EDMONTON — Opening night is kind of like the first chapter of a novel. The first chapter never defines a book, but it introduces the characters, sets the tone and foreshadows many of the themes, questions and subplots that become central to the overall story.
Forget the first chapter, Elias Pettersson was ready to proclaim himself The Man for Vancouver by the end of the first page.
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On his very shift at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Pettersson picked up the puck in the defensive zone and scanned the ice. He had an Oiler forward closing on him and both of his wingers, Andrei Kuzmenko and Nils Höglander, were unavailable as passing options. With no obvious play, Pettersson lifted the puck into the air. It’s a basic opt-out play for players to relieve pressure in that kind of scenario, to just punt and live to fight another day.
But for Pettersson, this wasn’t a haphazard clear, like it would be for 95 percent of NHL players. This was a purposeful alley-oop lob into a specific space, the kind that he was routinely executing at training camp in Whistler. It was calculated. Every Pettersson move is calculated.
The lob bounced in an awkward spot and Evan Bouchard was unable to handle the puck, with Höglander and Kuzmenko applying pressure.
When Ryan Murray corralled possession, Pettersson already knew what the defenceman’s move was going to be. Pettersson jumped the passing lane, cleanly picking off the breakout and beating a man in one fell swoop. He pulled the puck back into a shooting position as if loading a spring, only for it to serve as a decoy as he deked out Jack Campbell and tucked the puck home.
The big left-handed pump celebration said it all — this is a player who can’t wait to show the world what he’s capable of.
Pettersson’s opening burst set the tone for a perfect start that catapulted the club to a 3-0 lead. It somehow wasn’t enough as the club surrendered four consecutive goals, before allowing an empty netter for a 5-3 loss on Wednesday night. If this Canucks team is going anywhere special this season though, it’s going to come on the shoulders of No. 40. They need the most imposing version of Pettersson.
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Game 1 of the regular season was a really positive sign in that vein. Pettersson’s line was by far the Canucks’ best and that’s despite Höglander struggling mightily for stretches on his wing. They outshot the Oilers 10-2 in Pettersson’s five-on-five minutes — including a 5-1 edge in nearly four minutes head-to-head against Connor McDavid — dominating puck possession and spending nearly the entire game in the offensive zone.
That created the standard for a Canucks team that played well at even strength against an Edmonton side that’s been legitimately formidable at five-on-five since Jay Woodcroft took over midyear last season.
There’s no beating around the bush in discussing the result — it absolutely sucks to blow a three-goal lead. Every player should be disappointed and they were in the locker game postgame. But three-goal leads are regularly blown in today’s high-scoring NHL, especially when you’re facing off against an offensive juggernaut whose first goal was essentially gifted due to a blatantly missed high stick. This is an 82-game campaign and sound process matters more than a single game result and there was definitely more good than there was bad.
Vancouver’s gritty defensive effort
The Canucks don’t have enough two-way savvy, both up front and on the backend, to be an above-average defensive team. But at the very least, they need defensive competence and some semblance of discipline and structure to make the playoffs.
Edmonton got their chances on Wednesday night — they always will with two of the best players on the planet — but Vancouver defended well overall, allowing just 25 shots. They controlled the bulk of play, especially for the first two periods, and drew eight penalties for it. The Oilers generated some looks off the counterattack and rush, but Vancouver wasn’t bleeding rush chances to the extent it often does against Edmonton’s speed. More importantly, the in-zone defence was really solid, especially considering the circumstances.
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Missing two of their regular defencemen in Tyler Myers and Travis Dermott and their best defensive winger, Ilya Mikheyev, the Canucks were surprisingly effective at keeping the Oilers to the outside. That matters because the Oilers had many opportunities where they could have exposed the Canucks. Owning the last change, Woodcroft loaded up McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and consistently found ways to get that super duo out against the likes of Kyle Burroughs, Riley Stillman and the fourth line. Vancouver was especially vulnerable when Quinn Hughes missed a chunk of the second period.
It could have easily turned into a disaster, and early last season it would have. This time Vancouver’s forwards were committed to helping, closing time and space quickly and blocking a lot of shots to help out the blue line. Take a sequence like the one below where the third pair was caught against McDavid and Draisaitl, a potentially disastrous matchup. J.T. Miller pushed Draisaitl, one of the strongest players in the league, around and forced him to hand the puck off. When it went back to the point, Boeser committed to blocking the shot and clearing the puck into safety.
Here’s a play where Tucker Poolman got beat, but Vasily Podkolzin backchecked very hard and made a big block which denied a rush chance.
Miller was back to deny a dazzling McDavid rush.
The exception was when Bo Horvat essentially bailed out of the backcheck on Darnell Nurse’s tying goal.
Anytime you outshoot and out-chance McDavid and Draisaitl despite them manipulating the matchups in their favour because of last change, you have to be pleased.
“They didn’t have anything, really,” Miller said after the game. “Five-on-five we controlled the play the entire game. We had a couple breakdowns, maybe two or three, but if you’re playing a team like that, you’ll take that any day. I think we played really well and we’re going to hang our hat on that, I mean the stuff from tonight’s fixable, that’s for sure.”
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The last part of what Miller mentioned is key. Vancouver’s power play, which went 1/8 and allowed a short-handed goal, is the reason the Canucks lost. That should be very easily fixable given the track record of this first unit. What you can’t so easily fix is five-on-five structure, stability and control which is what the Canucks had for most of the night.
Höglander under pressure to show something
Mikhyev was skating in a regular full-contact jersey at morning skate on Wednesday morning; he must be close to returning. That means someone from the top nine has to come out soon and right now Höglander looks like the laggard.
He had multiple turnovers and failed to bury the couple of prime scoring chances he had. The first chance was on the power play and the second was from a perfect cross-seam pass by Pettersson.
This was exactly the type of chance Edmonton buried with no hesitation. It’s time for Höglander to show something quickly, otherwise we may have a debate on our hands as to whether he’s better off building his confidence and playing a ton in the American League once Mikhyev returns.
The inconsistency thing
While I’m cutting the Canucks some slack because their overall performance was solid against a superior Oilers team, Saturday’s game against the Flyers is going to reveal a lot. Last season, the Canucks had a tendency of playing down to their competition level and conceding points to bottom feeders like Detroit, Buffalo and Chicago. It killed their season and can’t happen again.
Process matters, but it has to be sustained. The Canucks need to bring the same forecheck, defensive intensity and possession control against the Flyers otherwise what they did well on Wednesday night doesn’t matter one iota. Good teams ruthlessly stomp on weak opponents — we’ll see what the Canucks are made of on the weekend.
(Photo of Elias Pettersson: Jerome Miron / USA Today)