Young Canucks do what Leafs, Oilers couldn’t
In an ideal world, the city of Vancouver would be gearing up for a social distancing round of vindication Friday night.
This would be a chance — with the hometown Canucks on the verge of eliminating the Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues — for Vancouver fans and residents to erase some of the ugly memories of 2011 when an anticipated celebration turned into a wake, and then into one of the worst riots in the city’s history.
With Game 6 on tap, you can bet that Vancouver hockey people and municipal politicians would have been putting on the pressure for locals to behave while cheering on one of the NHL’s best young teams against the Blues.
Alas, this is not an ideal world and these are not ordinary times, and so this clash will be taking place in the “hub” city of Edmonton, with no fans in attendance. This is where what has been lost to the hockey world in this pandemic — the chance to watch two teams in the atmosphere of a packed arena, fighting to either end a series or stay alive — becomes something yawning and empty.
Still, there will certainly be lots of eyeballs on this elimination game, as there should be. This has been the best series of the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs — which you might think is the second round, but of course that other business was the qualifying round. Don’t worry. It’ll all make sense in the end. Probably.
What we know is that the NHL is happily reporting no new coronavirus cases — which really is amazing — and while many folks were sleeping in the east, sometimes after watching playoff hockey all day long, the upset-minded Canucks were becoming the most exciting team in Canada.
They are filling the role both the Oilers and Maple Leafs were hoping to fill: an NHL club that has paid its dues, rebuilt with fine young talent harvested from the draft, and is reaping the rewards as those youngsters are delivering in the spotlight of the post-season.
Edmonton had hoped this round would be the chance for Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Darnell Nurse to shine. But Chicago upset the Oilers.
Toronto was imagining that Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander would come of age and actually win a playoff round. But Columbus squelched those dreams.
Three Canadian teams — Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver — survived the qualifying round, but it is the Canucks who have provided a glimpse of something special and might ultimately accomplish what the ’11 Canucks squad couldn’t quite get done against Boston.
The Canucks jumped ahead two games to none against the Blues and drove last year’s playoff hero, goalie Jordan Binnington, from the St. Louis net. Jake Allen took over, and the Blues won the next two. It seemed the champs had settled in and were ready to assert their pedigree.
In Game 5, Craig Berube’s group built a 3-1 lead over the Canucks, and it appeared to be a situation where Vancouver had acquitted itself well against the Blues but would have to wait at least another year as its young players mature. Instead, the Canucks roared back with goals from J.T. Miller, Jake Virtanen and the second of the game from winger Tyler Motte, who has quietly become one of the more intriguing individual stories of this series.
Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom made 36 saves — 17 of those stops coming in that middle period, when his team turned a two-goal deficit into a one-goal lead — and ultimately Vancouver won for a 3-2 series lead heading into Friday night.
These are the basic facts. What that leaves out, however, is the way in which Bo Horvat, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes have turned the Canucks into a thoroughly entertaining team to watch, and very difficult to defend against. Horvat might be the best young captain in the game and has had several highlight-reel moments against the Blues. Pettersson, at times, seems to be almost toying with the champions, keeping the puck on his stick for as long as he chooses.
Hughes, finally, is quickly becoming one of the best small players to watch, a blue-line version of Marner in Toronto. Like Marner, you’d think opposing teams would lean on Hughes, but he always seems to leave himself an escape route. There was a wonderful moment early in the series when he made a brilliant bank pass to Horvat for a gamewinning goal. As he made the feed, he was buried by a hit from Tyler Bozak — and lifted his head just in time to break into a broad smile as Horvat scored.
It’ll be either Hughes or Colorado defenceman Cale Makar for the Calder Trophy, whenever that gets announced, and both seem poised to be very good players for a long time. Hughes is one of those players with unique powers of on-ice observation that allow him to compete with bigger, stronger skaters in a way that makes him appear as though he’s always one stride ahead.
Throw in winger Brock Boeser and the team carefully assembled by Vancouver GM Jim Benning in the post-Sedin era suddenly looks to be a step ahead of other young clubs such as the Oilers and Leafs. Markstrom, providing superior goalkeeping to that received by either Edmonton or Toronto, has allowed the kids an extra layer of comfort to make mistakes as they grow through this post-season experience.
Whether it all results in an upset of the champs, we’ll see. For now, this Canucks team is just a blast to watch. The great hockey city of Vancouver, meanwhile, will have to wait for its day of vindication.