The Vancouver Canucks picked up another point to put a punctuation mark on a successful road trip, which saw them compile a 4-1-1 record despite a myriad of key absences up front, on the back end and in goal.
Ultimately, however, the Canucks lost in overtime 3-2 to a Minnesota Wild team that outperformed them for most of the evening. This was a game in which the Wild generated significantly more than Vancouver did, and controlled play for large swaths of the contest.
With the tank empty at the tail end of a 13-day, six-game road swing, however, Vancouver found its footing late in Tuesday night’s game. Though the Wild probably deserved the two points, the Canucks hung tight and turned up the pressure as the game went on.
Vancouver had multiple opportunities to win the game in the second half of the final frame, and added two spectacular chances in overtime, an Erik Brännström opportunity in tight and a Brock Boeser breakaway on which the Minnesota native hit the pipe before Kirill Kaprizov’s overtime winner. Vancouver probably deserved a four-on-three opportunity in the overtime period as well, given the rather blatant Kaprizov trip that went uncalled.
That the Canucks could only snag one point from their final game of the road trip takes nothing away from a stellar run of results for the short-handed club over the past two weeks. The Canucks showed a ton of grit, and found a way to grind out a ton of narrow wins.
Even if the club’s results have significantly outpaced their progress of late, there’s a lot to like about the focus and competitiveness this group demonstrated on this trip. Consider the fort held.
Here are three takeaways from Tuesday night’s overtime loss:
The Kirill Kaprizov problem
The Canucks are without their full complement of contributors, of course, but the Wild are dealing with some key absences of their own in Jonas Brodin and Kaprizov’s primary running mate Mats Zuccarello.
What both teams were able to bring to the fight Tuesday night, however, were their primary engines. And in the head-to-head matchup between Kaprizov, the NHL’s MVP front-runner after a quarter of the season, and Quinn Hughes, who should be getting more consideration from national media, frankly, it was a technical knockout in favour of the Wild’s superstar winger and that was before Kaprizov iced the game in overtime.
Kaprizov and Hughes played nearly eight minutes against one another head-to-head at five-on-five through regulation Tuesday. And the run of play bent heavily in Minnesota’s favour in those minutes, with Minnesota out-shooting Vancouver eight to one in head-to-head minutes pitting Kaprizov against Hughes at five-on-five.
The Canucks, as they’ve done admirably throughout this road trip, found a way to hang around.
In truth, however, the Wild controlled most of this game. Vancouver only really seemed to find its footing in the latter stages of the third period, but through the first 50 minutes or so of regulation, the Wild outclassed Vancouver at even strength and did so pretty thoroughly. Much of that damage was driven by Kaprizov, who seemed to have this game on a string.
The new second pair
The news broke Tuesday afternoon. An announcement from the club confirmed that the Canucks will be without top-pair right-handed defender Filip Hronek for the next two months.
Hronek isn’t replaceable internally, obviously, and we know how aggressive Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin typically is about making in-season trades, but as the club moves forward here, there’s a significant opportunity available on the right side of the Vancouver blue line in the short term.
Tuesday night, for example, the club unveiled a new-look second pair featuring Carson Soucy and Noah Juulsen. Juulsen, who performed exceptionally well Sunday afternoon in Vancouver’s victory in Detroit, was rewarded by being bumped up the lineup and playing a significant role as the game went along.
It was a challenge that Juulsen was able to rise to. Right from the get-go, Juulsen had jump Tuesday evening. On his very first shift, he threw a massive hit, jumped into the attack and deflected a puck at the net front and made an excellent recovery defensive play to prevent a Wild zone entry. It was something of a tone-setting shift from the Vancouver depth defender, and an important one given how Tuesday night’s game unfolded.
While Vancouver’s other defensive pairs spent most of their ice time in their own end of the rink at five-on-five, the Soucy-Juulsen pair was something of an exception. They actually played relatively high event hockey overall, but were able to stack up some shifts working the point and setting up in the offensive end of the rink. They were, somewhat surprisingly, Vancouver’s most effective even-strength pair Tuesday night.
It might not be a pair that looks appealing on paper, but the Canucks need solutions, and Soucy and Juulsen put in a quality shift as a makeshift pair to close out the road trip.
Jake DeBrusk has been on an opportunistic run for the ages as a goal scorer on this six-game road trip.
Across Vancouver’s trip, the club’s marquee 2024 free-agent signing has chipped in an incredible seven goals. And aside from a three-on-three goal off the rush to complete his hat trick and ice the club’s matinee victory over the Red Wings over the weekend, all of those goals have been the product of yeoman’s work at the net front.
That was the case again Tuesday night, as DeBrusk was in the right place at the right time late in the second period, and pounced on a clever Elias Pettersson setup to spot Vancouver an against-the-grain 2-1 lead. The club wouldn’t have secured a key point without that goal, and it was emblematic of precisely how DeBrusk has come up big throughout this trip.
#Canucks Jake DeBrusk’s 11 goals since November 2nd are tied for the most in the NHL pic.twitter.com/MbmKhHmitm
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) December 4, 2024
Efficient finishing has been the key reason why Vancouver managed to stay afloat in the absence of so many star-level contributors on this road trip. And no Canucks player has been more efficient and timely and sharp at converting their chances than DeBrusk.
(Photo: Matt Krohn / Imagn Images)
