Sunday January 13 - Vancouver Canucks 5 - Florida Panthers 1
The score is more lopsided than the game really was, but Sunday's win over the Florida Panthers checked all the boxes a Canucks fan could hope for. Mike Matheson was booed. Roberto Luongo was Loooooed. And Erik Gudbranson delivered a heavyweight tilt at centre ice to even the score for Elias Pettersson's early-season injury.
Here are your highlights:
A tired team heading toward the end of a brutal road trip, the Panthers didn't deliver a whole lot of snarl in their third game in four days and fourth in six. Vancouver outshot Florida 36-24 in the game and the score would have tilted in the home team's favour a lot sooner if it hadn't been for the stellar play of Luongo. He was particularly sharp against Brock Boeser, who led Vancouver with five shots and didn't pick up his 15th goal of the year until Luongo had left the net to give Florida an extra attacker in the late stages of the third period.
The Canucks came out hitting, too. The final tally was 34-18 for Vancouver and the Canucks were led by Gudbranson and Jake Virtanen, with six hits apiece—well above their averages of about two hits a game this season.
On Sunday, Gudbranson was credited with two hits before the game was four minutes old and logged his fifth of the game at the 11:09 mark of the first period. I believe that's what they call 'setting the tone.'
He wasn't working alone, either. By that 11:09 mark, the hit count was 12-4 in favour of Vancouver.
As for Public Enemy No. 1, Matheson—he was hard to miss, with the Rogers Arena crowd booing him early and often when he was on the ice. He was on the receiving end of four hits in total—two from Brandon Sutter and singles from Jay Beagle and Bo Horvat, who also dished out this subtle punishment as the teams were leaving the ice at the end of the second period:
After Matheson declined to drop the gloves, Guddy acquitted himself very respectably against the tough-as-nails Micheal Haley, who led the league last season in penalty minutes (212) and majors (22), but has just 15 penalty minutes in 20 games this season after starting the year in the
NHL/NHLPA player assistance program.
The fight came late in the first period—and Loui Eriksson opened the scoring just after the midpoint of the second when he picked off a Mike Hoffman pass attempt, then did his best Dekey Pete impersonation as he went wide to the left of the net before tucking the puck behind a sprawling Luongo.
The goal kicked off Eriksson's first-ever plus-four night in a Vancouver uniform and his second three-point game as a Canuck thanks to his primary assists on both Boeser and Jay Beagle's empty-net goals. On Sunday, Loui bested Lou, but Eriksson also snapped an eight-game pointless streak.
So far, Eriksson has stayed healthy this season, and is tracking to play all 82 games. With 7-9-16 in 46 games, he's on pace for 12 goals and 28 points—which would be his best totals in three years as a Canuck after seasons of 24 and 23 points, but also his lowest points-per-game (0.35).
As grim as his numbers are, though, it's still true that all the big-money free agents from that class of 2016 have underperformed—and dealt with a long list of injuries and health issues. Milan Lucic gets the brunt of the attention—he's now at 2-7-9 in 45 games in Edmonton this year. But David Backes has been stricken with concussions and is just 4-8-12 in Boston this year and Andrew Ladd was 3-4-7 in 14 games with the New York Islanders before being knocked out of action with a leg injury on a collision with Erik Gudbranson when the Canucks visited the New York Islanders on November 13.
Even Kyle Okposo, who has played every game for Buffalo this year after dealing with a scary illness and a concussion over the last couple of years, has a relatively modest 7-11-18 in 45 games. His first two seasons back in Buffalo, he had 45 and 44 points—not bad, considering the rest of the numbers we're talking about here, but still not on par with the 22-42-64 he posted with the Islanders as he headed into free agency.
Back to the Canucks. Despite outplaying the Panthers, it was still anybody's game in the third period, and Frank Vatrano gave Florida a chance to rally when he tied the game 1-1 with his 13th of the year at the 5:29 mark.
Travis Green did shuffle his defense pairings for the game, starting out primarily with Pouliot-Gudbranson and Hutton-Stecher. He needed to do more juggling while Gudbranson served his fighting major—and Tanev missed the first half of the second period after crashing awkwardly into the end boards.
Tanev did return to his regular spot with Alex Edler and was a shot-blocking machine in the late stages of the third, and Hutton-Stecher was still a thing when the pair combined for what turned out to be the winning goal, 7:20 into the third.
The goal was Hutton's fourth of the year—and his first in 30 games, or more than two months. He was one happy camper when he took his twirl around the ice at Rogers Arena after being named the game's first star.
The win was also Jacob Markstrom's first in four games—a solid outing to get the Canucks back in the win column after going 0-2-1 since Elias Pettersson's injury.
One other item to note, though: the NHL came as close as they ever will to admitting that they may have been wrong with their call on that kicked-in Coyotes goal that was unsuccessfully challenged by Travis Green on Thursday.
According to
Chris Johnston of Sportsnet:
The league’s hockey operations department followed up with a call to Green on Friday to explain how the process played out on their end. They also reviewed the decision internally with no clear consensus — some felt there was a distinct kicking motion from Cousins that should have overturned the goal while others believed the correct ruling was made.
There can be shades of grey with these type of decisions and even during video review they have to be made pretty quickly.
It’s safe to say there was one area of full agreement: Hockey ops was happy this happened in a game on Jan. 10 rather than June 10, with a Stanley Cup on the line.
The Canucks are off on Monday, so we'll have to wait until practice on Tuesday to learn whether Pettersson is well enough to potentially get back into the lineup on Wednesday against Edmonton.
Finally: did you get a chance to check in on the Utica Comets during the free day of AHL Live broadcasting on Saturday? I had one eye on the Comets' impressive 3-2 win over the Syracuse Crunch—a terrific game for goaltender Ivan Kulbakov, who was also in net for Friday's 4-3 overtime loss to Bridgeport—and who was torched for eight goals in 43:17 the last time he faced the Crunch, Tampa Bay's farm team, back on December 28.
With Thatcher Demko now up in Vancouver and Richard Bachman out for the season with an Achilles injury, Kulbakov has been basically been going it alone in net—and the Comets have moved up the AHL standings. They're now second in the North Division with a 21-17-3-1 record, but like their parent club, they've played more games than most of their opponents.
Expect to see the organization try to make a move soon to bring in a veteran goaltender with an NHL contract to try to shore up organizational depth at that position.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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