VANCOUVER — The word being wistfully lobbed again toward the Vancouver Canucks by their devout proponents is quite different than the one the team itself is clinging to these days.
“Again, the resilience,” head coach Adam Foote said after a Saturday night win over the Columbus Blue Jackets briefly bucked any notion of a rebuild.
Finally surfing down the back half of an injury wave that peaked at nine players, the Canucks held their first two leads for a total of four-and-a-half minutes, endured an awful five-minute power play in the second period, surrendered another tying goal halfway through the third and still beat the Blue Jackets 4-3 on Brock Boeser’s marvellous and fortuitous goal with 5:45 remaining.
The Canucks, who started the game with the second-worst penalty killing in the National Hockey League, killed the last of their three disadvantages late in the third period, and in the final seconds got a desperate shot block from $92.8-million centre Elias Pettersson and a mucky faceoff win from Aatu Raty.
Captain Quinn Hughes had his most superstar-like performance of the season, dancing circles around the Blue Jackets over 27:24 of ice time, creating a rebound goal for Drew O’Connor and dominating possession with a five-on-five expected-goals-for of 75.7 per cent in a game in which Vancouver was outshot 32-25.
The Canucks made it back to 8-8-0 ahead of Sunday’s daunting back-to-back encounter with the Colorado Avalanche, and are 5-0 this season after dipping below .500.
Pleas from some for a Canucks rebuild, one month into the season, are little more than an exercise in ideological debate as long as Hughes is playing in Vancouver.
After winning just two of his first six starts while posting a save percentage of .880, Canucks backup Kevin Lankinen had his best home game this season.
He was surprised and handcuffed by Kirill Marchenko’s lightning release from distance that tied the game 3-3 with 10:13 to go. But Lankinen made a lot of big saves in traffic, including Adam Fantilli’s backhand from the low slot and Charlie Coyle and Boone Jenner’s point-blank chances early in the third.
Just like last season, when Lankinen turned an opportunity as a fill-in starter into a five-year, $22.5-million contract, the Canucks needed the goalie because starter Thatcher Demko was unavailable.
Foote downplayed Demko’s “maintenance day” on Friday, explaining that the 29-year-old who has dealt with numerous injuries was simply being proactive by taking precautions necessary to survive the demands of an 82-game season. But Demko wasn’t available to even back up on Saturday, although general manager Patrik Allvin said post-game that the starter could be ready for Sunday.
The Canucks recalled goalie Jiri Patera from the minors on an emergency basis, but it’s possible Lankinen will be asked to play twice in 24 hours.
Saturday’s win meant a lot to Canucks penalty-killers who have been ventilated the first month of the regular season, several of them the same players who helped Vancouver lead the NHL in short-handed efficiency the final four months of last season.
While there has been a lot of churn up front on the PK, with Teddy Blueger’s undisclosed injury, Pius Suter’s departure in free agency and the trade of Dakota Joshua, three of the defencemen are key holdovers: Tyler Myers, Filip Hronek and Marcus Pettersson.
Blanking the Columbus power play on three chances — with six saves by Lankinen — marked just the third time in the last 14 games that Vancouver’s short-handed units did not surrender a goal.
“A lot of us have a lot of pride in the PK and when it’s not going well, it’s not a good feeling,” Myers said after the morning skate. “It’s not as far off as it looks. You know, we’ve been having meetings about it, we’re making some tweaks as we go along here, and obviously we have some new guys. But there’s no reason why we can’t figure it out.
“It’s really just a matter of five feet here and there. (We’re) just getting a little caught in between right now. The quicker that first guy can establish his position, it makes the other reads a lot easier. We’ve talked about things like that, and the quicker we do that, I think we’ll just look like a more proactive PK.”
With limited options at centre, Foote made a couple of significant changes with his wingers, moving top-six left winger Jake DeBrusk on to right wing of the third line while shifting right winger Brock Boeser to the left side of the second line to accommodate Kiefer Sherwood.
DeBrusk’s line with Raty and O’Connor outshot the Blue Jackets 7-2 and generated two goals, including a pretty finish by DeBrusk that was his first even-strength tally this season.
Boeser scored the game winner by deftly collecting a bullet stretch pass from Sherwood, keeping himself onside and rattling a shot through goalie Elvis Marzlikins.
“When you have young guys come up and the injuries we had, you sometimes think that you have to put your top guys together,” Foote explained. “And I think, you know, teams coming in might mark them easier. (They’re) easier to check. So I think just moving a couple guys around… you know, we got Jake some room, right? What I like is the guys accepted it, Boes has been accepting it. That’s good teammates. We’re trying to figure it out.”
Three of the injured Canucks — Blueger, winger Jonathan Lekkerrimaki and defenceman Victor Mancini — skated in non-contact jerseys with teammates Saturday morning.
They were impossible to miss in their red sweaters, but would have been immediately spotted in any colour — especially by young players who have gotten the chance to play in the NHL during the Canucks’ injury crisis.
The entire Arshdeep Bains-Max Sasson-Linus Karlsson first line from the Abbotsford Canucks’ Calder Cup run last June has been a fixture in the Vancouver lineup the last eight games, albeit as a fourth line in the NHL.
“I try to not get into the mindset of… putting too much pressure on myself,” Sasson said, “but there’s no doubt, like, we see the guys that are coming back that are key contributors to our team and that play similar roles to us. And you definitely want to put something forward to show that when those guys come back, you’re not the one coming out of the lineup. At the end of the day, they’re big players for us and we’re excited to have them back. But you’re absolutely right, that clock starts ticking and you definitely want to start showing more and more so that when these guys come back, you can stay in the lineup.”
