Wednesday October 12 - Edmonton Oilers 5 - Vancouver Canucks 3
Saturday October 15 - Vancouver Canucks at Philadelphia Flyers - 1 p.m. PT - Sportsnet Pacific
The Vancouver Canucks got out to the hot start they wanted in their season-opener on Wednesday night. But THEY weren't able to make it to the finish line with any points in their pockets as they fell 5-3 to the Edmonton Oilers.
After building a 3-0 lead by the 39-second mark of the first period off goals from Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller and Andrei Kuzmenko, the Canucks never seemed to recover after a non-call on a high stick on Quinn Hughes led to the Oilers' first goal. That got the crowd engaged and shifted the momentum — and when Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid are operating with full swagger, the Oilers are a tough team to stop.
As much as I hate making preseason predictions, I am pretty invested in my belief that McDavid is going to challenge for the Rocket Richard Trophy this year. During the preseason player media tour, he told the Sportsnet crew that he has spent the summer working on his shot. And when McDavid has already accomplished as much as he has by the age of 25, I imagine it's important for him to keep setting new goals in order to stay engaged.
Heading into Friday's action, McDavid's three goals tie him with Nashville's Nino Niederreiter and Colorado's Val Nichushkin atop the goal-scoring race. But I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that, even for McDavid, his 60% shooting accuracy against the Canucks is probably unsustainable. Right?
As for the Canucks — it was great to see the top stars step up early. And Elias Pettersson continues to look terrific, although it was a little unsettling to see him shooting wide on big one-timers from the right circle. I still remember his pinpoint accuracy from that spot during his rookie season.
The Canucks did outshoot the Oilers 36-25 in the game, and Petey's five shots led the team, along with three that were blocked and just one that missed, according to the stat sheet. Andrei Kuzmenko was second with four shots on net on six attempts — and his first NHL goal in his first NHL game. That works.
Heckuva play off the rush on the power play at the beginning of the period, and he makes a strong cross-ice pass to get things started. According to
Sportsnet Stats, he's the first Canuck ever to store a power-play goal in his NHL debut. Because he's 26, he isn't technically a rookie, so let's put it this way: not too many first-year players get to start off on PP1. And even he might not have gotten that opportunity had it not been for Brock Boeser's injury.
The bad news is that, in the big picture, the Canucks lost the special-teams battle badly — and it wasn't for lack of opportunity. Kuzmenko's goal was the only power-play tally on eight chances in the game, starting the power play at a modest 12.5% success rate. And yes, the Oilers are one of the most dangerous teams in the league with the man advantage. But their 3-for-4 effort was the difference in the game — and has Vancouver's penalty kill working out of a hole again, last in the league heading into Friday's games with a success rate of 25%. Eeep.
Adding insult to injury, Edmonton's tying goal came shorthanded — off the stick of Darnell Nurse with 41 seconds left to play in the second period, while McDavid was serving his second penalty of the night.
The Oilers' only even-strength tally of the night was McDavid's game winner, scored with 4:59 left in the third. So if you're looking for a positive, it's that the Canucks were solid at 5-on-5. According to
Natural Stat Trick, they controlled 53.37% of the expected goals in the game.
Kuzmenko finished with 17:43 of ice time and kept his shifts to a reasonable average of 47 seconds. But a whopping 7:10 of that time came on the power play. He was one of only three Vancouver forwards to finish with less than 10 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time (9:25). The others were fourth-liners Curtis Lazar (7:25) and Dakota Joshua (6:48). So Kuzmenko was sheltered a bit, but came out just fine. With seven scoring chances for the Canucks and only one against while he was on the ice, his expected goals rate of 89.68% was tops on the team — slightly ahead of Pettersson's rate of 87.19%.
Quinn Hughes finished at the bottom of that list, at just 21.56%. But I can give him a pass for this game — coming off an illness that kept him out of practice for several days and clearly uncomfortable as he dealt with the aftereffects of that high stick from Draisaitl, which forced him to keep cotton swabbed up in his nostrils to prevent further bleeding.
Looks like he's OK, though. After a travel day on Thursday, the combos all appear to be intact at practice in Philadelphia on Friday.
Not surprisingly, Harman also reports that the club is spending a lot of time working on the power play.
And while there has been plenty of doom and gloom surrounding Vancouver's next opponents, the Philadelphia Flyers came out with a strong effort that pleased new coach John Tortorella and got a good night of goaltending from Carter Hart as they kicked off their season with a 5-2 win over the New Jersey Devils.
The Flyers' early schedule is nicely spaced out, so I expect we'll see Hart again for Saturday's afternoon game against the Canucks. And one thing that is still consistent for Philadelphia is a long list of injury issues. In addition to Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis, who didn't play at all in preseason, Rasmus Ristolainen and Cam Atkinson also started the year on the injured list, and forward Owen Tippett was injured against the Devils on Thursday.
So if you haven't followed all the minutiae of the Flyers over the last two years, a lot of these names from Friday's practice might seem pretty unfamiliar:
Travis Konecny and Morgan Frost, who have both been around for awhile, had good games on Thursday, and the fanbase has high hopes for recent NCAA graduate Noah Cates. Former Canuck Zack MacEwen cleared waivers, but apparently fellow fourth-liner Hayden Hodgson is on waivers on Friday, so it wouldn't be a shock to see those two swap places before Saturday's game. And on defense, this will be the Canucks' first chance to see new addition Tony DeAngelo in a Philadelphia uniform.
Note the early start time for Saturday's game, at 1 p.m. PT.
Which leaves us time to catch the Abbotsford Canucks on the AHL's free preview weekend.
The AHL crew starts its season on the road in California this weekend, visiting the Ontario Reign on Friday and the Bakersfield Condors on Saturday.
I'm interested to see what Jeremy Colliton will get out of this team. Here's the opening-night roster — which does include both Linus Karlsson and Danila Klimovich, after Sheldon Dries was recalled to be the spare forward for the big club on this opening road trip.
Abbotsford also named its first team captain on Thursday. At age 22, that's a nice feather in the cap of Chase Wouters, who spent three seasons as captain of the Saskatoon Blades during his WHL career.
Puck drop for Abbotsford on both nights is at 7 p.m. PT.
Enjoy the games!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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