Something something winning when eliminated.

The Vancouver Canucks defeated the Colorado Avalanche by a 4-1 scoreline in a pretty solid affair from beginning to end. While the Minnesota Wild’s win against the Sharks cemented the Canucks’ playoff elimination, the team was playing for pride and demonstrated as much against one of the west’s best. Was it a little frustrating to see this kind of game after they had no chance to make the postseason? Yes. But at least it isn’t bad hockey to close out the year.

Here’s the win, by the numbers.

As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

The first period saw the Canucks get two early powerplays and fail to capitalize, a pretty common theme from this season. What also was common was that their opposition seized the momentum, with the Avs riding hot through to the end of the period after those two initial powerplays. But, the intermission gave the Canucks a good break to reset, managing a dominant 65.00 CF% and 71.61 xGF% in the middle frame and a 4-2 edge in high-danger chances. That was enough to let them get into the lead and enough to help them ride out a surge by Colorado in the third period for the win.

Everything was pretty darn even when it came to 5v5 scoring chances between both teams. The Canucks and Avs equally split a 23-23 overall scoring chance battle, but it was Vancouver who edged out Colorado in the high-danger department with a 12-9 margin. What’s the most intriguing is that the Canucks were able to get 10 of their 12 HDCF in the second and third periods, the large majority of them being in the final frame. That came at odds with the score effects, which was nice to see them not turtle and play overly defensive.

Corsi Champ: Elias Pettersson was balling out and stepping up big time all over the ice last night. His team-high 66.67 CF% was just one of those aspects, the young defenceman playing in a variety of deployments against the Avs’ top 6 and top 4. While given the chance to start 66.67% of his faceoffs in the offensive zone, Pettersson started the majority of his shifts on the fly, without a single o-zone change in his favour. For him to slide up and down the lineup, playing with Quinn Hughes and Marcus Pettersson the most, D-Petey is definitely showing that he’s a full-time NHLer for next season.

Corsi Chump: Max Sasson brought up the rear of the Corsi department with a 35.00 CF%. Centering the line between Jake DeBrusk and Brock Boeser once again, their numbers were the worst across every single line at 5v5. In fact, no other forward line finished below 40.00 CF% or 30.00 xGF% besides them, recording a 28.57 CF% and 18.44 xGF% to their names. Sasson is not adding a lot to these two wingers, suffice it to say, as the centerman recorded the third-worst xGF% of 32.12.

xGF: Elias Pettersson kept rocking in the expected goals department, putting together an 80.83 xGF% to lead all players last night. He managed a team-best 0.12 xGA which was nice to see from a defenceman, holding a 7-3 edge in scoring chances and a 3-0 HDCF lead as well. Considering the minutes that he played and the quality of opposition, it’s really impressive that he could do all of this and turn in the results that he did. In terms of raw xGF, Kiefer Sherwood tallied the best numbers on this Canuck roster with a 0.96 to his name.

GSAx: Kevin Lankinen sparkled in this one. Colorado wasn’t going down without a fight as they racked up 3.09 xGF against the netminder. However, besides 1 high-danger chance, Lankinen turned away everything en route to a 2.09 GSAx. That’s not an insignificant contribution – in fact, the Finn was probably one of the biggest reasons why the Canucks were even able to take home two points. His extension is looking pretty darn nice going into the 2025-26 season.

The Canucks were really solid in this one. From top to bottom, Vancouver played well, managing to ride out momentum swings and striking where they could. They didn’t sit back when they had the opportunity to and limited the Avs from surging too much. It was nice to see, and the biggest frustration was that they couldn’t manage this earlier. Hopefully, it provides them the opportunity to build the bones for a better season next year.

Vancouver returns home to host the Minnesota Wild on Saturday night.