Pettersson plays his part as kids scorch Flames
Youngsters find net, Markstrom solid as Canucks start season off on the right foot
And Elias looked down upon the goal he created and declared it was good. And it was good.
It’s not known on which day of that first week Elias Pettersson was created, but everyone who watches hockey in Vancouver is thankful he was.
The Swedish Kid opened his NHL account in perfect fashion Wednesday night in a 5-2 win for the Vancouver Canucks over the Calgary Flames and nothing else mattered.
Not even the free beer — or water, or soft drink — handed to each fan at Rogers Arena mattered.
Pettersson sniped a top-corner wrist shot on a first period rush, a
shot so vicious it seemed to curve space to create the gap between Flames goalie Mike Smith’s shoulder and the post he was hugging and the crossbar he was seeking to cover.
The bend Pettersson put on his stick was something else to behold and when you saw the replay, you saw how he was able to create such power from such a tight angle.
And where he shot from was deeply deceptive. It was almost as if he was setting up to pass across the slot to an onrushing Derrick Pouliot, but from high above it never really looked as if he was going to pass.
He also had an assist, setting up Nikolay Goldobin at the left side of the net after a Loui Eriksson — who had put Pettersson in the clear on the first goal — shot from the top of the slot was stopped dead in its tracks by Noah Hanifin.
Pettersson grabbed the loose puck before Hanifin could find it in his feet and flipped it quickly to Goldobin, who made no mistake in firing it home. (Unlike the first pre-season game, when he was on the other side of the crease but couldn’t find the back of the net as the Oilers’ netminder, Cam Talbot, snagged it.)
Jake Virtanen and Brendan Leipsic added third-period insurance markers for the Canucks — before Tyler Motte scored into an empty net — against goals for the Flames by Matthew Tkachuk and Sean Monahan.
PETTERSSON’S DREAM
The number of times Pettersson was asked about his first NHL night during pre-season became a talking point unto itself.
On Wednesday, he summed it up in a way that set the rest of the day up with a prescience you can’t make up.
“Of course, I dreamed of this my whole life and now I’m here and I’m going to try to make the most of it and I’ll be surprised if I’m not nervous and hopefully it goes away first shift,” he said.
“It (pre-season) started very good against Edmonton and then it went OK, then I felt more comfortable playing on North American ice. Got better each day with practice and the games.”
He scored on his fifth shift. Oh, and his parents were in the crowd, having arrived on Tuesday.
Look up “dream start” in the dictionary. You’ll find the definition will be “see, Pettersson, Elias (NHL debut)."
We didn’t even notice that Pettersson skated less than 10 minutes.
MARK IT UP
The Canucks’ No. 1 man was calm and in control. The Flames had shots aplenty and Jacob Markstrom turned away nearly all of them.
The only shots beating him were down to bad luck.
The first was by Tkachuk from the corner after a lucky bounce off the end boards landed on his stick.
The second was essentially an own goal, with Sven Baertschi deflecting home a goal that was credited to Sean Monahan.
Markstrom saved his best save of the night for late in the third, when he jabbed his right leg out at a Hanifin shot off a rebound at the side of the crease.
He made 15 saves in the third period as the game-chasing Flames made a strong push.
VIRTANEN’S DRIVE
Jake Virtanen’s night was uneven and then it wasn’t. He burst out of the box after taking a penalty, racing past sprawling Flames backchecker Mark Giordano to the puck and drove to the net, making a fabulous deke on Smith to score the Canucks’ fourth goal.
He’s such a big player and such a great skater, it’s the kind of play that would be good to see more of.
GUDDY UP
Erik Gudbranson is a big, strong man.
In his first two seasons in Vancouver, he’s had little luck in staying healthy and when he has played, he’s struggled to make an impact.
He did his level best to get noticed early, throwing a hit on his first shift (that got whistled for an interference penalty) and then got into a healthy scrap with Travis Hamonic on his second.
The fight actually took away a scoring chance for Pettersson, but when The Kid scored, all that was forgotten.