麻豆传媒映画Canucks fans embraced Bruce Boudreau as head coach with great enthusiasm.
That’s pretty understandable not only because of how the team initially performed under his leadership but also because of his jolly, open persona — joking () in press conferences, , and .
It’s no wonder Canucks fans quickly became Boudreau fans, going far beyond just the “” chants during games.
It’s easy to forget, however, that Boudreau is still an NHL head coach and every single NHL head coach is going to do things that fans disagree with or seem mystifying from the outside.
For instance, the use of Juho Lammikko and Matthew Highmore in overtime has left some scratching their heads. There’s nothing that ends a honeymoon with a coach more than that coach overvaluing his fourth-line grinders. Even the best coaches have blindspots and they usually involve guys that : they try their best but they don’t succeed.
Another recent choice of going to a two-defenceman formation on the power play flies in the face of both .
In Monday’s game against the Chicago Blackhawks, there were a couple more odd choices. The game after being shut out is certainly an odd time to promote Jason Dickinson, a player with three goals in 42 games, to the top line with J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser.
Meanwhile, Boudreau healthy scratched Vasily Podkolzin, who is tied for second in 5-on-5 goals on the Caanucks behind Conor Garland.
But here’s the thing: coaches can make all sorts of off-kilter decisions and try all sorts of odd combinations, as long it works. Heck, one particular decision doesn’t necessarily need to work out, as long as the team wins.
Do you think there weren’t raised eyebrows when Alex Burrows first took the ice with Daniel and Henrik Sedin? A third-line, penalty-killing winger with a career-high of 12 goals on the first line with the Sedins — how in the world did that seem like a good decision? And yet, Burrows made Alain Vigneault look like a genius, becoming the perfect winger for the two best players in franchise history.
I’m not saying any of the decisions Boudreau made heading into this game will live on in Canucks lore like playing Burrows with the Sedins but the Canucks won the game, which is what really matters.
Even better, the player that drew into the lineup for Podkolzin, Justin Dowling, set up the game’s opening goal and Dickinson got an assist on the game-winner on the first line. How can you argue with a coach’s decisions when that happens? As they say, if it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid.
As for Podkolzin, Boudreau made it clear that the scratch wasn’t a punishment and that Podkolzin didn’t even necessarily do anything wrong.
“Sometimes it’s just better to take a step back and watch a game and see it,” said Boudreau. “Maybe he’ll see some things that he’s missing in his game recently. He hasn’t played a lot of hockey and I think he’s just trying to do too much out there.”
Fair enough. With Boudreau’s winning touch, odds are that Podkolzin comes back in Tuesday’s game with a new perspective and is one of the Canucks’ best forwards. Keep winning games and armchair coaches like myself won’t have much to say.
But seriously, I really could’ve gone without seeing Jason Dickinson on the first line when I watched this game.
- Did Podkolzin need a healthy scratch? Maybe. Sometimes rookies need a reset and he didn’t have a great game against the Calgary Flames on Saturday but, then again, no one was particularly good in that game. There’s nothing wrong with taking a step back and seeing a game from a different perspective and perhaps Boudreau will feel comfortable reversing Podkolzin’s declining ice time.
- The two defencemen on the power play thing, however, is no good. It was painful watching Oliver Ekman-Larsson at the right faceoff circle where Elias Pettersson or J.T. Miller ought to be. Please, make it stop.
- The Canucks got the game’s opening goal from the fourth line, albeit a fourth line that featured Nils Höglander. The pint-sized power forward made a great read along the boards to pick off a pass and backhanded the puck to Dowling, who had his back to the net. Instead of spinning and firing, he sent a quick pass to Alex Chiasson, who . And then the puck went in off it.
- “Great play, I thought, from our line,” said Chiasson. “Högs did a great job chasing the puck down, just a smart play by Dowls there. I like to find those areas, spots where I feel pretty confident with my shot.”
- After the Canucks only managed one shot on goal in the first period on Saturday and you could tell by the lopsided shot attempts in the first period on Monday that they were intent on not repeating that fiasco. They out-attempted the Blackhawks 27-to-9 in the first, even if they only outshot them 11-to-6 because the Blackhawks blocked 14 shots.
- The Canucks extended the lead in the second period off a turnover by Brandon “Not Georg Wilhelm Friedrich” Hagel. Luke Schenn took away his weak clearing attempt, bumped the puck down to Dickinson, and he found Quinn Hughes cross-ice. Hughes jumped down the boards and sent a hard pass to Miller in front, but Boeser snuck in and tipped the puck first, sending short-side on Marc-Andre Fleury, who had cheated towards the middle like a campaigning politician.
- Jaroslav Halak looked sharp in the Canucks net despite not playing a game since last year. No, literally: he last played on December 30. Sure, that’s a month ago, but last year sounds longer.
- Well, Halak was sharp except for the one shot that got passed him, on which he was duller than a baseball bat. Schenn lost the puck behind the net, leading to a shot from the sideboards from Conor Murphy. Halak tracked it, tried to catch it with his glove, and just whiffed on it and the puck banked off his cheater and in. It’s okay — if it’s the only goal you allow, it’s allowed to be a stinker.
- It ended up being just fine. The Blackhawks shot themselves in the foot with a terrible too many men penalty with three minutes left, abruptly killing their momentum. When they finally got their goaltender pulled for the extra attacker in the final minute, Patrick Kane wasted it with a terrible shot attempt from distance that hit Schenn, and the defenceman flung the puck the length of the ice into the empty net to seal the game.
- “He’s the first defenceman that’s scored a goal since I’ve been here, so to me he’s Bobby Orr,” quipped Boudreau about the goal, Schenn’s second since Boudreau took over.
- Schenn had a busy game: he had the takeaway for a Canucks goal, the giveaway for a Blackhawks goal, and the empty netter. On top of that, Schenn matched his career-high in hits with 12, which is tied for 17th all-time in the NHL, at least since they started tracking it as a statistic.
