Talk about a scrappy game.

The Vancouver Canucks fought hard in a 4-1 win over the Calgary Flames. It didn’t look really pretty, especially at the start, but the Canucks were able to get better as the game went on and found a way to seal a victory at home. It’s definitely a welcome surprise in terms of results and adds more positive vibes to this new regime as they try to build a new culture and a new foundation during this rebuilding year.

Here’s the win, by the numbers.

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

When the Canucks got two power plays in the first period and were unable to capitalize on them, it felt like the momentum would shift in favour of the Flames. Indeed, the game flow reflected as much, with Vancouver reeling after giving up the opening tally. They would finish the first with their worst statistical performance of the game, coming in at a 34.21 CF% and 43.8 xGF%. Even the sheer amount of scoring chances wasn’t all that impressive, the Canucks finding themselves in a 4-8 hole with a further 1-2 high-danger chance deficit.

However, Vancouver got better once the game hit the halfway point. They strung together a strong second that saw them ever so slightly swing the game in their favour, before really turning it on in the third. The Canucks might’ve only gotten 50.0 CF%, but racked up a 79.49 xGF% at even strength off the back of a 7-2 lead in high-danger chances. They made the most of their opportunities and grew into the game, paying off with four straight goals in the third.

The heat map would’ve been interesting to see evolve throughout the game. While Vancouver finished with a 27-18 overall scoring chance lead and 11-6 high-danger chance advantage, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. The aforementioned first period was not too pretty to look at, and honestly a boring frame of hockey. The second was marginally better, but even despite a 12-4 advantage in scoring chances, the Canucks only held a slight 3-2 lead in high-danger chances. That third period buoyed a lot of the heat map to finish the game – but at the end of the day, the final score is what matters.

Corsi Champ: Drew O’Connor made the most of his bottom 6 minutes, chipping in with a team-best 70.37 CF%. During his TOI, the Canucks had a 9-3 edge in shots with a 10-2 lead in overall scoring chances. DOC helped chip in on the expected goals front too, his 62.76 xGF% the 5th-best on the team along with the 7th-best raw xGF of 0.91. Not bad for the winger, especially considering that he only played 9:55 of 5v5 minutes.

Corsi Chump: It was an interesting game for Marco Rossi, who found himself lining up alongside Elias Pettersson and Linus Karlsson on the wing. The young forward recorded the team’s worst CF% of 25.81, with the entire line’s possession metrics being some of the worst on the entire roster. That being said – Rossi still posted a 54.08 xGF%, which was marginally in the negatives at -4.30 xGF% relative to team average. No goals given up was huge as well, especially considering that only 25% of Rossi’s on-the-fly and faceoff starts came in the offensive zone. Likely, they were being put into higher-leverage situations defensively and relied upon to get some stops by Manny Malhotra.

xGF: D-Petey had himself a game. Racking up a team-best 87.95 xGF%, the defenceman was lights out in his own end with a team-best 0.08 xGA. That’ll happen when you hold the opposition to just 1 scoring chance against without a single high-danger chance against, and Pettersson also managed to be on ice for 7 scoring chances for Vancouver, 2 of which were registered as high-danger. His beauty of a goal was the eventual game-winner as he made his impact felt offensively as well. Filip Hronek led all Canucks in raw xGF at 1.33, but was also on ice for the second-most xGA at 0.99.

GSAx: It was a great night between the pipes for Leevi Meriläinen. Facing down 2.07 xGF by the Flames, the Finn turned aside all but one middle-danger chance to finish with a 1.07 GSAx. What was also nice was that the Canucks actually played some semblance of team defence in front of him, only allowing 3 high-danger chances to get through to him when all was said and done. Not bad for a waiver wire pickup and certainly a great performance in net to help the Canucks secure the win.

Line Combinations: Malhotra hasn’t been shy about playing around with his forward lines through the first three games of the season, just to see what he has to work with. Last night, two combinations stood out positively. Starting with the Drew O’Connor – Aatu Räty – Brendan Gallagher unit, this trio recorded the best CF% (57.14) amongst all Canucks lines, seeing an 84.66 xGF% share, which was also a team-best. Much of that is due to a team-best 0.07 xGA, which shows that they were able to keep things very low-event in their own end at even strength. It made sense that Malhotra would throw them out at the end of the game to close out an empty-net situation given these results.

The other line that popped out was Liam Ohgren – Paul Cotter – Brock Boeser, which was functionally Vancouver’s second line last night. Perhaps it was Pettersson’s line that took on the brunt of the top 6 defensive duties helping them out, but the offensive numbers out of this trio were quite impressive. Their CF% and xGF% shares were the second-best on the team, but in terms of raw xGF, their 0.62 doubled the contributions of the Drew O’Connor, Aatu Räty, and Brendan Gallagher line’s 0.36 xGF. Not a bad night at all, and if a team is getting valuable contributions from three lines without the fourth line being a liability, chances are they’re winning hockey games.

This was a nice win. The Canucks got better as the game went on and managed to play some quality hockey in the third to steer this one to a win. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but winning against the Flames is always fun – especially with both teams staring down the barrel of a rebuild; any semblance of joy should be hung onto. It’s been a fun start to the season, and one has to wonder what else this team could do going forward.

Vancouver is right back in action tonight as they host the Vegas Golden Knights.