Tuesday April 2 - Vancouver Canucks 4 - San Jose Sharks 2
The Vancouver Canucks finished out their 2018-19 home schedule by staging a third-period comeback to defeat the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night at Rogers Arena.
Here are your highlights:
Tanner Pearson had two goals, Markus Granlund scored the game winner, and Troy Stecher hit for the insurance marker with a long-range shorthanded empty-netter—just his second goal of the year.
The Canucks came out of the gate well, with Pearson opening the scoring at 1:28 of the first period and Luke Schenn squaring off in a fight with tough-as-nails Micheal Haley 24 seconds later.
After that, Vancouver went to sleep until the second intermission—outshot 23-13 through the first two periods and trailing after two thanks to a couple of tricky shots that eluded Thatcher Demko.
Overall, Demko was very good in the game—making 33 saves and looking confident against the Sharks' snipers who always seem to get the best of the Canucks. We even saw a couple of examples of Demko's bendy desperation saves that always seemed to find their way to the highlight reels when he was at Boston College. Unorthodox, but he makes them work.
As I thought back to how poor Mikey DiPietro was overwhelmed by the Sharks when he took the net for that 7-2 shellacking on February 11, it was a good reminder that while DiPietro has shown plenty of promise, he still has a ways to go before he'll be NHL ready—and that Demko's development path does seem to be on track. Yes, his early-season concussion and the two weeks he missed with that knee injury in February set him back a bit, but Demko seems to be settling in to his NHL role. Tuesday's game gives him a winning record at 4-3-0 for the year, with a respectable 2.94 goals-against average and .909 save percentage. Hopefully he'll get one more start on the road before the end of the year.
Pearson's production since joining the Canucks has also been impressive. In 17 games, he has seven goals and nine points, and has shown good chemistry with Bo Horvat.
Travis Green on Tanner Pearson: "It's a little bit of opportunity, you know playing with Bo, I think they've got some chemistry. But he seems to skating better than when we first got him. He's playing well." #Canucks
According to Jason Botchford in The Athletties, Travis Green first put Pearson and Horvat together midway through the Canucks' March 15 home game against New Jersey. Over the last 10 games, including that night, Horvat has collected three goals and 11 points and now sits at 61 for the year, while Pearson has seven points—six of them goals.
Horvat can be a guy who tries to do it all himself, offensively, but it seems like he has found a finisher that he trusts in Pearson.
As for Quinn Hughes—he finished up as a minus-one for the first time in a game, but saw his ice time increase by more than two minutes, to 18:37, and took a few shifts on the right side as well as spending most of the night with his usual partner, Schenn. He did fine with Alex Edler, but was out with Ben Hutton while Schenn was serving his fighting major when Kevin Labanc got the Sharks on the board in the first period.
Hughes finished the game with just one shot attempt; his best moment was a pinpoint pass in the slot to Boeser during a third-period power play.
The Canucks are also now a perfect 3-0-0 in the Hughes era. I'm not saying that's a clear cause-and-effect, but it is interesting—and they had just lost three in a row before he got into the lineup.
Tuesday's game marked the fifth time this season that the Canucks came back to win when they were trailing after two periods, which is more than I thought. The odds are still long—they're 5-28-4 in that situation for the season—but it's better than last year, when they were 3-35-4.
With the win over the Sharks, Vancouver finishes out its home schedule with a 20-16-5 record at Rogers Arena. That's also a nice uptick from 16-18-7 last year.
Is it just me? I feel like this season has flown by. I also feel like the Canucks didn't have too many soul-crushing losses at home this year. I guess the three worst were all pretty recent: the 7-2 loss to the Sharks with DiPietro in net in February, that 6-2 drubbing by Vegas on March 9 and the 5-0 loss to Columbus on March 24—right on the heels of that pivotal 3-1 loss to Calgary that closed the door on the playoff conversation.
As for the team awards—all good by me.
It was nice to see Antoine Roussel on the big screen when he was announced as Unsung Hero. He looked genuinely moved—and I hope the accolade helped to cheer him up a bit. We learned on Tuesday that Roussel underwent ACL surgery last week after suffering that nasty injury against the New York Rangers three weeks ago. His recovery time is projected at six to nine months, which means there's a strong possibility that he'll miss training camp and the beginning of the season for the second-straight year.
In the end, I also had no problem with Jacob Markstrom winning the MVP Award. I'm so pleased that he has defied the odds to keep getting better into his late 20s, and that he got the support of the fans through the award voting. I hope his upward trajectory continues—and that he kicks butt for Sweden at World Championships this year.
The Sedins may be gone, but the Swedish flavour still runs deep through the top end of the Canucks' lineup. Alex Edler did take home his second Best Defenseman award, while Elias Pettersson earned Most Exciting Player honours.
Air Canuck is bound for Nashville on Wednesday, where the Canucks will face the Predators on Thursday before finishing out their 2018-19 schedule with a Saturday matinee in St. Louis.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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