After some up and down performances these past few weeks, the Canucks had something to play for on Saturday night – and it showed. The Canucks were sharp and purposeful in their 3-1 win over the Oilers. It was more-or-less a battle for the Pacific Division crown, and the Canucks came out on top. If you want to see the highlights, they’re here:
It was a bend-don’t-break mentality for the Canucks, so going into Edmonton and taking the two points and the stranglehold on the division this late in the season is a huge boost for the boys heading into the playoffs. Unlike the first game beatdown in October, the Canucks won on the back of their defensive play. The team was clinical when they held the lead, and DeSmith was solid when pucks got through.
“We’ve been working to trend back to our top level as a group and I thought that was a really good effort by us,” Myers said after the win. “I didn’t think we tried to force things, we let the game come to us as a team and it was a great team win.”
Top to bottom it was. The Canucks finally got some more depth scoring out of their lineup, with goals from fourth liner Lafferty, newly promoted Suter (who was a healthy scratch just a couple games ago), and an empty netter from Joshua. Tocchet shuffled his lines back to what they were earlier in the season, and that appeared to work.
With questions about deployment coming back from his injury, Lindholm played well centering a line with Garland and Lafferty, and spent most of his 5-on-5 time matched up against Draisaitl. He played the most of the Canucks’ forwards, logging 17:54 of ice time compared to Miller’s 17:36 and Pettersson’s 17:33. It looks like having the center depth will be the way moving forward, and you can’t really argue with those defensive results.
“It’s a tough building to come into. They don’t lose very often here, and coming in here and letting them only score one goal, it’s a credit to a lot of guys,” Tocchet said. “I thought defensively we were good, and they had a lot of chances, too."
Winning in Edmonton is always nice, but of course the cherry on top is getting one step closer to winning the division. It was a big night for both teams, and they both knew it. Not that winning the division is much heralded in the NHL, but it means something more for a team that hasn’t won much the past few years, and was written off in the off-season.
“We knew this was a four-point swing toward that goal that we had,” DeSmith said. “It’s not the ultimate goal that we have this season, but it’s definitely something we’ve been working toward and it’s something we take pride in.”
The Canucks need just one point over their next two games to wrap up the division. The next chance to do that is against the Flames. Tocc was asked about the title, but dodged it a bit:
“Well… it's not over yet, so I'm not going to answer that question. Listen, anytime you play late in the season meaningful games (it means) a lot. That's something this franchise wanted for a long time, and these are the games we need. We've got a big one on Tuesday.”
It’ll be interesting to see how many Oiler fans show their faces in the comments now:
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