Avalanche offer scare, but Canucks eke out win
Visitors score rare road win, but not without a scare from lowly hosts
It was there for the taking on paper and on the ice.
As much as the Vancouver Canucks continue the struggle to muster just enough offence to turn games in their favour, they were no statistical match for the woeful Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday. The National Hockey League cellar dwellers have scored the fewest goals, allowed the most and are runaway leaders in trade rumours regarding forwards Matt Duchene and Gabriel Landeskog. The losers of seven straight games gave the Canucks everything they needed to prevail and the Avalanche should have been run out of their own rink before rallying from a two-goal deficit and eventually falling 3-2.
It was just the sixth road triumph of the season for the Canucks and it shouldn’t have been this hard.
The Avalanche couldn’t cover in their own zone at the outset. They couldn’t complete passes and preferred to play pond hockey with too many individual plays and rushes. They made Henrik Sedin look fast. They made Loui Eriksson look like he had the keys to the crease and made Markus Granlund look like a pickpocket. They even made Nikita Tryamkin look like Usain Bolt.
However, nothing ever comes easy to these Canucks and coach Willie Desjardins sounded the alarm bell to warn his club of another danger game.
“You have to prove it every night,” said the Canucks coach. “Just because you’ve been resilient in the past, it carries nothing ahead. Colorado has good talent, but the record doesn’t show it.”
That sounded overly diplomatic, but on some level it made sense because sustainability would prove to be the problem after a strong start.
It was a rare power-play effort that would prove the difference and allow the Canucks to prevail in a must-win game and stay in the playoff conversation.
Henrik Sedin took a pass from Daniel Sedin and, from the side of the net, spotted Sven Baertschi on top of the crease. Baertschi calmly redirected the effort for his second goal of the night to up his season total to 13. But it almost didn’t come to that. On a pair of second-period goals that Jacob Markstrom would like to have back — a slot shot trickling between his pads and Mikko Rantanen bolting to the goal-line for the two-foot tap-in and Matt Nieto then pouncing on a Michael Chaput turnover and snapping the puck between the backup’s arm and body — the Avalanche found life and found themselves in a game they had no business being in early.
The Canucks were all over the Avalanche in the opening period. They had 20 shots. They should have been up two or three goals. Bo Horvat bullied his way by defenders and his line gained the offensive zone with such ease that it was looking like points night for the trio.
The Avalanche couldn’t contain Horvat on the opening goal. Baertschi was the benefactor with a backhand off the centre’s rebound. And Henrik Sedin was directing traffic in the faceoff circle because he was not only winning most of his draws, he was placing them right on the stick of defencemen.
You have to prove it every night. ... Colorado has good talent, but the record doesn’t show it.