No-name Canucks win after Flames fizzle early
Gulutzan says mental letdown allowed visitors to storm back in pre-season tilt
The good, bad and ugly was the theme of Wednesday’s 5-3 Vancouver Canucks victory over the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
And the good came early, at least for the home side.
With players like Tanner Glass, Dillon Dube, Mark Jankowski, Ryan Lomberg, Rasmus Andersson and netminder Jon Gillies all trying to make an impression in their second pre-season audition, they put themselves all over the scoresheet in different ways. And in other ways? “I liked some guys. I thought some guys weren’t very good,” said Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan. “The time is ticking, here, as every game goes by for guys wanting to stay around.” Let’s start with the good. Near the end of the second period, Gillies earned high praise — from the Canucks Twitter account — when he made a no-look, behind the back, swipe save with his glove hand on a shot from Vancouver forward Wacey Hamilton in the slot.
“You guys are going to be surprised, but that’s not the best save I’ve seen from him,” said Jankowski, who skated with Gillies at Providence College and with the AHL’s Stockton Heat.
“That was incredible but he does that on a daily basis. He’s just a heck of a goalie and that doesn’t surprise me.”
The save was impressive, no matter which way you looked at it. But there were other bright spots.
Glass, the former Canucks forward, scored a beauty just 2:05 into the night and laid a hit on rookie defenceman Jalen Chatfield before shovelling the puck past Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko.
Dube, who was fresh in the Flames’ minds from Monday’s 5-4 loss to the Oilers, having recorded a nice assist that night, had a sublime setup on the marker from Glass. The Cochrane native added another nice assist before the period was over when he teed one up for Andersson. His shot was tipped by Lomberg to give the Flames a 2-0 lead.
Gulutzan said the Glass-DubeLomberg line was the Flames best unit.
“One guy’s on a (tryout deal) and the other two are contract guys — one’s an American leaguer, the other one is a junior player who is trying to stick around,” he said. “I thought every shift, they had an impact.”
Jake Virtanen set the stage for the Canucks to cut the lead in half after breaking up a chance between Jankowski and Curtis Lazar to send the play to the other end. Anton Rodin connected after Cole Cassels dropped him a pass between his legs.
But with 2:32 left in the first period, Jankowski gave the Flames a 3-1 lead. The bad? The ice tilted immensely in the second period in favour of the Canucks and Brock Boeser was the obvious star.
His goal was a thing of beauty, just 2:14 into the first period when he split Brett Kulak and Matt Bartkowski and went five-hole on Gillies.
The ugly?
With the majority of their NHL roster overseas in China, getting ready to play a pre-season game against the Los Angeles Kings which began at 4:30 a.m. PDT, the Canucks managed to bounce back.
Goals from Nikolay Goldobin and Virtanen allowed the visitors to pull ahead 4-3 by the end of the second period.
Chatfield scored with 6:06 remaining in the final frame.
Despite making the highlight reel save, Gilles finished the night allowing four goals on 23 shots. Tyler Parsons played the third period and allowed one goal on six shots in 20 minutes of work.
“I wasn’t critical of Jon,” Gulutzan said. “I thought he kept us in (the game) and made some big saves, except maybe for one … we let him down after the first.”
Demko, meanwhile, stopped 23 of 26 shots.
Keep in mind that the Flames dressed a roster that had a total of 3,121 NHL games of experience under their belts. The Canucks? Just 416 NHL games.
“We had a good first period and you can see what happens when, mentally, you lose a degree of intensity,” Gulutzan said. “You can see what happens when you shut down a degree … we lost our edge.
“... You look at their lineup and most of their players are in China. This is a group of young guys. Maybe two or three are going to be on the actual team.”
Again, just like Monday’s preseason loss to the Edmonton Oilers, the score isn’t the biggest focus for the Flames’ senior management at the moment.
They’re more concerned about evaluating a handful of their younger and professional tryout players aiming to earn jobs.
Auditions continue Friday against the Arizona Coyotes.