The one downside of the 4 Nations Face-Off going from an All-Star-esque showcase to a knockdown-dragout battle for national identity is that returning to NHL hockey feels like a bit of a letdown.
The Vancouver Canucks faced off against the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday and it just didn’t feel the same. At times, it bore a striking resemblance to preseason hockey but maybe that was just by way of comparison to the speed and physicality of the championship final between Canada and the United States.
The stakes were lower and the pace was slower, as if most of the players had just gotten back from vacation.
“It’s like training camp in a way,” said Jake DeBrusk. “You’re just getting the feeling of the puck, even when pucks go off the boards and stuff like that. For myself, anyway, I was really rusty in that today. I felt like I couldn’t get a bearing on the game.”
Perhaps the Golden Knights had a slight edge because four of the players in their lineup — Mark Stone, Adin Hill, Jack Eichel, and Noah Hanifin — didn’t take a break over the last two weeks because they were part of Team Canada and Team USA.
Or maybe the Golden Knights are simply the better team, especially with the Canucks missing Quinn Hughes.
The Canucks were less in sync , as evidenced by taking two too many men on the ice penalties in the first 11 minutes of the game. They managed just five shots on goal in the first period to 13 for the Golden Knights. It was some lousy, lethargic hockey.
Well, except for Kevin Lankinen.
Maybe the game moved slower for Lankinen just like it did for the fans watching the game because he was part of the 4 Nations Face-Off for Finland. Maybe he wanted to prove the Canucks made the right decision with his . Either way, Lankinen was lights out for the Canucks, making 32 saves on 34 shots to keep his team in the game and give them a chance to win.
His teammates didn’t do enough with that chance and wasted his fantastic performance.
“We’ve got to make more plays,” said Kiefer Sherwood. “I know Lanky’s world class but we left him on an island too much. I think it starts with our breakouts: if we can clean that up, it probably leads to a better transition, more possession. We had a couple of good looks and they just held on. We need a better 60 minutes — it’s not good enough, especially when we’re on the brink of the playoffs right now.”
To the Canucks’ credit, they did push back against the Golden Knights, piling up 19 shots in the third period in an attempt to come back from a one-goal deficit. The Canucks have had four entire games this season where they didn’t manage 19 shots, so getting that many shots in a single period is a moral victory.
And yet, the Canucks couldn’t come up with that one extra goal.
You have to wonder if Rick Tocchet, fresh off his stint as an assistant coach for Team Canada, experienced a little bit of whiplash returning to coach the Canucks.
“Wait, I can’t throw Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby, Sam Reinhart, and Cale Makar on the ice when we need a goal?” he probably thought. “This is bull.”
What he actually said was, “There were moments that we had that we should’ve executed on…The execution was good some parts and sometimes it wasn’t.”
That last part might be a quote from . I watched this game.
- The final shot totals — 34-to-34 — and final score might paint a picture of an evenly-matched game, especially when you add in that the Canucks had two goals disallowed. But that would just be inaccurate. Like a , the Golden Knights had chance after chance after chance.
- “We need him,” said DeBrusk of Lankinen. “He’s been a huge reason why we’re in this playoff race and he was a huge reason tonight why it was even close.”
- “That’s why we just extended him, right?” said Sherwood. “He gives us a chance every single night. They probably could’ve had four or five easy ones tonight and he gave us a chance. He was making some hard saves look easy. I think we owe it to him to come out better.”
- Lankinen made lots of huge stops but his two saves with five minutes left in the first period seemed important. Jack Eichel attacked on a 2-on-1 and set up Pavel Dorofeyev but Lankinen stretched out to make a right toe save, then quickly recovered and tracked a deflected pass through traffic and snagged a Victor Olofsson shot with his glove.
- Of course, those saves only seemed important at the time because the outcome of the game had yet to be decided. With the Canucks losing the game, all those saves will be lost in time .
- I had to laugh five minutes into the second period when Brock Boeser fired a hard pass in the defensive zone that went right on his own net, forcing Lankinen to make yet another save. It’s not enough that Lankinen faced 34 shots from Vegas, he had to face shots from his own teammates.
- The Canucks’ top line of DeBrusk, Sherwood, and Elias Pettersson were mostly outplayed by the Golden Knights but they came up with one fantastic shift in the second period and opened the scoring. Some smart rotations and sharp puck movement hemmed Vegas in, then Carson Soucy kept the puck in at the blue line and sent it down low to Sherwood. At the end of a minute-long shift, it seemed like Vegas expected the Canucks to make a line change, so no one picked up DeBrusk as he snuck in at the backdoor to finish off Sherwood’s pass through Adin Hill’s legs.
- That was DeBrusk’s team-leading 20th goal of the season, putting him on pace for a career-high 29 goals. Can he crack the 30-goal barrier? And is it bad that the Canucks’ leading goalscorer might score 30 goals?
- “He’s got a knack for being around the net and putting them in,” said Sherwood. “Guys like that, you want to just put it in there and give them a chance and he made a great finish. He had good poise and it was a nice play to slide it five-hole.”
- Midway through the second period, you could just tell the Canucks were in trouble, not only because the Golden Knights were pouring on the pressure but also because Carson Soucy and Tyler Myers were together on the ice. The two spent barely a minute together at 5-on-5 and were on the ice for a goal against.
- The tying goal was a simple one: Kaedan Korczak uncorked a point shot, Olofsson tipped it to force Lankinen to give up a rebound, and Ivan Barbashev tucked in the loose puck. What’s incredible is that both Olofsson and Barbashev ended up in behind Myers and Soucy, giving the Golden Knights a 2-on-0 down low. It was mind-boggling watching Soucy stare at Korczak taking the shot instead of trying to box out or tie up anyone at all. I swear, Soucy wasn’t this bad last season.
- It’s probably a good thing that I’ve stopped watching Elias Pettersson the defenceman like I was evaluating a prospect and just started taking his presence on the ice as a given. His ice time grew as the game went on but he still finished with just 13:36 because he didn’t get any time on special teams, but that seems like it should change. The ice was heavily tilted for the Canucks when he was out there at 5-on-5, with shot attempts 24-to-14 in their favour.
- I want to give a shout out to Marcus Pettersson for his monstrously long shift at the end of the second period. He and Myers got stuck in the defensive zone for a long time but eventually Myers was able to change after a two-minute and 12-second shift. Pettersson couldn’t get to the bench and ended up on for two minutes and 48 seconds before getting off. Myers looked utterly gassed, bent over double; Pettersson looked fresh as a daisy. In Myers’ defence, he’s three inches taller than Pettersson, so has to deal with thinner air at his altitude.
- The Golden Knights took a 2-1 lead eight seconds into the third period. Lankinen came out to challenge a shot from Zach Whitecloud but his shot missed the net and took a friendly bounce off the backboards like he was shooting craps with rigged dice. As the puck rebounded to Brandon Saad, Lankinen got bumped outside the crease by Mark Stone, preventing him from coming across to make the stop, but since Lankinen was outside the crease and arguably initiated the contact, it wasn’t goaltender interference.
- Of course, the bounce off the boards and the bump from Stone might not have mattered if Conor Garland had skated on the backcheck. Saad was his man and Garland went into a coast instead of moving his feet, which was a surprise, because he’s the most foot-movingest player on the team. You’d think he was with how much he usually moves his feet.
- Twice, it looked like the Canucks had tied the game only to have the goal disallowed, which makes it feel like the hockey gods were toying with Canucks fans. You’d think they’d be tired of doing that by now but apparently not.
- Five minutes after Saad’s goal, Teddy Blueger was in the crease looking like he was giggling and kicking his feet like a schoolgirl. Nils Höglander banked the puck off Blueger’s knee and into the net. Only problem was Blueger was lying behind the goaltender because he tripped over him in the crease. He was interfering with the goaltender, if you will. I believe the NHL has a phrase for that.
- Ten minutes after that, Dakota Joshua poked a puck in under Hill’s pad but the whistle had clearly gone and Joshua arguably pushed the pad and not the puck, so the no-goal call was pretty understandable. Still, it’s hard to get the puck over the goal line, so doing it twice without actually getting a goal had to be frustrating.
- The Canucks had other chances to score but they made a mountain out of Hill, who made 33 saves on 34 shots. Pius Suter had their best opportunity on a Joshua rebound but he was robbed first by Hill’s right arm, then his left. Hill was throwing limbs around .
- Filip Chytil drew a late power play and Tocchet waited until there were 10 seconds left in the power play to pull Lankinen for the extra attacker. It felt like a missed opportunity to go 6-on-4 to get the tying goal, though an empty net on the power play is always a risk because teams can go for the goal without worrying about icing the puck.
- Anyways, the Canucks didn’t score and the Golden Knights eventually got an empty-net goal with 31 seconds left. Game over.
