Wednesday October 7: Vancouver Canucks 5 - Calgary Flames 1
The Vancouver Canucks gave fans lots to like as they skated out of Calgary with a 5-1 opening-night win.
Here are your highlights:
The big story of the game was the new first line of the Sedin twins with Brandon Sutter on right wing. The trio combined for six points on the night and all three players were plus-three.
Not only were the Sedins scoring, they were making plays with style—doing a fine job of asserting that their 35-year-old selves will look pretty much the same as what we've gotten used to seeing over the years.
Sutter's deployment was interesting—rather than being used as a typical right winger, it's more like the line features two centres handling different parts of the job.
After Henrik's faceoff success rate dropped to 45 percent last season, Sutter shared duties on the draw last night. The stats at NHL.com don't break down right-side and left-side draws, but Sutter told
Cassie Campbell after the game that he was taking the faceoffs on the right side, where he was 5-4. Meanwhile, Henrik went 7-8 on his faceoff duties.
Sutter also brings a new defensive conscience to the line. Again, it's the centre who's typically responsible for being the third man back—but that's the role that Sutter is playing thanks to his speed and his sense of two-way responsibility.
Bo Horvat may have seized the second-line centre job that was originally earmarked for Sutter, but one could argue that Sutter is now playing as a sort of 1B pivot. Very creative—and, so far, effective—deployment by Willie.
The two fights in the game seemed a bit like quaint relics of bygone days, but I think they served their intended purposes.
As the visiting coach, Willie would have been the first to submit his starting lineup on Wednesday. He kicked things off with Bo Horvat centring Derek Dorsett and Brandon Prust.
Bob Hartley responded by putting out Sam Bennett with Josh Jooris and Micheal Ferland so, two seconds into the game, Dorsett and Ferland were throwing down.
Dorsett didn't look great in the fight but admitted that he couldn't resist the opportunity to tangle with Ferland.
As
Iain MacIntyre put it in his
Vancouver Sun game story:
Dorsett’s fight with Ferland may have been staged, but it was not pointless.
“I thought about it for a while,” Dorsett said. “And when I (saw) what the starting lineups were, I knew I was going to ask him to fight. He’s an honest player, he plays hard. He obviously made a statement last year in the playoffs. I just wanted to make it clear that we were going to give him some pushback.”
Brandon Prust's scrap with Brandon Bollig at the 8:02 mark of the first may have seemed even less relevant to the overall game, but I think it served a purpose.
Bollig got the better of Ryan Miller on two less-than-stellar goals in preseason, so I can see Prust wanting to defend the honour of his starting netminder a little bit.
More importantly—Calgary had dominated the game in the early going. The Flames were ahead 6-3 in shots, and Vancouver's only offense had been generated by its early power play, before Prust's fight.
But there, the tide started to turn. Jannik Hansen got Vancouver's first goal of the season 2:32 later on a seeing-eye shot to the top corner that left the Sportsnet crew dissecting Karri Ramo's glove-hand technique in the first intermission, while the Canucks came out of the opening frame with a 2-0 lead and a 15-9 advantage on the shot clock.
Here's how Ben Hutton describes his first NHL point, as he set up Hansen for that opening goal. From
Jason Botchford's Provies:
"I saw a big gap in the middle of the ice and I saw (Hansen) at the far blue and he kind of gave me a little stick up," Hutton said. "I just threaded one down there."
Though Hansen was sprung, in this case, by a slick pass, he was more excited about how the defense was skating through the course of the night:
“You see (Hutton) skate it out of trouble, skate it out of his own end?” an amped up Jannik said. “We weren’t getting hemmed in. It’s so huge for us forwards, when the D can do that.
“You saw how the pressure relieved when (Hutton) and Bart and Tan Man and Edler skated the puck out of trouble. It took a lot of pressure off their forecheck.”
Without that forechecking pressure that Vancouver became so familiar with in the playoffs, the Flames looked like a pretty pedestrian hockey team. The Flames still outhit the Canucks 28-16—led by six hits from Ferland—but when the Canucks dominated on the shot clock (44-30, led by seven shots from Daniel) and the scoreboard, there's not much room for concern.
On a morning where Chris Tanev leads the NHL with a plus-four, Mark Giordano starts his comeback from biceps surgery with a minus-three.
I'm guessing that Willie will stick with this lineup for Game 2, but it'll be interesting to see what the Flames bring to the table on Saturday. A different goalie from their rotating selection will probably draw in, but will the skaters be able to ramp up the effort and counter what the Canucks brought on Wednesday?
Bob Hartley thinks so.
"We played a game totally out of character for us," he said to MacIntyre. "We got what we deserved. They kicked our butts."
Don't forget, last season's no-expectations Canucks beat Calgary 4-2 to kick off the 2014-15 campaign.
Click here to go back to one season ago, when Willie, Miller and Vrbata were brand new and Henrik Sedin made the highlight reels with his sliding empty-net goal.
And one final note to wrap up today—the Utica Comets still haven't set their final roster ahead of Saturday's opening game, but they have offered up a rundown of the comings and goings since last season:
Yesterday, Ludwig Blomstrand and Tyler Shattock were assigned to the Kalamazoo Wings, so it sounds like that relationship with the ECHL squad will be continuing even though Columbus will be the Wings' official NHL affiliate.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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