night.
Best Ballsy Move
To add injury to insult, at the end of a tough first period for Tom Willander, after checking Mark Kastelic in front of the net, Kastelic’s skate came up and caught him in a… shall we say, delicate spot.
After an extremely low event first period with only a combined 11 shots, it only made sense that Canucks would come out guns ablazing in the second period. The new look first line of Elias Pettersson, Jake DeBrusk and Linus Karlsson gained the zone and worked the puck to Fil Hronek, who shot a low puck through traffic that hit EP40 in the leg and redirected past Swayman.
Maybe it’s not the ideal way to score your 10th of the season if you’re Petey. But when the puck starts taking fortunate bounces in your favour, that’s a sign you’re heating up.
With Max Sasson in the sin bin for cross-checking Casey Middlestadt, a former Canuck got to exact some revenge on his old teammates. The Bruins’ power play got back to work, and as David Pastrnak put the puck through the lip of the crease, Elias Lindholm snuck around the Chaos Dragon and tipped the puck past Lankinen’s blocker.
Not exactly a banner night for the PKers. Luckily, this was the last time their services were required.
Best Actions > Words
Fil Hronek is a man of few words. Well, at least in public, he is. He prefers to let his play do the talking.
Usually, when Hronek scores a goal, it’s because he blasts a slap shot through traffic that Fulton Reed would be impressed by. This time on a power play late in the second, he picked up a pass from Zeev Buium near the corner, threw the puck at the net and banked the puck off Charlie McAvoy’s skate and in.
It was only a matter of time before the Canucks power play cashed in one of the six(!) power plays the most penalized team in the league gave them. Where were the calls against this team 15 years ago when we needed them?
Sorry to make you put a dollar in the 2011 jar, but you had to know we couldn’t make it all the way through this without referencing it.
There was lots to like about this line tonight, and there’s a reason they factored in on the majority of the Canucks’ best chances. If I’m Adam Foote, I’m super-gluing this trio together as long as humanly possible.
Jeremy Swayman had nothing to prove to anyone tonight. But he owned the third period with 11 saves, and it’s only fitting that he’d put together that performance days after finding out he’d be joining Team USA at the Olympics in February.
When it came down to who would be the Americans’ third goalie behind Connor Hellebuyck and Jake Oettinger, the only two possible options were Thatcher Demko and Jeremy Swayman. They wouldn’t square off tonight, but it had to feel a little good for Swayman to turn in this performance in Demko’s house and with Finnish Olympian Lankinen in the other net.
Linus “Cash Money” Karlsson came close to a goal earlier on Hronek’s tally, but he got his opportunity in the third on a turnover in the Bruins’ end. He pulled the puck to his backhand but put it right into Swayman’s chest.
Karlsson’s linemate EP40 nearly picked up his second of the night when he cut in through the crease on a short break, but just couldn’t tuck it around Swayman’s pad.
And saving his best work for last, Swayman stoned David Kämpf and Kiefer Sherwood on a trio of golden opportunities late in the third period.
Say what you will about the attendance figures of late, but those chances were the loudest I’ve heard at Rogers Arena in a while. All it takes is some fun chances and effort!
Across the ice, with Swayman carrying the Bruins on his back, his Boston teammates were extremely content to run the clock out in the third and take their free point. This is why we need the three-point system in the NHL.
I was at Friday’s game against the Seattle Kraken, and one of my biggest takeaways was ‘oh wow, the Canucks’ overtime strategy is no fun!’.
Tonight, they couldn’t even earn a power play, and the Bruins made their short amount of possession time worth it. They knew facing Kevin Lankinen in another shootout was NOT an option, so they’d have to finish it here.
Enter Fraser from Yaletown once again.
Of the Bruins’ 21 shots on the night, six of them came off the stick of Minten. Playing in front of friends and family, he saved his best work for last. After winning a board battle against Sherwood in the Canucks’ zone late in overtime, he passed off to Pastrnak for the shot through traffic. Lankinen made the initial stop, but Fraser was able to pounce on the rebound, deposit it to the back of the net and celebrate like he was going to skate all the way to Roundhouse.
The Canucks getting a point out of both of their back-to-back games is a nice change of pace from the usual zero, and they still get to hold their second-place spot in the lottery standings, with only *checks notes* the Winnipeg Jets standing in their way? How on earth did that happen?
Anyways, Team Tank and Team Compete both sort of won today because a compromise is a deal that satisfies no one.
