When the Vancouver Canucks or any National Hockey League team says — with all due respect, of course — that the opponent doesn’t matter as long as the Canucks play their game, it’s not entirely true.
If you’re not at your best, the opponent definitely matters. On Sunday in Chicago, for instance, the Canucks might not have survived the first period against a stronger team than the Blackhawks. But Vancouver escaped its early doldrums and deficits, managed mistakes, and won 4-3 against one of the NHL’s worst teams.
On Tuesday, however, the opponent didn’t matter. It was all about the Canucks and their game.
Given the chance to rest and reset their body clocks after playing a pair of weekend matinees 25 hours apart, the Canucks dismantled the Nashville Predators 5-2, icing what had been one of the league’s hottest teams.
The Predators were 13-3 in their previous 16 games, had won four straight, and were riding a starting goalie in Juuse Saros who had won his last seven games and in the last four surrendered only five goals.
But the Canucks beat him five times on 24 shots, sending Saros down the tunnel to the dressing room, pretty much kicking and screaming, 76 seconds into the third period after Teddy Blueger roofed a shot over his shoulder to make it 5-1 for Vancouver.
With a Thursday finale in Dallas against the Stars, who are another tier up on the Predators, the Canucks are 2-0-1 on their four-game road trip and now 6-0-1 in their last seven games. Tuesday was when they produced their A-game, winning handily while out-skating, out-working, out-thinking and out-shooting the Predators.
There was nothing gimmicky about it, no asterisks attached.
The Canucks were just too good. They won with backup goalie Casey DeSmith starting for the second time in three games, last season’s 39-goal-scorer Andrei Kuzmenko a healthy scratch for the third time, and with nothing on the scoresheet from points leader J.T. Miller and goal-scoring leader Brock Boeser.
Vancouver scored five even-strength goals, by Blueger, Pius Suter, Nils Hoglander, Nils Aman and Elias Pettersson.
The Canucks are 22-9-2, one point behind the Vegas Golden Knights at the top of both the Pacific Division and NHL standings.
DeSMITH DELIGHTFUL
For the eighth time in 10 starts, DeSmith earned points for his team, stopping 26 of the first 27 shots he faced before Cody Glass scored a classic garbage goal for Nashville with 12 seconds remaining in the blowout.
Teammates have given DeSmith excellent run support, scoring 35 times in his 10 starts and only once generating less than two goals for him. And the backup had a 2-0 first-period lead to work with when Pettersson and Aman scored 31 seconds apart late in the opening frame. But DeSmith still made a handful of big, timely saves, like a breakaway stop on Phil Tomasino at the end of the opening period after a lot of players had stopped skating due to a ruckus behind the Nashville net.
Of all the trades Canuck general manager Patrik Allvin has made — and “Trader” Jim Rutherford’s disciple has been involved in six of 13 across the league since Labour Day — acquiring DeSmith from the Montreal Canadiens for surplus winger Tanner Pearson (while saving $1.45 million against the salary cap) may be his best.
“I was really pleased they went back with me and had that confidence in me,” DeSmith told Sportsnet about starting for the second time in three games. “And then obviously, I wanted to deliver. That’s important for me to keep building that trust. We have such a good goalie partner in Demmer (Thatcher Demko) and it’s hard to get games away from that guy; he’s playing so well right now. Thankfully, he got a little bit of rest tonight and he’ll be ready to go in Dallas.”
SCORING THE HARD WAY
If you want to know what coach Rick Tocchet wants to see from players trying to score, the goals by Hoglander and Suter 46 seconds apart late in the middle period, just after Predator Jeremy Lauzon cut the Canucks lead to 2-1, are the template.
After Miller won a draw for the Canucks in the offensive zone, Hoglander fought through Alexandre Carrier’s box-out to get to the middle of the ice from the faceoff circle, then battled the defenceman again to get his stick free in time to redirect Quinn Hughes’ point shot and make it 3-1 at 14:38.
Two shifts later, Pius Suter established body position on Carrier at the top of the crease as Pettersson teed up a quick shot for Ilya Mikheyev that trickled under Saros. Suter then turned and leaned hard on his stick to dig the puck from the goalie and sweep it into the net.
Those two goals were entirely about battling to get to a scoring position and being hungrier than anyone else once there.
BRILLIANT SNEAKY PETE
Blackhawks rookie Connor Bedard’s quick hands and lightning release got a lot of attention around the NHL when the projected generational talent conjured a goal out of nothing last week in Edmonton. Elias Pettersson made it look easy in Nashville when he opened scoring with a similar goal.
With a half-step on defenceman Tyson Barrie while skating in from his off-wing (in Pettersson’s case, the right side of the ice), the Canuck quickly pulled the puck in to change his angle and snapped a shot from 30 feet that cleanly beat Saros on the stick side.
It was pure, simple brilliance.
Pettersson has 11 points in his last eight games and is plus-eight. He has 17 shots on net on the first three games of this road trip and, quietly, is back on top of his game as one of the best two-way centres in the world.
THE KUZMENKO STUFF
We’re saving this for last because in the context of the Canucks seven-game points streak and, especially, one of their best performances of the season on Tuesday, it should be the least-important item. For the third time this season, and first time since he sat out two games in late November, Andrei Kuzmenko was a healthy scratch in Nashville.
And other than his $5.5-million cap hit, it makes perfect sense. Over the previous 10 games, Kuzmenko played himself to the fourth line from the first (but stayed on the first-unit power play) and in the first two games of this road trip registered zero shots on net in 28:25 of ice time. He had three goals and no assists in those 10 games. Kuzmenko wasn’t moving his feet in Sunday’s win in Chicago and had two shifts there in the third period.
The only place for him to go was down. And since he was already on the fourth line, that meant leaving the lineup. And the only way for him to prove he should be back in the top six is to play better. For starters, that means skating harder to get to the puck and being engaged.
Of course, now he needs Tocchet to give him another opportunity, something that seems unlikely to happen on Thursday because no one deserves to come out of the Canucks’ lineup after the win in Nashville.
“Just trying to win a game tonight,” Tocchet explained at the morning skate when asked about Kuzmenko. “I felt this was the best lineup for tonight.”
With hindsight, it was impossible to argue otherwise.
