Beating the Anaheim Ducks shouldn’t feel like an accomplishment.
The Ducks have a 27-27-7 record. Their 61 points this season are good for 26th in the NHL. Their minus-26 goal differential is ranked 27th in the NHL. They are, by any standard, not a good team.
And yet, the Ducks have been pesky lately. Not only did they beat the Vancouver Canucks last week with five unanswered goals to come back from a 2-0 deficit, but they also embarrassed the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday, beating a team with Stanley Cup hopes 6-2.
With the Canucks struggling to close out games since the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off, any win deserves applause. The bar is low for the Canucks right now but, by gum, they vaulted over that bar and only rattled it a tiny bit — not enough to knock it out of the standards.
To be fair, the score was a lot closer than it ought to have been considering the Canucks outshot the Ducks 36-to-16. For the vast majority of the game, the Canucks controlled possession and created plenty of shots and chances, even if all of those shots and chances still only resulted in three goals.
Even one more goal could have made this win just a little bit more comfortable.
“When they have 16 shots, I thought we did a pretty good job,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “You can’t be too picky but sometimes you’ve got to put your foot on a wounded snake; you’ve got to stamp it out. That’s our next level.”
The Canucks might not have stomped on the snake but at least they held the lead in the third period, something that has eluded them not just recently but for most of the season.
“I think when they were making presses, we stayed in our defensive structure,” said Tocchet. “But I still thought we were pressing. I told the guys after the second, we’re up 3-1 but we don’t want to dump pucks in. We don’t want to play just flip pucks out and play cautious hockey. We want to play the game.”
On Wednesday night, the Canucks played the game. I know, because . I saw them do it. I watched this game.
- The Canucks came out strong in the first period, dominating the shot clock 17-to-5 over the Ducks. Unfortunately, none of those 17 shots hit the back of the net, as John “Les Paul” Gibson was more locked in than .
- “We didn’t get rewarded,” said Tocchet. “I thought there were a lot of chances early. You’re hoping it’s two-nothing.”
- Brock Boeser, after being subjected to questions about this possibly being his last game for the Canucks, nearly opened the scoring but Gibson robbed, stole, and pilfered it from him, first getting his toe on the puck, then reaching behind himself with his glove on the backhand to pull it away from the goal line. It was the biggest theft since Denis Villeneuve wasn’t even nominated for best director for Dune: Part Two.
- My favourite moment from the first period was completely inconsequential but it made me laugh. Conor Garland dumped the puck into the Ducks’ zone and, when Jackson Lacombe looked for the puck in the corner, it instead hit him on the top of the helmet. Sometimes, I have a very Three Stooges sense of humour: it funny because puck hit head go doink.
- When the Canucks couldn’t score on their multitude of shots, you just knew the Ducks were going to get the first goal. Sure enough, the Ducks drew first blood. The opening goal was, , against the flow. The Ducks meandered into the zone, Cutter Gauthier threw the puck toward the net, and Sam Colangelo tipped it in past Kevin Lankinen to make it 1-0.
- Poor Elias “Junior” Pettersson got beat up in the first period. First, he took a stick to the jaw from Radko Gudas trying to crash the net for his own rebound, drawing a penalty. Then, in the final minute of the period, he took a shot to the back of his leg, hobbling him. He was in absolute agony at the bench but, , he managed to shake it off and continue for the rest of the game and might possibly become a billionaire in the future. He reassured me that he was okay in the hallway after the game.
- Despire going down a goal in the first, the Canucks didn’t let up in the second, cashing in on an early power play. They took advantage of the Ducks’ aggressive penalty kill that had been pinching up trying to pick off the drop pass. Filip Hronek beat the press with a lovely stretch pass to Boeser and he hit a flying Jake DeBrusk, who flicked the puck top shelf where Grandma hides the edibles.
- “It’s something we look for,” said DeBrusk of the play that led to the goal. “Especially against a team that was super aggressive — they were cutting up some plays there early on the power play. I think their penalty kill made some good adjustments tonight; I think I killed three of our own power plays myself, but at least I got one. It’s one of those things where we make eye contact, I always try to see where Brock is, and I’m fast enough to catch up if it’s developing.”
- Teddy Blueger then gave the Canucks the lead. On the ice at the end of a long shift — he was on for exactly a minute — Blueger could have just dumped the puck in and gone for a chance, instead, he gained the offensive zone with possession, held the puck, then fired a shot that took a fortunate deflection off Jackson Lacombe’s leg and fooled Gibson to slip under his glove. Putting pucks on net works: ?
- Midway through the second period, Elias Pettersson Classic took an awkward hit and was very clearly limping on his way back to the bench, though the broadcast didn’t quite capture it. He was clearly checking his knee at the bench but he didn’t get ask for any medical attention and didn’t miss a shift. I’m not saying he’s playing through an injury but I’m also not not saying that.
- Despite taking the knock, Pettersson had a fantastic game, even if he didn’t hit the scoresheet. He went 20-for-25 in the faceoff circle, which is absolutely dominant, and tilted the ice every time he came over the boards. Shots on goal were 10-to-1 for the Canucks when Pettersson was on the ice at 5-on-5. He also had five hits and three shots on goal. Nice night for the oft-criticized forward.
- “I’m always trying to get better every day and faceoffs are something I haven’t been too great at,” said Pettersson when I spoke to him about faceoffs last month. “I’m aware of it and I’m trying to get better.”
- Gibson had to leave the game after Drew O’Connor crashed into him with a little help from Drew Helleson. O’Connor’s hip or elbow seemed to hit Gibson in the head but the Ducks reported that it was a lower-body injury, so the cause of the injury may have had more to do with Helleson pushing O’Connor on top of his goaltender, which is not a recommended course of action.
- You usually hear about big, physical guys like Jacob Trouba being crease-clearing defencemen but on the Canucks’ third goal, he was a crease-filling defenceman. Pavel Mintyukov pushed Kiefer Sherwood into the net, and then Trouba pushed Teddy Blueger into the crease, meaning there were four players behind goaltender Jakob Dostal, who came into the game in relief of Gibson. With Sherwood still stuck behind Dostal, Nils Höglander fed Carson Soucy, and he one-timed the puck past both Dostal and Sherwood into the net to make it 3-1.
- “Good net presence by our guys,” said Soucy. “Almost too good.”
- “I got pushed in,” said Sherwood. “I was just trying not to push the net off and then I got pushed in again, so I was trying not to touch the goalie. I thought they definitely made the right call.”
- The referees took a long time with the review but finally stated, “It was determined that it was the actions of the Anaheim defender that caused the goaltender interference,” and declared it a good goal.
- Soucy didn’t think it was going to count: “Once it starts taking that long? No, I don’t think so. I don’t know what they’re deciding on when it takes that long but at that point, I’m just like, make a call either way.”
- While the Canucks never collapsed back into a defensive shell with the two goal lead — they outshot the Ducks 12-to-6 in the third period — the Ducks still clawed one goal back. Off a sloppy-looking rush, Isac Lundestrom got off a hard shot, forcing Lankinen to give up a big rebound into the slot. Filip Chytil couldn’t tie up Brian Dumoulin’s stick and he chipped it into the open net to make it 3-2.
- The Canucks nearly responded on the shift after Dumoulin’s goal but just as Gibson robbed Boeser in the first period, Dostal robbed him in the third. Pius Suter won the puck on the forecheck and moved the puck to DeBrusk, who set up Boeser for the one-timer, but Dostal went postal and came across to make the right pad save.
- After the 3-2 goal, the Canucks held the Ducks to just one shot on goal the rest of the way, aided by three defensive zone faceoff wins by Pettersson in the final two minutes. , the Canucks gave the Ducks nothing to work with. To be fair to the Ducks, they looked a bit fatigued on the second night of back-to-backs.
- My favourite moment of the entire game was this nifty play by Conor Garland in the neutral zone in the third period. As Frank Vatrano reached for the puck, Garland, with just one hand on his stick, executed a pristine stick lift at just the right moment to make Vatrano miss the puck. With his stick too far from the puck to play it, Garland had to use his hand to push the puck up ice away from Vatrano’s swinging stick — it was a play borne out of pure necessity. To top it off, Garland drew a hooking penalty on Vatrano, making it even harder for the Ducks to come back in the final minutes. Brilliant stuff.
- “I’ve played enough shinny that sometimes you do whatever works,” said Garland. “I thought that was the best chance to keep the puck in front of me, to just play it with my hand.”
- Most Canucks fans might point to another Garland moment as his best moment of the night — when he tuned up Trevor Zegras in an entirely unexpected fight with five seconds left in the game. It wasn’t just that Garland got a couple of good punches in on Zegras, who has been known to run his mouth, but that he gave him a little “Come on, let’s go” motion with his hands. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not the biggest proponent of fighting but that ruled.
- For anyone caught off-guard by Garland dropping the gloves, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was his fourth fight in the NHL and fighting is in his blood. He was quick to point out, “My dad fought his way through the minor leagues.”
- He’s not wrong: back in 1988-89, Garry Garland had 151 penalty minutes in 23 games with the Carolina Thunderbirds in the ECHL, 30 penalty minutes in four games with the Flint Spirits in the IHL, and 57 penalty minutes in 11 games with the Denver Rangers in the IHL. That’s an average of 6.26 penalty minutes per game.
- Garland vs Zegras distracted from the brouhaha on the other side of the ice, as Derek Forbort wrestled with Jackson Lacombe, prompting Jacob Trouba to fly in from the blue line to be the third-man in to their tussle. Teddy Blueger then jumped in to pull Trouba off of Forbort. Trouba didn’t get a third-man in penalty, as that applies only to fights, and they decided that Forbort was merely roughing Lacombe, who didn’t get a penalty at all, leaving the play at 5-on-5, which is a choice.
- Also, the faceoff stayed in the Canucks’ zone, even though Trouba came down from the point to join the scrum, which is supposed to automatically bring the faceoff outside the zone. Actually, Trouba didn’t even come down from the point, as he’s the one who went back to his own zone to touch up the puck for icing. So, he skated the length of the ice to be the third-man in and the referees not only evened up the penalties but put the faceoff in the Canucks’ zone. It doesn’t make a lick of sense.
- I mean, it didn’t matter, but still. It’s the principle of the thing. Won’t someone please think of the principle?
