Monday October 29 - Vancouver Canucks 5 - Minnesota Wild 2
Jammed in between Halloween Saturday and Halloween Wednesday and the second game of a four-game homestand that features three higher-profile opponents, Monday's matchup between the Vancouver Canucks and the Minnesota Wild drew the smallest home crowd of the season so far at Rogers Arena—listed at 16,546.
The faithful missed out, because Elias Pettersson showed he's back on track after his concussion with two goals and a plastic pumpkin full of other goodies as the Canucks ended their two-game losing streak against a team that had just won five straight games.
Markus Granlund, Jake Virtanen and Ben Hutton had the other goals for the Canucks. Yes, five!
These are pretty fun: here are your highlights:
The Canucks don't score first very often but when they do, you can book the win this season. Markus Granlund got things started on a patient shot from the slot at 7:17 of the first period, capitalizing on a giveaway by Matt Dumba behind the Minnesota net.
Dumba was selected one spot ahead of Derrick Pouliot in the 2012 NHL draft—and 140 spots ahead of Ben Hutton. He signed a juicy five-year contract with a cap hit of $6 million last summer. On Monday, his mistakes overshadowed any miscues by the Canucks' blueliners. He finished the night with a whopping 11 shot attempts but was also a team-low minus-3 for Minnesota.
For the most part, Dumba has put those tough nights behind him, but I guess it goes to show that even the good ones can lay an egg every once in awhile. His big deal came after a 50-point season in 2017-18 and he's on a similar track this year, with five points in 11 games and a plus-three even after Monday's numbers are added.
This is my roundabout way of saying that while the Wild didn't bring the same battle level on Monday that we saw from Pittsburgh on Saturday night—especially in the first period—the Canucks' defenders also delivered a much more responsible effort. I didn't spend the evening pining for Edler and Tanev like I did on Saturday.
Travis Green's adjustments after the shutout loss to the Penguins appeared to pay solid dividends. With a mandate to play harder and be more aggressive, Vancouver started strong and outshot Minnesota 14-7 in the first period. And though they lost the possession game in the final 40 minutes, Hutton's empty-netter gave them a season high of 31 shots on goal and, more importantly, they outscored Minnesota 4-1 despite being outshot 32-17 in the last two periods.
That's another very good game for Jacob Markstrom, who held the fort impressively when he was under siege in the third. According to
Hockey Reference, Markstrom has now delivered four "quality starts" in his seven appearances this year for a Quality Start Percentage of .571. The fancystatters will tell you that the league average is .53 and anything above .60 is considered excellent, so that's a perfectly good place for Markstrom to be at this point in the season.
You know who else had a pretty good game? Adam Gaudette. After a scratch against Pittsburgh, he drew back in on the fourth line, then found himself with extra responsibilities after Brandon Sutter injured his shoulder early in the second period.
Gaudette saw 3:25 of ice time in the first period, 3:56 in the second and 4:54 in the third for a total of 12:15—his highest total this year. He did play more during his five-game audition at the end of last season—his career high is 14:32. But those games were essentially garbage time. These ones matter more.
“It was a gutty performance by our group and we had a lot of guys step up, especially after Sutter went down and it will be at least weeks,” Travis Green said after the game, per
Ben Kuzma of The Province. “Young Gaudette gets thrown into the fire and ends up playing against Staal and Koivu.
“That’s a lot to ask.”
Green is also trying to manage the ice time of young Elias Pettersson, who snuck up to 19:01 against Pittsburgh on Saturday and played 18:11 against the Wild.
When Kuzma asked after Monday's morning skate how much Pettersson thought he should play, he gave another golden response.
“Interesting question,” pondered Pettersson. “I don’t know. If I could, I like to play 60 minutes a game.”
After his two-goal, two-hit, three-block, first-star tour de force, he said "I felt good and felt fresh and felt that I had good energy all game long," and added "It’s always fun to score, but I think the biggest (goal) was to bounce back from our last game."
Let's look at those goals again, shall we?
At 6:51 of the second period, there was this, from his 'spot.' It proved to be the game winner:
Then at 6:29 of the third, he delivered this beauty:
There has been a lot of grumbling about the Canucks' ongoing use of the Viking Clap as an in-arena pump-up ritual during the first TV timeout of the third period.
On Saturday, it went over like a lead balloon, as they say, as Vancouver was getting pounded by Pittsburgh. But the energy from the ritual was still crackling through air on Monday when Pettersson's breakaway goal came just eight seconds after play resumed.
I guess it's sticking around for sure, now.
As for Elias—even during his six missed games, he never relinquished his top spot in the rookie scoring race. Now with seven goals and 10 points in eight games, he has a three-goal lead over second-place Max Lajoie of Ottawa and a three-point lead over Lajoie, Anaheim's Max Comtois, and two Chicago rookies who will make their first appearances at Rogers Arena on Wednesday: defenseman Henri Jokiharji and centre Dominik Kahun.
Petey picked a good night to shine, too. On a light night in the NHL with just two games on the schedule, the World Series finished, and the game broadcast nationally on Sportsnet, fans and media from coast to coast were able to marvel at his skillset.
Bure talk aside, he's also in pretty good company here:
As for Brandon Sutter...
The Canucks are off today. Here's how Jim Benning has chosen to manage his roster.
Officially, I'm only seeing Sutter on IR and Archibald recalled at this time. I wonder if there's a timing issue with the Tanev/Gaunce portion of the equation? I think Gaunce is needed.
If this is correct, I'm guessing that means Travis Green will continue to lean on Gaudette down the middle and Gaunce may slot into that fourth-line centre spot. I'm not sure Green's going to want to use Granlund in that role after he shone on Bo Horvat's line on Monday with a goal and a team-high six shots.
“Granny was great tonight,” Horvat told Kuzma. “He works his bag off on the forecheck and is really good defensively. I was excited to play with him tonight and I thought or line created a lot in the offensive zone and was grinding down low.
“And Granny played that 200-foot game. He scored 19 goals in this league for a reason.”
Green concurred. “That was Granny’s best game of the year by far and one of the better I’ve seen.”
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»