Saturday December 26 - Vancouver Canucks 2 - Edmonton Oilers 1 (OT)
The Vancouver Canucks earned their first overtime win of the season when a stitched-up Jannik Hansen returned to the ice to score the game-winning goal with 59 seconds remaining in the extra frame.
Here are your highlights of the Canucks' Boxing Day win over the Edmonton Oilers:
Andrey Pedan, Linden Vey and Ronalds Kenins all drew in on Saturday night as Vancouver's injury list continues to grow.
Chris Tanev missed Saturday's game and is said to be day-to-day after blocking a shot late in last Tuesday's game against Tampa Bay. Alex Burrows took Saturday's morning skate but was a late scratch with what is said to be an upper-body injury. I wonder if it's a result of that hit he took from Andrej Sustr against the Lightning on Tuesday—the one that led to the flurry of power-play chances for the Lightning?
Botchford has a GIF of the hit
here, in his postgame Provies from last Tuesday night.
Chris Higgins was also missing from the lineup for the second straight game, but Kevin Woodley mentioned in the
At the Rink blog at NHL.com that "Higgins skated Saturday and is expected to return Dec. 28 against the Los Angeles Kings."
All told, I thought the replacements did a pretty good job. Pedan was the most interesting case—my first chance to see him in the flesh in regular-season action. Wearing Gino Odjick's No. 29, the 6'3" Russian played 10:43—five minutes in the first period, then less than three minutes in the later two frames. As advertised, he took the body, registering three hits, and also posted four shot attempts and one blocked shot. All told, a decent effort. As far as I'm concerned, he can stay.
Defense combinations shifted throughout the night, in part because it seemed like Alex Edler barely left the ice. The two righties who picked up the slack in Tanev's absence were Yannick Weber, who played a season high 23:29, and Alex Biega, who broke the 20-minute mark for the first time in his NHL career with 20:31.
Weber and Biega were part of a large group of players who showed great hustle on Saturday night. Even as the Oilers dominated play in the early going, outshooting Vancouver 13-6 in the first period, the Canucks' effort was there. I could see players like Biega and even Weber making conscious decisions to choose high-percentage plays that stood a better chance of keeping their team out of danger.
Weber did make one big gaffe, though. Midway through the second period, the Canucks enjoyed nearly two minutes of sustained pressure in the Edmonton zone, but had trouble getting shots on net. After Weber called for the puck out at the blue line, he got beat by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who had been on the ice, defending frantically, for about 1:15. Getting past Weber, the Oilers centre turned on the jets to create a breakaway opportunity, luring Weber into taking a slashing penalty in the process.
Thankfully, nothing came of it. Neither team scored a power-play goal on Saturday night.
When speaking of injury replacements, I tend to overlook Jacob Markstrom because I have been wanting him to get some sustained action ever since he recovered from his early-season hamstring injury.
With Ryan Miller expected to be sidelined for about a week, Markstrom delivered his second 2-1 win in his second straight start as he improved his record to 3-3-3 with a 2.33 goals-against average and a .924 save percentage.
For the most part, the Oilers didn't look especially dangerous, but Taylor Hall has been red-hot in recent weeks and led all Edmonton skaters with seven shots on goal on Saturday night. A few of those shots were Grade A chances—his release is amazing these days—but Markstrom is so calm in the net and controlled in his positioning. He's playing with the sort of confidence that makes his saves seem less impressive than they are.
When Miller comes back, I'd love to see the two goalies split duties 50/50, like Jeff Blashill is doing in Detroit with Jimmy Howard and Petr Mrazek. I suspect Miller still wants to be the clear No. 1 but he seems to play much better when he's rested and with Markstrom playing this well, it's not like the backup is a downgrade. Markstrom turns 26 in January—if he really is the Canucks' next goalie of the future, he needs to get some quality starts.
Other notes from the game—I liked most of what I saw from the Horvat/Vrbata/Baertschi line. Vrbata was literally the only Canuck with any offense on his stick in the first period, and Baertschi also had some chances—though I saw him get bumped off the puck along the boards on more than one occasion.
That line seemed to develop some momentum during the last road trip. The trio looks much more dangerous now than when I saw them last—hopefully, a sign of things to come.
Of course, I can't finish this blog without mentioning the heroics of Jannik Hansen, who scored both goals and ended the overtime drought.
With his linemate Henrik Sedin apparently suffering through some sort of hip or groin issue, Hansen is stepping up his play to the next level. Hansen played just two seconds less than Henrik as the team's top forwards, even though he had to leave the game with 1:04 remaining in regulation to get stitches after smashing his face into the crossbard on a netfront rush.
He even took four faceoffs, going a solid 2-and-2.
Hansen combined with the twins to get the Canucks' first goal, tying the game 1-1 at the 3:37 mark of the second period, then picked up the OT winner on his second shift back after getting stitched up.
Nice work from Markstrom and Matt Bartkowski to draw the assists on this goal, getting the puck up to Hansen in a hurry.
Hansen's now up to 12 goals on the year—just four off his career high of 16, less than halfway through the season. The man who was maligned for years for his inability to bury his chances has a shooting percentage of 17.4 percent so far this season. That's second only to Henrik Sedin's 20.9 percent on the Canucks and 17th in the NHL for players with at least 10 goals.
Here's a look at the hacked-up face of the first star after the game:
Speaking of facial injuries, here's a reassuring shot. Dan Hamhuis looks pretty decent here, at the rink just two and a half weeks after taking that Dan Boyle slap shot to the face.
With Saturday's win, the Canucks grew their cushion in the standings to four points over the Oilers and leapfrogged the San Jose Sharks back into second place in the Pacific Division.
Here's the latest look at who is and isn't on the ice for Sunday's practice:
It's right back to work on Monday, as the homestand will continue against the Los Angeles Kings.
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