NASHVILLE – When Pius Suter signed with the Vancouver Canucks six weeks into free agency last summer, cut adrift by the Detroit Red Wings, a lot of friends back home in Switzerland thought he was nuts.
“They said, ‘You’re going to another team that’s not going to make the playoffs,’” Suter recalled late Friday. “I was like, ‘No, this team is better than you think. We have guys that are top-five guys in the league at every position.’ It’s huge for us to win this series. But we know what people say. Not many believed in us before this season. Probably even less next series.”
Suter, who came to the Canucks with a lot of skills in his tool box but was never regarded as tough, was one of the best Vancouver players against the Nashville Predators. He took a beating in the hard areas all series, won more battles than he lost, never shied from the fight and played the last two games with a mouthful of stitches.
And on Friday, having never logged a National Hockey League playoff game until two weeks ago, Suter scored the franchise’s biggest goal since the 2011 Stanley Cup Final.
After smashing his stick in frustration at missed opportunities earlier in the game, the 27-year-old from Zurich used its replacement to direct Brock Boeser’s centring pass past Nashville goalie Juuse Saros with 1:39 remaining as the Canucks beat the Predators 1-0 to win the first-round series in six games. They advance to a dream Stanley Cup quarterfinal matchup against the Edmonton Oilers that starts Tuesday at Rogers Arena.
Suter turned out to be tougher than anyone knew. So did the Canucks, who won the series with third-string goalie Arturs Silovs – with a total of 12 NHL games on his resume – stopping all 28 Predator shots in the deciding game.
The Canucks are the first NHL team since the 1973 Chicago Blackhawks to have three different goalies register wins in a playoff series victory.
The game-winning goals against Nashville were scored by Boeser, whom the organization spent last season trying to trade before the longest-serving Canuck rebranded himself and became one of coach Rick Tocchet’s most-trusted two-way players, St. Louis Blues reject Dakota Joshua and former Calgary Flame Elias Lindholm, who cost Vancouver a small fortune in a trade and did very little until he stood like a giant against the Predators.
The Canucks not only won without Vezina Trophy finalist goalie Thatcher Demko, injured in Game 1, but also with very little from star centre Elias Pettersson. Vancouver scored only 13 goals in six games.
But the Canucks still won their first real playoff series in 13 years, validating their surprising 50-win regular season by eliminating the Predators with a roster that included 10 players who had never experienced a genuine Stanley Cup Playoffs game.
“It means a lot because we’ve grown as a team,” Tocchet, named a coach-of-the-year finalist earlier Friday, told reporters at Bridgestone Arena. “You know, we’re not pretty. We are who we are. But we hang in and the guys buy in and, you know, to keep that team to zero (goals), the way we play defence really helps us stay in the games. Would we like more offence? Of course. Hopefully some of those goals will go in for us the next series. But I think the buy-in on the way we play defence is keeping us in it, and has been a fabric for our team this year. We’ve had our moments, but we don’t apologize for who we are.”
They are a direct, gritty, physical, defence-oriented team topped by a few of the best players in the world.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for the Predators, got some friends on that team,” Canuck leader J.T. Miller said. “But to be on the right side of that handshake for the first time, like that’s one of the best feelings in hockey. To see how far our team has come — if you flip through COVID, and then the Bruce (Boudreau) stuff, and the team stuff . . . and to see the steps and the progress and the process continue to move forward, and now we get a chance to play against a team that we love playing against, I mean, it’s everything. I can’t wait to go back home and rest up and go again in front of our fans. It means the world to us.”
There were so many Miller trade rumours the last couple of seasons that we wondered if he had identically named brothers. Instead, he signed a seven-year, $56-million contract extension two summers ago because he believed the Canucks could win a Stanley Cup.
“Not any part of me ever wanted to go somewhere else,” he said. “You don’t have Pettersson and (Quinn) Hughes and Demko everywhere, and you don’t have (president) Jim Rutherford and (general manager) Patrik Allvin and Rick Tocchet and Adam Foote. Why would I want to leave something that I’ve always been looking for?”
Not any part of veteran defenceman Tyler Myers was unscathed in this fierce, tight-checking series. In the final seconds, after referee Garrett Rank’s soft cross-checking call against Lindholm allowed the Predators to finish the game six against four, Myers threw himself in front of Gustav Nyquist’s point-blank shot during a scramble with Silovs down.
“It got me right in the balls,” Myers said, managing to smile. “Guys were desperate. We were laying down and were fortunate to keep it out. I think a lot of playoff hockey is just winning battles. It becomes so much tighter and there’s a lot of one-on-one battles and 50/50s and you’ve got to win as many as you can.
“But as good as it feels to get a series win, we know we’re not done.”
Another veteran defenceman signed last summer, Ian Cole, said: “I think we realized that these series, it’s a war of attrition. Who’s going to crack first? Who’s going to break? And I thought we did a really great job, especially in this game, of not cracking. A 0-0 game? We were just fine with it, which is great.”
And the win?
“Just another round,” Cole said. “Back to business. Keep going.”
With Demko out indefinitely and veteran backup Casey DeSmith now bypassed by Silovs, the Canucks will have a new starting goalie against the Oilers. But they’ve got a new identity, too.
They’re better than anyone thought they would be. Tougher, too, and with a lot more playoff experience than they had six games ago.
