VANCOUVER — If the Vancouver Canucks had played Tuesday night’s game in October, they might have beaten the Buffalo Sabres by 7-2.
Those are the expected-goals that naturalstattrick.com logged for the Canucks and Sabres at Rogers Arena, where high-danger scoring chances were 26-7 in all situations for Vancouver, according to the analytics website.
The actual goals were just 3-2 for the Canucks despite their dominance — a reminder that this is not October.
There has been a market correction in Canuck scoring since their historic team shooting percentage through the first half of the National Hockey League season. The bottom half of the Vancouver lineup has essentially stopped scoring, even on nights like Tuesday when the third and fourth lines were quite good, and a few key players like Elias Pettersson have cooled along with the team in recent weeks.
Pettersson, however, did have a terrific game against the Sabres, scoring twice and drawing an assist on Conor Garland’s early goal after the winger-dynamo was moved by coach Rick Tocchet to play alongside Pettersson and Nils Hoglander.
But mostly, it just feels like March, not October. The trade deadline has passed, fruit trees are in bloom on the West Coast, there is still daylight when the games begin and the Canucks, for the first time since 2015, are trying to ramp up speed, intensity and execution ahead of a playoff run in a non-COVID Stanley Cup tournament.
The Canucks probably aren’t going to score like they did last fall, no matter what.
But as far as everything else — and especially that pre-playoff elevation Tocchet has been begging for from his players — Tuesday was a very good night for the Canucks.
They held the desperate Sabres, who had won four of their previous five games, to just 10 shots through two periods and 17 shots in the game. Buffalo didn’t score until the final 11 minutes, and when it did, the goals by Rasmus Dahlin came at four-on-four and six-on-five.
Pettersson’s pair of goals, including an empty-netter that made it 3-1, matched his output from the previous 11 games. And the struggling Canuck power play, driven by J.T. Miller making plays downhill from the left side of the ice, scored once and looked dangerous for nearly all of its 6:31 of advantage time.
“It was a long time coming,” goalie Casey DeSmith said of a 60-minute effort that was far more complete than Canuck losses last week to Washington and Colorado. “We’ve had some good starts and it was good that we held on to this one. I thought we controlled the play and we got back to our identity of getting the puck deep and getting on the forecheck. A lot of movement in the offensive zone, a lot of teamwork. That’s kind of what the emphasis has been in the past couple of days: just get back to that identity that gave us so much success.”
Garland jammed the rebound from Quinn Hughes’ sharp-angle shot just over the pad of Buffalo goalie Devon Levi to make it 1-0 at 4:06, and Pettersson doubled the lead on a power play at 13:48 of the second period on the rebound from Miller’s heavy wrist shot.
“Yeah, we were snapping it around pretty good,” Miller said of the power play. “It was good to get back on that (left) side. You know, it just depends on the personnel and the hands of people and what teams present in the formation. I felt like we created a lot of momentum each time, like we talked about. They were good reps and you feel good when you come off of those reps. That was a step in the right direction for us.”
So was the way the Canucks defended and limited Sabre scoring chances after Dahlin, weaving through Vancouver skaters at four-on-four, conjured a goal out of nothing at 9:23 of the third period. Pettersson scored into an empty net with 1:51 remaining before Dahlin bounced a shot in off defenceman Nikita Zadorov’s shin pad with 20.7 seconds to go to dull DeSmith’s statistics.
The goalie, who has been solid in three straight starts since Thatcher Demko left the lineup with a knee injury, has been victimized by a bunch of five-on-three and three-on-three goals this season as a backup, as well as a 10-7 Canuck debacle in Minnesota in January.
“I feel pretty good,” DeSmith, whose pre-game save percentage was .899, told Sportsnet. “Stats are deceiving, I think, especially for me this year, given all the five-on-threes and overtime goals against, weird deflections, the Minnesota game. There’s just a lot that’s kind of gone wrong for me stats-wise. But I think there’s a lot that has gone right for me playing-wise. This is the best that I have felt in the National Hockey League throughout my career. This is probably the best I’ve felt about my game, personally.”
DeSmith is expected to start a fourth straight game when the Montreal Canadiens visit Vancouver on Thursday.
“We had a solid, solid game tonight,” Canuck defenceman Carson Soucy said. “Unfortunately, just a four-on-four goal (against), but we didn’t give up much. We had looks again, and at the start of the year those were going where you’d get that multi-goal lead. But I kind of liked our full 60 (minutes).”
“I’m really proud of the way the guys played tonight,” Tocchet said. “I thought there was a commitment without the puck tonight. That’s the way we’ve got to play. We’re built that way; we’ve got to make sure we play that kind of hockey. We’re not a run-and-gun team. When we play like that, we have a chance to win every night.”
TOCCHET SNAPS
Asked after the morning skate about the decision by NHL general managers at meetings in Florida to slightly expand video review and coach’s challenges, Tocchet made a pitch for adding a wrinkle to high-sticking reviews.
“If a guy snaps his head and (the stick) doesn’t touch his face, he should get a penalty,” Tocchet told reporters. “We had a couple of penalties against us where it didn’t hit the guy’s face and we got a penalty. That’s what I think (should be) reviewable. That’s the stuff that bothers me. Why not penalize a guy that acts? In soccer. . . if you fake it or something, don’t they give you a red card or something? Yellow card? Maybe we have a yellow card if you fake something.”
We can dream.
