The biggest story of the Vancouver Canucks’ game against the Ottawa Senators wasn’t Max Sasson getting his first NHL point in his first NHL game or Jake DeBrusk scoring two goals or the chaos of the final minutes as the Canucks held off a Senators comeback.
No, the big story was that Quinn Hughes received the first five-minute major and game misconduct of his NHL career.
It’s been clear from the start of the season that Hughes could take another run at the Norris but midway through the first period he ran Josh Norris face first into the boards. The officials assessed Hughes a five-minute major penalty for boarding, a call that held up after video review.
While some might suggest a boarding minor would have been sufficient, I find it hard to disagree with the call.
Certainly, Hughes wasn’t trying to injure Norris. Heck, Norris is one of Hughes’s closest friends off the ice, as they were teammates for four years at the US National Team Development and the University of Michigan. At the same time, Hughes did crosscheck Norris in the numbers and sent his mouth directly into the dasher.
Because Norris was bleeding, that’s considered an injury by NHL officials. That matters because Rule 41.5 states, “When a major penalty is imposed under this rule for an infraction resulting in an injury to the face or head of an opponent, a game misconduct shall be imposed.”
It doesn’t matter that Norris returned to the game halfway through the Senators’ five-minute power play. The severity of the injury doesn’t enter into it.
The only way that Hughes could have avoided a game misconduct is if the officials decided to downgrade the boarding major to a minor after video review. When the officials affirmed the call on the ice, Hughes was out of the game.
That meant the Canucks had to play the majority of the game against the Senators without their captain, who has been making an argument for being the best player in the NHL. Considering the Canucks were already without J.T. Miller, Brock Boeser, and Thatcher Demko, that was a tall order.
The rest of the team, however, stepped up.
“Guys played hard,” said Tyler Myers. “We played for each other, we were holding guys up for each other, we were demanding the puck. That’s how we have to play.”
Filip Hronek led the Canucks in minutes with 27:38 and had one of his best games of the season, with the Canucks out-scoring the Senators 3-to-0 when Hronek was on the ice at even-strength.
Erik Brännström, who has been averaging 14:32 in ice time this season, played 20:57 with Hughes out of the game and played some stalwart defence against his former team. The Canucks out-shot the Senators 6-to-2 when Brännström was on the ice, as he used his mobility to limit the Senators’ chances.
And the new first line of Jake DeBrusk, Elias Pettersson, and Kiefer Sherwood combined for three goals to drive the Canucks to the win.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out the Canucks could win without Hughes, Miller, Boeser, and Demko when I watched this game.
- The real shame about Hughes getting kicked out of this game is that it skewed the results of the Canucks’ grand defensive experiment, as they finally split up Carson Soucy and Tyler Myers. Brännström was bumped up to the second pairing with Myers to start the game, while Soucy was moved to the third pairing with Noah Juulsen.
- Surprisingly, despite defencemen double-shifting in Hughes’ absence, Soucy and Myers stayed split up, playing just 21 seconds together at even strength. Considering the end result of the game, maybe the experiment was a success after all.
- While his linemates grabbed the spotlight, Elias Pettersson was quietly excellent, playing an outstanding two-way game to throttle the Senators’ scoring chances at 5-on-5 despite some struggles in the faceoff circle. Also, he absolutely leveled Tim Stützle with an open-ice hit early in the first period. Stützle may as well be a tuning fork, the way hitting him set the tone.
- Before he was kicked out of the game, Quinn Hughes was doing classic Quinn Hughes things. He danced around Drake Batherson with a quick change of direction and might have scored if not for Stützle reaching in at the last minute to get a piece of his stick, breaking it in the process. I vote for less boarding, more dancing.
- The five-minute major could have been a turning point in the game for the Senators but instead the Canucks built momentum off a solid five-minute kill, with Kevin Lankinen stopping the only four shots that got past the skaters in front of him. We’ll just try to overlook that they gave up two goals on the Senators’ other two power plays because at least they killed off the big one.
- Without Hughes, Hronek took over the point on the first power play unit and quickly assisted on the game’s opening goal. The power play was refreshingly direct, as Hronek gave the puck to Conor Garland and he snapped a puck on net that Jake DeBrusk neatly Jake DeFlected into the top corner past his former Boston Bruins teammate, Linus Ullmark.
- “I was asking him for one — I needed one, I hadn’t scored in a bit,” joked DeBrusk about catching up with Ullmark before the game. “It was great to see him, I miss him and I wish him the best but obviously tonight, I tried to get one on him and I was lucky enough to get two.”
- Before anyone starts clamouring for Quinn Hughes to be taken off the first power play unit — I know some of you are thinking it — that was the only power play goal the Canucks could muster in six opportunities, including a third-period 5-on-3.
- The Senators evened the score on a power play of their own and I regret to say that Kiefer Sherwood has now been on the ice for his first power play goal against. I have to say, I feel like I jinxed it by , so when Brady Tkachuk tipped a point shot and then finished off the rebound, I felt partially responsible.
- With a lot of special teams play and a couple of stretches at 4-on-4, Max Sasson didn’t play much in his NHL debut, but he made the most of his minutes. Tyler Myers picked off a stretch pass and sent Sasson streaking down the right wing. He smartly threw on the brakes and found the trailer, Teddy Blueger, who beat Ullmark short side to make it 2-1. That’s tremendous poise for a player in his first game.
- Sasson’s dad, who Sasson said screamed and cried when he called him to tell him he would be playing his first NHL game, did some screaming and crying after his son’s assist too. Also, fist-pumping. Lots of fist-pumping.
- “Any time a guy steps in for his first game and gets a moment like that, it’s pretty cool to see,” said Myers. “Special night for him…His family was here and he played great.”
- A few minutes later, the top line extended the lead. Pettersson picked off pass in the defensive zone and poked the puck out to Sherwood, who protected the puck from Tyler Kleven, then spun past him to create a 2-on-1 with the onrushing DeBrusk. Sherwood sold the pass , then slipped the puck inside to DeBrusk, who deked out Ullmark with a move to the backhand.
- I have a soft spot for Noah Juulsen, who took major steps last season to become a legitimate NHL defenceman, but he has struggled this season and he made a classic Juulsen misstep in the dying seconds of the second period. With his defence partner, Carson Soucy, already stepping up on Brady Tkachuk, Juulsen threw an admittedly massive open-ice hit on David Perron, allow Josh Norris to streak in for a breakaway behind him. That’s a hit Juulsen cannot make, especially at that time of the game. Just get safely to the intermission with the two-goal lead.
- Pettersson, DeBrusk, and Sherwood combined again to make it 4-1 in the third period with a gritty goal. Pettersson intercepted a pass in the neutral zone, then set up DeBrusk for a shot that got blocked. DeBrusk stayed after the puck and threw a backhand on net that wound up in the crease. Pettersson and Sherwood both went digging for the puck and Sherwood shoveled it home.
- Down by three, the Senators nearly went off the rails, following in the tracks of their unhinged captain Brady Tkachuk. To be fair, the Canucks were putting plenty of pennies on those tracks to try to derail the Senators, such as when they played keep-away for nearly two full minutes on a delayed penalty, hanging onto the puck long enough that they actually drew a second penalty to make it a 5-on-3.
- “I mean, I’d be pissed off too,” said DeBrusk about the delayed penalty. “[Claude Giroux] was screaming at me from the bench and I was at the blue line. I was like, ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m trying to score.’”
- During the delayed penalty, I’ll admit my stomach dropped for a moment when Hronek shot a piece of broken stick into his own net. In my defence, the puck had just gone off-screen, so I didn’t know who had the puck and that piece of Tkachuk’s stick, for just a brief moment, looked like the puck.
- Tkachuk went completely off the rails right after coming out of the penalty box, going after Dakota Joshua for a fight, while somehow avoiding a penalty for instigating, though he did get a 10-minute misconduct that ended his night. It was dumb on Tkachuk’s part as he took the Senators’ leading goalscorer out of the game, which may not have seemed like a big deal when the score was 4-1 but it looked pretty stupid when the Senators actually got within a goal before the end of regulation.
- As much as I think the call on Hughes was fair, Tim Stützle’s tackling hit on Nils Höglander was far more dangerous. If not for Höglander twisting at the last moment, he could have been sent headfirst into the boards in a way that could have led to a serious injury, so I don’t blame Höglander for being hopping mad after. Somehow, Stützle avoided a penalty for the initial hit and the Senators ended up on the power play.
- Tocchet said there was “a little bit of Hudson’s Rules at the end,” referring to , “Hudson Bay Rules,” which describes when the rulebook seemingly gets tossed out the window like during a pond hockey game played without referees. To me, it seemed like a pretty subtle jab by Tocchet at how the officials handled — or didn’t handle at all — how the Senators were running around and taking liberties in the third period.
- The Senators pulled the goaltender to go 6-on-4 on the power play and Giroux pulled the Senators within two. Soucy, who was a little rattled from being blatantly interfered with a moment earlier, left the front of the net to chase the puck and it was poked past him to Giroux. He took advantage of Lankinen losing his stick earlier in the sequence, leaving the goaltender unable to poke the puck away.
- When a game grows increasingly chaotic, you lean on your veterans to calm things down. Or, in the case of Tyler Myers, they increase the chaos. With a minute-and-a-half left, Myers picked up the puck in the defensive zone with plenty of time and space to make a play. So, of course, he hammered a slap shot from his own blue line toward the empty net that sailed well wide for an icing. There is no one else on earth like Tyler Myers.
- That icing didn’t lead to the Senators’ third goal. No, that came two icings later on the same shift. Giroux sent a cross-seam pass to Stützle through where Myers’ stick would have been if it wasn’t sticking straight up into the air and Stützle — who frankly should have been in the penalty box from the five-minute major he didn’t receive for boarding Höglander — fired in the one-timer.
- That was as close as the Senators would come, however. The Canucks survived the remaining 43 seconds — call it a tribute to number 43, Quinn Hughes — to secure the win.
- “We’d probably prefer [winning 4-1] — especially Kevin,” said DeBrusk with a rueful chuckle.
- “That’s a lot to throw at a team and I thought we handled it well. I’m proud of the guys. They hung in there and grinded out the win.”
