The Canucks dearly missed Quinn Hughes, as well as the injured Elias Pettersson. They managed the puck badly at three on three and handed Seattle’s Vince Dunn a breakaway
For 58 minutes Saturday against the Seattle Kraken, there were just that. Of course, playing a team coming in on a five-game losing streak helped.
Seattle showed very little through most of the game, but after getting a pair of lucky goals to keep them in scoring range they took advantage of two miscues with their goalie pulled to send the game to overtime.
Obviously, the Canucks will dial in on how they played the bulk of the game. It really was a contest that had no business going to overtime. And they had no business losing.
There will be far more difficult contests for the Canucks. The Kraken were mostly atrocious. They did little to stop the Canucks’ breakout, for instance. Vancouver played much smarter hockey. That’s a good thing. But will better teams, like those they’ll start facing in two weeks’ time on an Eastern road trip, give them this much space? Doubtful. The Canucks will have to manage crunch time so much better.
Still, the hockey they played is what will keep the Canucks afloat for as long as Hughes is out with his undisclosed injury, which is suspected to be a hand. However long that proves to be.
They played like the top line you want, scoring three times. Boeser’s knack for finding the right spot to shoot from at all times is remarkable and he did just that on the pass from Soucy. But he’s also adept at winning battles in front and that’s what he did on the game’s opening goal — he knocked the puck out of mid-air after Seattle goalie Phillipp Grubauer just managed to made a stop on a power play one-timer by DeBrusk.
Boeser has been a constant for the Canucks almost since he showed up in Vancouver seven years ago. He doesn’t score every game, but it’s rare he goes many games in a row without one and when he does score, they tend to come fast and furious. He has five goals over the past week, for instance.
DeBrusk’s nifty finish early in the third, Vancouver’s fourth goal of the game, was precise, a perfect pass from Miller to spring his winger loose, the perfect finish from DeBrusk, exactly what the Canucks signed him for.
Those are the good things — but the results matter.