It’s the cruel truth of a best-of-three series to start the American Hockey League playoffs – all the hard work, all the effort, all the sweat and energy expended over the course of a lengthy regulation season can be undone in essentially the blink of an eye. And that’s the predicament the Abbotsford Canucks find themselves in heading to a one-game winner take all showdown with the Tucson Roadrunners on Saturday night.
After taking Wednesday’s series opener 4-3, Abbotsford was in the driver’s seat. Just 24 hours later following a 4-1 loss, the Canucks were facing the very real prospect of being knocked off by the seventh seeded Roadrunners.
Abbotsford didn’t play poorly in Game 2. They ran into a red-hot Jaxson Stauber in the Tucson net and will surely see him again in Saturday’s elimination matchup. The challenge now is to convert on the many chances the Canucks farm hands created.
Abbotsford peppered Stauber with 17 shots in the opening period and held a commanding 31-20 edge on the shot clock through 40 minutes. So territorially and aided by the first four power plays of the game, the Canucks did a lot of good things. But none of that really mattered as Tucson took a 3-0 lead to the locker room after two periods of play.
The biggest disappointment of the night was the way Abbotsford went quietly in the third period. After Linus Karlsson scored 2:54 seconds into the final frame, it looked like there might be a comeback in the offing. However, instead of continuing to push and riding score effects to a frantic finish, Abbotsford was outshot 12-8 in the third period and really didn’t test Stauber or create the looks needed to get back in the hockey game.
So here they are now – the second seed in the Pacific Division, a team that finished 10 wins and 18 points ahead of its opponent in the regular season, and this series has been boiled down to one game.
Linus Karlsson has scored in both games for Abbotsford. Sammy Blais had a pair of power play goals in the opener. Tristen Nielsen is the only other Abbotsford player to score in the series. Since the Canucks jumped out to a 4-1 second period lead on Wednesday, Tucson has scored six of the last seven goals in this matchup. At 5-on-5 through two games, the Roadrunners have outscored Abbotsford 5-3.
While Max Sasson may have been the best Canucks skater on Thursday, leading the team with five shots in Game 2 and leads the series with nine shots, he has just one assist in the series so far. Sasson, along with Aatu Räty and Arshdeep Bains, need to be the driving forces offensively for Abbotsford.
Jonathan Lekkerimäki, playing with a full bubble due to a late-season injury, has five shots in the series and had a couple of good looks on a late first period power play on Thursday. But the guy is a goal scorer, and through two games so far, Lekkerimäki has yet to find the back of the net.
And Danila Klimovich, who led Abbotsford with 25 goals in the regular season, doesn’t even have a shot on goal in this series. To be fair to Klimovich, he spent much of the regular season higher in the lineup while others around him were called up by Vancouver. As many of those players have returned to the AHL, Klimovich now finds himself playing lower in the lineup than he did for much of the season.
The bottom line is that Abbotsford is 17-2-1 in its last 20 games and, on Saturday, the Canucks have to find a way to make that matter. They’ve got to lean into all the good things they’ve done to be the hottest team in the league over the past six weeks. They scored twice with the power play in the series opener, but went 0-for-5 in Game 2.
And if Arturs Silovs gets the nod in net once again, he has to be up to the challenge and find a way to outduel Stauber at the other end of the ice. Silovs came up with a game-saving stop on a final-minute penalty shot in the series opener, but has a 3.01 GAA and a .891 save percentage in the series so far.
At 4-1 in the second period on Wednesday, this looked like it would be a quick series. Since then, however, Tucson deserves full value for forcing this battle to the limit.
The margins are now remarkably thin, and one shot truly can be the difference between going on or going home. The opportunity is still there for Abbotsford, but its difference makers need to make the difference on Saturday night.
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