Saturday October 24: Detroit Red Wings 3 - Vancouver Canucks 2 (OT)
The Vancouver Canucks earned a point but remain winless on home ice after squandering a two-goal lead to the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night at Rogers Arena.
Here are your highlights:
This one hurts. On their three-game trip through Western Canada, the Wings had lost in regulation to Edmonton and in overtime to Calgary, and had lost Brad Richards, Mike Green and Kyle Quincey to injury. Alexey Marchenko was an emergency call-up on the blue line on Saturday.
In those tough circumstances, Marchenko played 16:34 on Saturday night, on the right side of Detroit's second pairing.
The Canucks dominated in the first two periods, outshooting Detroit 23-11 and building a 2-0 lead while enjoying a plethora of other scoring chances.
Both goals came on the power play, but lineup addition Yannick Weber didn't factor into either one. He was inserted into the lineup to try to add some life with the man advantage, but it was the second unit that connected.
Chris Tanev opened the scoring with a seeing-eye shot at 13:03 of the first period for his first of the year, revealing his goal song to be Nelly's "Hot in Herre." Fun!
Brandon Sutter then picked up his third of the year in the second, alone in the slot on a slick passing play set up by Alex Burrows (who also got the primary assist on the Tanev goal) and Bo Horvat.
The Wings looked like they were down and out, but Detroit mounted an unlikely third-period comeback to tie the game.
Who knows where they found the energy at the tail end of a back-to-back? Detroit outshot Vancouver 12-7 in the final frame.
Teemu Pulkkinen showed why he was the AHL's top goal-scorer last season (in just 46 games!) when he got the Wings on the board on a breakaway at the 4:25 mark. Then Yannick Weber took a high-sticking penalty on Darren Helm 1:40 later, which led to a sweet shot from Tomas Tatar to tie the game.
We still hear a lot about the Red Wings' top-level veterans like Henrik Zetterberg and the currently-injured Pavel Datsyuk, but it was the youngsters that salvaged Saturday's game for Detroit. Pulkkinen's in his first full NHL season, Tatar's in his third and Gustav Nyqvist, who scored the game winner in overtime, became a full-time Red Wing during the second half of the 2013-14 season two years ago.
That being said, it's worth noting that this young trio's a lot older than the Canucks' kids. Nyquist is 26—the same age as Brandon Sutter—while Tatar's 24 and Pulkkinen's 23.
After taking criticism for benching his young players in Thursday's loss to Washington, Willie Desjardins did continue to roll the kids through the lineup in the third period on Saturday.
Jared McCann was quite prominent with 11:48 of ice time—a new high for him—including six shifts in the third. His final stat line doesn't look great with two shot attempts, two giveaways and a penalty, but the penalty was pretty chintzy and he seemed like he was making things happen on the ice.
The ice time of Jake Virtanen and Sven Baertschi was impacted by the all the special-teams play. Vancouver was whistled for six minor penalties in the game, while Detroit took four. Virtanen finished with just 5:38 and Baertschi got 6:45, but I'm surprised to see those numbers. I noticed Jake a fair amount as he put up one of the busier stat lines of his young NHL career with two shots, two hits, a takeaway and a blocked shot—even one faceoff win.
Virtanen and Baertschi did get four shifts in the third period on Saturday. Two of them were cut short by penalties—one for each team.
Willie indicated that he was happy enough and confident with the kids in his postgame comments.
Jason Botchford extracted the key quotes in his latest edition of The Provies:
“The young guys played good enough,” willie said. “I wanted to play them more. I put them out against Zetterberg at times.
“There were a couple shifts where they had the big lines. Power play, penalty killing took some of the ice time away on them a little bit.
“I thought they were good tonight. I didn’t have a problem with them playing. I thought all four lines played well.”
Yannick Weber took the penalty that led to Detroit's tying goal and played an absolutely mystifying three-on-three shift that led to Gustav Nyquvist's game winner—first, he blazed alone down the right wing on an end-to-end rush, then his attempt to change at the end of his shift allowed Petr Mrazek to thread a fantastic pass through to Nyqvist, leaving the Canucks caught.
Despite those two crucial gaffes, after the game on TSN1040 I heard about how Dan Hamhuis had the best Corsi night of his season on Saturday. I'd attribute that more to the fact that the Wings looked so sluggish for 40 minutes than to anything extraordinary that Weber brought to the table.
Elsewhere in the Pacific Division on Saturday, Eddie Lack's record fell to 0-2-0 on the season as his Carolina Hurricanes fell to the San Jose Sharks, Arizona beat Ottawa and Anaheim was shut out for the fourth time in seven games, falling 3-0 to Minnesota.
With the single point they earned last night, the Canucks cling to third place for the moment but could get bumped down if the Kings win their fifth in a row against Edmonton tonight. That game's on Hometown Hockey tonight at 6:30—the second half of a double header that opens with the Flames visiting the Rangers at 4:00.
Up next for the Canucks? They'll wrap up this homestand against the 9-0-0 Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday. I'll start setting the scene for that game tomorrow.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»