Yes, Kevin Lankinen made 32 saves to post his second shutout of the season.
Yes, Jake DeBrusk scored the game-winning goal as he returned to the place he called home for the last eight years.
Yes, the Vancouver Canucks beat the still-disliked Boston Bruins, halting their all-too-brief post-coaching-change winning streak at just two games.
Those are all great stories but I want to take a moment to look at the Canucks’ scoring leaders this season. Specifically, their goalscoring leaders.
All seven of them.
By scoring the Canucks’ two goals against the Bruins, DeBrusk and Conor Garland each reached six goals on the season, pulling them even with five other Canucks: Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, Kiefer Sherwood, and Pius Suter.
None of those seven Canucks are among the NHL’s goalscoring leaders right now — heck, none of them are even in the top 90 — but those seven Canucks have combined for 42 goals.
There’s something to be said for that kind of scoring depth, where seemingly any Canuck can step up on any given night to chip in a key goal at a key time. It means the Canucks are not solely reliant on their stars to carry them.
That’s good, because the Canucks have been missing a whole lot of stars this season, whether it was Pettersson’s early scoring slump, Boeser’s concussion, Miller’s personal leave, or Quinn Hughes’s thuggery. It's a testament to the team's depth that they're currently second in the Pacific Division by points percentage.
Getting scoring contributions from such a wide variety of players bodes well for the rest of this season, and hopefully, the playoffs, though surely one of the team’s stars will permanently take the goalscoring lead at some point. For now, they’ll have to learn to share.
I considered the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything when I watched this game.
- Brock Boeser’s return to the lineup was mostly fine. He only had two shot attempts, neither of them on goal, but looked sharp on the power play and held his own at 5-on-5. The one trouble is the two penalties he took, which is sometimes a sign that a player’s timing — or judgement — is a little off. That’s pretty forgivable.
- It was a scrappy first period for the Canucks and Bruins, with both teams struggling to get shots out of their early possessions. It took seven minutes for the Bruins to get the first shot of the game, with the Canucks getting their first shot a minute later. The Bruins had a strong push late in the period to out-shoot the Canucks 9-to-3 but Lankinen, nicely rested by the opening seven minutes, stopped them all.
- Lankinen worked hard for his shutout but he got a little help from the skaters in front of him, who blocked 26 shots, when they weren’t preventing the shot attempt entirely. Aatu Räty did exactly that on a golden scoring chance at the backdoor for David Pastrnak after Filip Hronek lost the puck. Räty bolted back and checked Pastrnak’s stick, though Pastrnak felt Räty got a good chunk of his hand too.
- Nils Höglander also made a sharp defensive play late in the first period, as he identified that Räty was moving to check the same man as he was, spotted the open man, and picked off a cross-seam pass to Pastrnak that could have resulted in another dangerous chance. The Canucks must have collectively gone gluten-free the way they were denying Pasta.
- Lankinen got in on the Pasta-denial in the second period, as Pavel Zacha sent Pastrnak in on a breakaway. Like someone with poor sitting habits, Lankinen tucked his leg under his butt. Thankfully, instead of developing back problems like me, Lankinen instead kicked the puck out, leading to a wild scramble as the goaltender slid out of the net, with Erik Brännström and Pius Suter clearing the puck out of the chaos.
- “That’s the part of goaltending that I always love,” said Lankinen. “Just scrambling and throwing technique and the structure out the window and just trying to get something at [the puck]. I got some help from my D corps and the guys in front of me.”
- It would be great if Brännström could play on the Canucks’ second pairing with Tyler Myers but it didn’t work too well in this game. That pairing got eaten alive when they were matched up against the Bruins’ top line, which is probably a big reason why Brännström ended up with his minutes slashed in the second and third periods, finishing with just 13:06 in ice time. He has thrived this season on a bottom pairing against weaker match-ups; maybe that’s his ceiling.
- Jake DeBrusk made the most of his return to Boston and his return to the first power play unit. A rotation on the left side by Boeser and Conor Garland opened up a shooting lane for Quinn Hughes, who fired a high shot that Garland tipped down into the crease. That’s where DeBrusk deposited the puck calmly into the net before giving a couple front-row fans a “What do you think about me now?” stare.
- Shout out to the Bruins’ DJ for the killer needle drop after DeBrusk’s goal, playing “We Used To Be Friends” by The Dandy Warhols, a song also used as the theme for one of my favourite TV shows of all time, Veronica Mars. I guess the Bruins haven't thought of you lately at all, DeBrusk.
- The Bruins challenged the goal, arguing that there was a hand pass from Garland to DeBrusk, which would have required the play be blown dead. To be fair, the puck did hit Garland’s glove, as can be seen in the slow-motion replay, but the rule for a hand pass (Rule 79) specifically mentions playing a puck “with his open hand.” Garland’s hand was firmly closed on his stick, and he clearly did not intend to play the puck with his hand, since the puck deflected off his stick first.
- We saw an interesting development on the penalty kill in this game, as Aatu Räty got into the mix on faceoff duty. Räty has the Canucks’ second-best faceoff percentage this season behind J.T. Miller but has barely touched the ice on the penalty kill. To be fair, he barely touched the ice in this game either: he was sent on for three shorthanded faceoffs, won all three, then immediately left the ice each time, finishing with just 36 seconds of ice time on the penalty kill.
- Here’s a clip of Räty’s first PK faceoff because it made me chuckle. He wins the draw, then immediately bolts. You can see him making a beeline to the bench as Noah Juulsen clears the puck the length of the ice. That was a seven-second penalty-killing shift for Räty and a very effective one.
- The Canucks may have been out-shot 32-to-15 in this game but they honestly played a solid game defensively. Apart from a few chaotic moments around the crease, the Canucks largely kept the Bruins on the perimeter and did well to box out and tie up sticks to prevent the Bruins from getting to rebounds. They wouldn’t want to make a habit of getting doubled up in shots, mind you, but their in-zone defence was pretty strong.
- One of the Bruins’ best chances to tie the game required some skullduggery, as Pavel Zacha knocked Teddy Blueger’s stick out of his hands as the Bruins rushed up ice on the power play. With Blueger behind the play after retrieving his stick, Zacha had a golden opportunity off a pass from Brad Marchand, but Lankinen read the play like a book — probably “The Hidden Life of Trees” — to make the stop.
- What was arguably Lankinen’s best save of the night was an unorthodox one. A Nikita Zadorov point shot ricocheted off the end boards to the side of the net and Lankinen had to be alert to jet out his right pad to kick aside a chance for Charlie Coyle. If Zadorov’s shot had been a little softer, the puck wouldn’t have bounced back out so far and Lankinen wouldn’t have been able to reach it. Take a little off it next time, Nikita. Lob it in.
- “That’s part of the tracking and triggering,” said Lankinen. “You’re trying to be alert and ahead of the play. A lot’s going on around the crease sometimes and you’ve got to just throw something at it and I got lucky a couple of times there.”
- While we’ve paid a lot of attention to hits this season, with Kiefer Sherwood adding 8 hits to his league-leading total, with Dakota Joshua recording nine as he attempts to catch up, there’s another stat on the NHL’s “miscellaneous” list worth noting. With two blocks against the Bruins, Elias Pettersson moved up to 27 for the season. That leads all Canucks forwards and is tied for sixth in the NHL among forwards.
- The Bruins had one last chance to tie the game in the final minute, but Lankinen robbed Marchand on the doorstep. Moments later, Suter forced a turnover at the blue line and gave the puck to Garland for the empty-net goal, leading to Sherwood and Pettersson delightedly assaulting DeBrusk in congratulations for the win over his former team. A lot happened in a short span of time.
- In fact, so much happened that I didn’t even mention that former Canuck Elias Lindholm missed the net on Marchand’s rebound. Frankly, if not for the many faceoffs he won, I’m not sure I would have even noticed Lindholm was in this game.
- What a performance by Lankinen. The 32-save shutout means he’s still undefeated on the road this season, winning all eight of his starts away from Rogers Arena with a .941 save percentage. It’s just too bad that the Canucks have to play half of their games this season in Vancouver.
- “He was first, second, and third star,” said Rick Tocchet of Lankinen. “He was very good tonight. Saw the puck extremely well. They made a couple of nice plays where they faked they were going to shoot and went cross-ice and he just read it. That’s when you know your goalie’s on…Those were tough saves he made tonight.”
