Tuesday September 1 - Vancouver Canucks 2 - Vegas Golden Knights 1
Vegas leads best-of-seven series 3-2
It ain't over yet, gang. Feeling left out of a key playoff bubble narrative with no goaltending drama, the Vancouver Canucks presented a Jacob Markstrom injury and a heroic playoff debut by Thatcher Demko to keep themselves alive in Game 5 in Edmonton on Tuesday.
Here are your highlights:
The rumblings about a possible Markstrom injury started on Monday, and gained steam as we rolled up to gametime.
"All last night & this morning, everything I’ve heard is Thatcher Demko is starting tonight. Markstrom has 2 issues: he’s fatigued & think he has a minor groin injury, is what I’m hearing."@DhaliwalSports with @DonnieandTheMoj now on #Canucks goaltenders for Game 5.
Demko said after the game that he found out on Monday night that he'd be playing. He also sounded like Markstrom's status would be day-to-day going forward. The TV crews did catch a masked-up Markstrom watching from the stands during the third period of the game.
It's kind of funny that in the last game, I was musing about players like Brock Boeser potentially playing through injuries. Markstrom, of course, should have also been on my radar, if for no other reason than his heavy workload. He's second in total minutes played in the postseason behind only Andrei Vasilevskiy — who had a five-overtime game to help pad his numbers!
But even though the Canucks have, generally speaking, tightened up defensively in the playoffs compared to some of their worst regular-season moments, Markstrom leads all postseason netminders by a mile in shots faced, with 491 in 14 games. So that's an average of 35.07 shots against per game — and those 14 games were packed into 29 days, so that doesn't leave a lot of time for rest or treatment.
Vasilevskiy is second, 418 shots faced in 13 games. That averages out to 32.15 shots against per game, but that number is dramatically impacted by the 63 shots in the five-overtime game and a 47-shot night in the double-OT game on Monday, when the Lightning eliminated the Bruins.
Should Travis Green have been more judicious sooner with his goalie management? It's tough, when every game is so important. Even Peter DeBoer has had his challenges in dealing with healthy Robin Lehner and Marc-Andre Fleury, as has been well documented. Elsewhere, injury issues with Ben Bishop forced Dallas to lean on Anton Khudobin, who has played well — and then Bishop got torched for four goals in less than a period when he did return to the net for the Stars in Game 5. And at the other end of the ice on Monday, Colorado stayed alive with third-stringer Michael Hutchinson taking over goaltending duties now that both Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz are injured.
In the East, Tuukka Rask's decision to leave the bubble — while understandable — was a huge blow to the Cup chances for the Presidents' Trophy-winning Bruins, and Alain Vigneault has dealt with plenty of naysayers in terms of how he has deployed Carter Hart and Brian Elliott.
The Islanders' surprising success has insulated Barry Trotz a bit — although he has run primarily with Semyon Varlamov. Jon Cooper has gotten away with a one-goalie show with Vasilevskiy for the Lightning — and it's now looking like Tampa Bay will get a multi-day rest before starting the Eastern Conference Final in the bubble in Edmonton. The way things are going, it'll be no earlier than this weekend, I guess, and possibly as late as next Tuesday or so if the Islanders-Flyers series ends up going to seven games.
That's a long preamble because there's really not much to say about Demko's performance except that he was lights out. And how impressive is that? Now five-and-a-half weeks into life in the Edmonton bubble, Demko has been able to stay mentally focused and keep doing the work that he has needed to do in order to be ready, never knowing if or when that moment would come.
And Demko was full value for the win, too. The 43 shots he faced were the most allowed by the Canucks in a non-overtime game so far in this postseason. Jonathan Marchessault alone had 14 shot attempts — eight shots, plus three misses and three that were blocked.
Shots were 6-0 for Vegas before Oscar Fantenberg finally got a puck through to Robin Lehner midway through the first period. The Canucks were shooting early — Vegas recorded five blocks before that Fantenberg shot got through. But Vancouver finished the game with just 38 total shot attempts — 17 shots, 13 that were blocked, and eight misses. Vegas ended up at 79 — 22 shots that were blocked and 14 misses to go along with the 43 on net.
That may take a toll next game, but because the Canucks only trailed for 24 seconds in the entire game, line deployment was reasonably well balanced. Alex Edler was the big-minute man at 26:39, and Bo Horvat led the forwards at 21:20.
Also noteworthy on the stat sheet: J.T. Miller was 5-for-11 on draws! If he's back to taking faceoffs, I guess he has worked through whatever was ailing him — and I suspect that also correlates with his five assists in the last two games. He has been in on every Vancouver goal, so if he's healthier now and able to be more precise with his puck-handling, that could be a big boost to the Canucks' offense going forward.
Miller's now up to 16 points in 15 postseason games — tied for sixth overall and one point ahead of Vegas' scoring leaders, Shea Theodore and Mark Stone. Elias Pettersson remains second with 18 points, behind only Nathan MacKinnon, and Bo Horvat's nine goals still lead all players in that category.
Green on the win last night: A pessimistic person could say we didn’t respond, an optimistic person will say ‘you found a way to win a hockey game.’ It’s compete, it’s buying in as a group. I expect our team to play a better game tomorrow as with the puck and skating.
Travis Green speaks often about how effort doesn't necessarily correlate with results — a team can play well and lose, or can play not-as-well and get a win.
In addition to Demko's performance, the other bright spot on Tuesday was a much more aggressive offensive game for Brock Boeser. His five shots on goal were a postseason high for him, he was in on both goals, and his goal was his first in this series and just his second in 12 games.
It had been a week between wins for Vancouver. My guess is that the positive mood after Tuesday's win will add more fuel to the team's bonding experience.
They're now 15 games in — and they didn't waver when they could have bought into the teasing temptation that a loss would mean they'd get to leave the bubble and go home.
I'm so happy that three of the four teams facing elimination have lived to fight another day. Hoping for some great games over the next few days!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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