VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Canucks are suddenly a team with three Swedes named Pettersson and two Czechs named Filip. But there is still only one Thatcher Demko, and on Tuesday he looked exactly like himself.
The goalie who has struggled to regain his elite form after missing eight months with a troubling knee injury made 25 saves — about half of them, it seemed, against Nathan MacKinnon or Cale Makar — as the Canucks shut out the Colorado Avalanche 3-0 at Rogers Arena.
It was Demko’s best game since returning from injury in December, and his play contributed to one of the most promising nights for the Canucks during what had been a winter of discontent.
Two games after Friday’s J.T. Miller trade that represents a seismic shift for the organization, the Canucks were fast, clean with the puck, direct, and combative as they climbed within five points of the Avalanche in the National Hockey League standings.
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Now 4-1-1 in their last six games for the team’s best stretch since November, the Canucks are tied with the Calgary Flames for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference and just one point behind the Los Angeles Kings for third place in the Pacific Division. The Kings have three games in-hand.
Vancouver’s chances of making the playoffs in April — and being a threat once they get there — will be bolstered dramatically if Demko can manufacture a lot more performances like Tuesday’s.
“So happy for him,” Canuck winger Brock Boeser said. “You know, he works so hard. He does everything the right way. He’s such a good pro, and for him to get a shutout tonight, just as one of his good friends, it’s awesome to see. To see him make some saves like that, I’m just happy for him.”
Of the 67 NHL goalies who had appeared in at least 10 games before Tuesday, Demko’s save percentage of .873 ranked 64th. This is the player who finished second in Vezina Trophy balloting last season, would have been an automatic choice for Team USA at the Four Nations tournament were it not for his knee injury, and has for several years been considered one of the best goaltenders in the game.
He just hasn’t shown it much so far this season.
“I mean, you’ve got to do it again,” Demko said. “I know where my game’s at right now; there’s been some games that probably didn’t reflect that. Sometimes that’s the challenging part as a player — being able to have confidence and trust in yourself internally when you know externally it might not look that way. I know what direction I’m headed in, and certainly tonight was a good game.”
If Demko and the Canucks needed any reinforcement, he provided it halfway through the second period, shortly after Jake DeBrusk had given Vancouver a 1-0 lead.
A turnover in the neutral zone allowed the Avalanche to counter, and with Makar joining the rush as the trailer, Demko was at full stretch to get his left glove on the former Norris Trophy winner’s bullet shot.
Forty seconds later, with the Canucks still under siege and unable to get the puck, Demko lunged left to stop Artturi Lehkonen’s one-timer from MacKinnon’s cross-ice pass. Maybe Mikko Rantanen would have scored, but it was still a helluva save.
And about a dozen seconds after that, Demko snared another Makar wrister to end the onslaught and bring many of the fans to their feet for a thunderous cheer. Demko hasn’t heard a cheer like that this season.
For much of that marvelous minute under pressure, Demko was without his goalie stick. He saw Makar flub a one-timer from MacKinnon and heard the happy sound of Makar pinging the metal on another chance — the Avalanche star’s third post or crossbar of the night. And certainly, Demko heard the chants of “That-cher Dem-ko! That-cher Dem-ko!” that followed the siege.
“Luckily, there was a TV timeout, so I was trying to catch my breath,” Demko said. “Yeah, I mean, it’s great to hear. I know it’s later in the year, but we’re trying to establish that home ice (advantage). We take a lot of pride playing here, and we’ve struggled at times this year stringing games together. But I don’t want them to feel for a single second that we don’t take pride and we’re not aware of the impact that they have on the game.
“I was just trying to get a piece of something (during the scramble). Yeah, it’s a big sequence there, like you mentioned. A lot of bodies flying around, a couple scoring chances. But I thought the guys collapsed (to the low slot) really well and kind of managed the guts of the ice. You know, we’ve got to get through those situations as a six-man unit, and on that one were able to.”
It may have been Demko’s best minute this season, although the other 59 were pretty good, too, for him — and better for his team.
DeBrusk scored his second goal in 14 games by calmly gloving down the high rebound from Filip Hronek’s shot and shovelling the puck past Colorado goalie Mackenzie Blackwood at 4:26 of the second period.
After Miles Wood needlessly put the Avalanche shorthanded early in the third period by injecting himself into a scuffle between Canuck rookie defenceman Elias Pettersson and Logan O’Connor, Brock Boeser scored his second goal in 16 games by converting DeBrusk’s power-play feed on a two-on-one at 8:20 after a gorgeous stretch pass off the boards by Hronek.
Drew O’Connor, one of the four players who joined the Canucks on the weekend from the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins, scored the final goal into an empty net after Vancouver’s power play failed to take advantage of more voluntary penalties by Wood.
The re-aligned Canucks were quick to stand up for one another, Tyler Myers grabbing Ross Colton in the scrum that followed Woods jabbing Linus Karlsson in the groin with his stick, and Carson Soucy and DeBrusk intervening when Woods tried to go after the younger Pettersson.
“You can tell it’s a group that’s resilient, and everybody’s pulling in the same direction,” new defenceman Marcus Pettersson said. “I’ve had a really good experience so far. We’ve just got to keep battling, like I said, and wins like these really help when you’ve got everybody contributing and playing their hearts out. So, yeah, it was a fun game.”
The Canucks, who have taken three of four points while playing the last two games without star defenceman Quinn Hughes, visit the San Jose Sharks on Thursday before hitting the NHL’s tournament break on Saturday against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Vancouver.
