RATTLING THE SABRES
Canucks still perfect
Honestly, what’s the big deal about four home wins for the Vancouver Canucks?
They won four home games last season. And that fourth win even came against the Buffalo Sabres, too — on Dec. 7, 2015.
That was four wins at Rogers Arena exactly two months into their National Hockey League regular season. And the Canucks, with Thursday’s 2-1 win against the Sabres, made it four home victories in six October nights.
But do you know they have yet to score in the first period this season, have only seven goals in regulation time in four games, and have built a lead only once?
You probably do. Still, don’t worry, be happy, because 4-0 is perfect, even if the Canucks aren’t, and in one week they’ve already flown beyond what most believed them capable of.
Guess how many people picked them to be 4-0 and leading the NHL?
“Probably zero,” Canucks centre Brandon Sutter said after scoring Thursday. “Even the guys in this room. There’s a lot of work left to do. We’ve just got to build on our confidence here. The biggest thing coming into the year was believing we’re a good team because nobody else did. And we’re proving everybody wrong. So far, the first four games have gone well.”
We suppose. Granted, three of the Canucks’ four wins were against teams they’re unlikely to meet on the way to the Stanley Cup next spring. But it was still four games in six nights after a delayed start to the season that initially turned Vancouver legs to stone. The power play has one goal on the season, the US$20million first line was briefly split up late in the second period and the first three wins came without the benefit of a lead. And Anton Rodin is still out with a sore knee. So things may yet get better for the Canucks, even if their record doesn’t.
Vancouver’s first road games are back-to-back this weekend against the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks.
“You want to take every single win you can. It doesn’t really matter how they come,” veteran Canuck Jannik Hansen said. “It’s the two points at the end of the night. We know there are a lot of tough nights in this league. Come January, maybe these are the points you need to stay in the race, give yourself a little cushion here.”
Sutter added: “Tonight maybe wasn’t the best game we’ve played out of the four, but we didn’t give up much, especially in the first half. The second half they got a few more chances, but our goalie was awesome. That was a big game for Marky.”
Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom made 26 saves and was beaten only by Nicholas Baptiste’s disputed goal at 11:23 of the third period. It survived two video reviews — one by the NHL war room in Toronto, the other by referees Ian Walsh and Trevor Hanson, who concluded Nicolas Deslauriers did not interfere on the goalie when he torqued
Markstrom with his skate. The goal came 2:13 after Daniel Sedin scored the Canucks’ first powerplay goal of the season to make it 2-0, finishing through a mosh pit from a sharp angle after Loui Eriksson passed him the puck rather than shoot himself from four feet.
Unable to score in the first period or first at all this season, the Canucks at least rectified one of those problems when they made it 1-0 at 11:10 of the second period. Hansen tapped in an open-net rebound after Sutter’s shot was stopped by Buffalo goalie Robin Lehner on a twoon-one while Sabre defenceman Zach Bogosian was caught.
As they managed to start their season 3-0 despite not leading for a second, the Canucks were in the unfamiliar position of playing with, you know, the lead. It’s not as easy as you think.
Awoken by the deficit, the tight-checking Sabres started attacking the tight-checking Canucks, who required Markstrom to be their best player. Sutter was a close second.
The 27 shots the Sabres managed, though below the league average so far, are the most allowed by the Canucks this season. The team’s new systems play — forcing opponents wide through the neutral zone and suffocating them on the backcheck — has the Canucks at No. 3 in the league in shots allowed with an average of 24.5. They are second in goals-against at 1.50.
“We looked at the sheer numbers from last year and we gave up way too many quality chances,” Hansen said. “(And) not just chances, but where you’re going to score goals from. Little, subtle changes make a big difference.”