As the Canucks season winds down, what constitutes a “good” game has to be redefined. By any standard measure, this wasn’t a good game. It was mostly sloppy, there were long stretches where nothing much seemed to happen, and the Canucks collapsed like a stabbed lung in the third period, getting out-shot 20-to-9 in the final frame.
But with a little shift in perspective, this game was great: both Canucks goals were scored by youth, another young player, Nikita Tryamkin, had a standout performance, and the Stars leapfrogged the Canucks in the standings, giving the good guys a better shot at a higher draft pick.
Look, when you live with clouds 90% of the year in the Fraser Valley, you get pretty good at finding silver linings. I found a few while I watched this game.
- This may surprise you, but Ales Hemsky is still in the NHL. It seemed to catch Ben Hutton off guard too, as he was caught standing still while Hemsky blew past him. Before Hutton could say, “Wait, didn’t he have hip surgery?” Hemsky had already deked around an over-aggressive Ryan Miller and scored the opening goal.
- Nikita Tryamkin was a treat to watch in this game. He was a factotum, doing a little bit of everything. He jumped up in the play repeatedly, sparking the Canucks’ offence. He played a solid defensive game, shutting down passing lanes with his reach and keeping the Stars to the outside. He threw some crush body checks, including a doozy on Patrick Sharp early in the third period. And he obliged Jamie Benn’s request for punches, because he is a nice young man who listens to his elders.
- Tryamkin’s run-in with Benn came late in the second period, as the Russian Tallboy ran over Benn at the blue line. , Jamie Benn went down, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about it and, after dropping the gloves, he refused to go down again. Tryamkin didn’t seem to really know what he was doing in the fight, but because he’s such a behemoth, it didn’t seem to matter, as he somehow injured Benn anyways. He left with an upper body injury, possibly to his pride for being tossed to the ice so easily prior to the fight.
- Tryamkin’s contribution to the scoresheet came midway through the first. After a long shift in the offensive zone by the Baertschi-Bo-Boucher line, which is , Tryamkin rotated down to the backdoor, somehow remaining unnoticed despite his stature. Reid Boucher found him with a lovely centring pass, but Tryamkin couldn’t beat Kari Lehtonen. Fortunately, Sven Baertschi happen to be passing by and put the rebound back where it belonged.
- Boucher managed to stay on his line with Horvat and Baertschi for the entire game, which was, like Nintendo’s latest offering, a nice switch.
- Boucher was on the ice for the Stars’ 2-1 goal and it’s easy to point the finger at him: he was a little slow getting back in position after a puck battle behind the net. At the same time, my goodness did that ever look like a saveable shot. Ryan Miller handled Esa Lindell’s long wristshot like a goaltender who has only had one night off in the last dozen games.
- Ben Hutton pulled double duty on the tying goal, drawing the penalty, then putting the puck in the net. The second power play unit created a scramble in front of the net, then Hutton, like a Denny’s customer, pulled the foreign object out of the scramble. On the one hand, that’s a terrible joke, but on the backhand, Hutton put it in the net with less than 2 seconds remaining in the period.
- The third period was disastrous for the Canucks, giving up a stunning 20 shots on goal. Just three of them came on the lone Stars power play, though it seemed like a lot more. The penalty kill pairing of Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi never got off the ice, stuck on for nearly a full minute before Tyler Seguin blasted a one-timer by Miller. It’s been suggested that Horvat isn’t a particularly good penalty killer and it was easy to believe on that shift. He waved more sticks without actually doing anything than a kid psyching out his dog.
- Troy Stecher has been excellent at using his skating to get himself out of trouble, but the opposite happened on the 4-2 goal: he skated himself into even more trouble. Picking up the puck behind the net, he tried to wheel out with Devin Shore right on him, when the wiser course of action would have been to eat the puck along the boards or throw the puck up the boards to Markus Granlund. Instead, Shore picked Stecher’s pocket and gave Radek Faksa a tap-in.
- And that was it: the Canucks pulled Ryan Miller for the extra attacker, but that basically just led to a couple minutes of the Stars trying their long-distance target practice. They’re really bad at it, so they likely appreciated the practice.
