NASHVILLE — Fifty-four years without a Stanley Cup has made Vancouver Canucks fans a little skittish about success and conditioned for disappointment, which they expect in springtime the way they expect rain in January.
Nothing could have prepared them for what happened Sunday.
Outshot, outskated, outplayed and generally outclassed for 57 minutes, the Canucks scored twice in the last three minutes of regulation time with their goalie out — and that goalie was named Arturs Silovs — and won 4-3 in overtime on Elias Lindholm’s goal at 62 seconds as Vancouver stole Game 4 from the Nashville Predators to take a 3-1 series lead in the first round of the National Hockey League playoffs.
Each of Vancouver’s three wins has been with a different goaltender, as first Thatcher Demko and then Casey DeSmith were hurt. One injury is significant, the other not.
The Canucks have managed 71 shots on net. In the series! No team in NHL history has tested an opposing goalie less often through four games. Star defenceman Quinn Hughes is getting blasted by the Predators and star centre Elias Pettersson and his linemates have yet to make a dent.
No one on the Canucks, especially head coach Rick Tocchet, is arguing that Vancouver has been the better team so far, even if all three of their goalies have been better than the Predators ace Juuse Saros.
And yet, Tuesday at Rogers Arena, the Canucks will have an opportunity to win a Stanley Cup series on home ice for the first time since the 2011 Western Conference Final.
These are not the Canucks we have known all these years.
Even when they’re bad, they can be good. As we’ve said before, one of Tocchet’s greatest achievements has been raising the floor for this team by getting players to embrace his ideas about defending and systems play.
“Before we started the playoffs, I asked a couple of guys: What word would you describe this team all year?” Tocchet told reporters in his post-game press conference. “We wanted to put it on a T-shirt or our hoodies, and they said ‘resilient.’ That’s our word. That worked tonight on that T-shirt, that word for us. It’s been like that all year. Certain spots we’ve been put in (but) somehow we get out of them. It might not look pretty, you know? Like tonight wasn’t pretty, and we got out of it somehow.”
They got out of it when they got Silovs, another surprise starter, out of his crease for an extra attacker in the final minutes.
With only 16 shots on Saros through 57 minutes, the Canucks cut a 3-1 deficit in half when Brock Boeser took Lindholm’s goalmouth pass and lifted the puck into the roof of the net with 2:47 remaining.
Then, after the Predators Colton Sissons somehow managed to hit the post of the Canucks’ open net from 30 feet away, Boeser completed his hat trick on his biggest night for the franchise by collecting his own rebound off the post and jamming it past a sprawled Saros with eight seconds left in the third period.
Nashville had had a chance to clear its zone but Hughes made a brilliant play at the right-wing boards to keep the bouncing puck in and get it past Gustav Nyquist about six seconds before Boeser scored from the aftermath of J.T. Miller’s slap-pass.
In overtime, Ryan O’Reilly and Filip Forsberg, the Predators’ two best forwards, both drifted wide and left Lindholm completely unchecked in the low slot, where he scored from Conor Garland’s pass after the Canucks winger spun away from Nashville defenceman Luke Schenn.
It may have been the first good shift of the night for Lindholm, Garland and Dakota Joshua, the trio that drove the Canucks down the stretch and into the playoffs.
“I think we’re all knowing that so far we haven’t played our best,” Lindholm said. “There’s been a couple of periods here and there where we’ve played pretty good. But overall, we haven’t been nearly as good as we can. I think today was showing a lot of character on the team, you know, coming back like that the way we did. And hopefully we can build off that.”
“Obviously, we’ve got some things to work on but that three minutes won us the game,” Tocchet said. “You’ve got to take the positives, but we’ve got some work to do.
“Generally, the last couple of games, I think they’ve been a little bit better on battles and skating. I find we’re not moving our feet and we’re kind of losing some battles. I don’t think it’s any tactical thing. We’ve got to get some guys in the fight here a little bit. But it’s a lot easier to teach and prod and get guys going when you’re winning. So hopefully, this is going to bring some juice to some guys.”
Boeser, who began his hat trick in the first period on a cross-ice pass from Miller that marooned Saros, was easily the best Canucks player. The longest-serving player on the team amassed eight of the Canucks’ 20 shots over 22:17 of ice time. Miller had three assists and may have surpassed Hughes as the best Canuck in the series.
Lindholm had a goal and assist and went 15-5 on faceoffs, and Silovs, the 23-year-old Latvian who helped his country win its first medal at the world championships a year ago, stopped 27 of 30 shots in his first playoff game and 10th appearance in the NHL.
After Demko was knocked out of the series in Game 1, DeSmith won Game 3 2-1 on Friday and was healthy enough to fully practise on Saturday. But Tocchet confirmed that the veteran backup has an injury and that a decision was made after practice to go with Silovs in Game 4.
Silovs’ reaction when he was told?
“It was a great time to shine, you know,” he said Sunday evening.
Already missing Demko, the Canucks are thought to be being ultra-protective of DeSmith, whom Tocchet expects to be an option in goal on Tuesday.
“Nobody was down,” Tocchet said of the team’s reaction to starting goalie No. 3. “I don’t think the moment is too big for (Silovs). I just like his demeanour.”
Asked about possibly holding DeSmith out of Game 5, too, the coach said: “It’s a tough question because, obviously, if Smitty feels good enough to go and we feel it’s safe to go in there, you’d go with Casey, right? But saying that, we’ve got Arty and we’re confident with him. I think we (can) win either way. I think the prudent thing is to get Casey healthy before we make any decision.”
The Canucks flew home post-game but were not expected to practise on Monday.
“It doesn’t affect the way we’re playing,” Miller said of the goalie carousel. “If anything, you want to play harder for the guy. It doesn’t matter who’s in net, we should have every reason to be playing on our toes and playing Canuck hockey no matter who’s back there. And I’m just happy that whoever’s getting the call right now is stepping up for us.”
But Vancouver isn’t playing Canucks’ hockey. Their forecheck was largely nonexistent in Nashville and, as Tocchet noted, they’re neither skating nor battling at the Predators’ level.
“That’s a big win for where we are in the series right now, but we know we have another gear,” Miller said. “It’s crazy how it works sometimes. I keep saying it, but we just need to be a helluva lot better than we were today.”
We’ve heard that before from the Canucks. Just never when they’re winning a playoff series.
