While it is true that all National Hockey League games are worth two points, they are not all equal.
The points in the standings that the Vancouver Canucks banked with Wednesday’s 2-1 overtime road win against the Anaheim Ducks, though helpful, were not the most important thing the National Hockey League team carried away as it drove up Interstate 5 to play the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday.
Forget about the facts the Canucks had lost six straight games over nearly five years in Anaheim, and that Ducks’ goalie John Gibson had owned them like Disney owns the theme-park tourist trade in Orange County.
Just three-and-a-half weeks ago, the Canucks were 8-15-2, which is why they fired head coach Travis Green and general manager Jim Benning — and their top lieutenants — on the same night.
Wednesday was the team’s seventh straight win under new coach Bruce Boudreau, who tied an NHL record by starting his new job with a winning streak of that length. But it had been 13 days since the Canucks’ made it to 6-0, their holiday break extended by COVID-19 and five postponed games.
During the intermission to their revival, the Canucks practised five times. So, at least Boudreau had the chance to refine and add to the renovation of Vancouver’s systems play after his mid-season arrival.
No matter what, the Canucks were going to be game-rusty but better drilled after the extended break. But for how far they have come in December, and for where Boudreau hopes to take them, the Canucks had to maintain their confidence and hope and re-start their momentum by beating a legitimately-good Ducks team.
And then the Canucks were down 1-0 on the road in a building that has been a domicile of doom for years, against a goalie in Gibson who was 12-2-1 all-time against Vancouver.
The Canucks won anyway, tying the game on Tanner Pearson’s third-period goal and winning it 26 seconds into overtime when J.T. Miller banked the puck off the boards to himself, skated 130 feet to chase it down on a breakaway as Gibson stayed rooted in his crease, and rifled a shot high-blocker on his friend and former Team USA world junior teammate.
The Canucks have won seven straight games to make it back to .500, at 15-15-2, faster than anyone thought possible. Their belief in themselves probably grew by more than two points on Wednesday.
“It’s F’n awesome,” Miller told Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy in his walk-off interview. “I’m tickled as hell to win that game. We’ve got a good thing going right now.”
Later, when his euphoria had dulled only slightly, Miller told reporters on Zoom: “We believe in ourselves right now. It’s hard to find that belief when, early in the year, you find a way to lose every game, no matter if you play well or not. Tonight, I thought, we knew in the second period, we kind of had them.
“We knew what was working. I don’t think it was a bad first period. We just looked like we were getting our bearings a little bit after the break. And then the second, we really started to realize we were doing some good things and knew what it was going to take to win a game. And the third was by far our best period. So this was really good for our group to stay with it — a character-type win like that.”
The Canucks outshot the 17-9-7 Ducks 29-15 after a ragged first period in which the only goal was scored on a breakaway by Anaheim’s Sam Carrick, who got behind defenceman Brad Hunt after Tucker Poolman made an unwise challenge in the neutral zone.
This was the same opponent, in the same arena, who thrashed the Canucks 5-1 on Nov. 14, during a three-game road disaster that was really the end for Green and Benning.
The Canucks are a different team now.
They won Wednesday without key winger Brock Boeser, who went into COVID-19 protocol with teammate Phil Di Giuseppe earlier in the day.
They may lose Thursday against the Kings. But the Canucks did something by coming from behind against the Ducks — on the road after a 13-day layoff — that a month ago would have been nearly as unthinkable as a seven-game winning streak.
“We’ve got our confidence back,” Pearson said after scoring from excellent passes by Miller and defenceman Quinn Hughes.
The Canucks made it to overtime by killing the last of four penalties halfway through the third period.
Five of the seven wins under Boudreau have been by one goal.
“If you believe that you can win when you’re close, then usually that happens,” the coach said. “I just think that the mind is such a strong element, when you’re playing in any sport, and hockey is no different. It didn’t matter who the coach was, if this was the beginning of the year when they were slumping and they got that penalty with nine minutes to go they would have said: ‘Ah, here we go, they’re going to score. They’re going to score but we played a great game.’ But now, they were defiant and said they weren’t going to score. No matter how many good chances (Anaheim had) or how tired our defence was out there, it was something really special.”
Whatever this is, however long it lasts, it is special for the Canucks.
They look reborn.
