By: Brayden Fengler / December 4, 2023 Game 23: November 28th vs. The Anaheim Ducks
The first game of last week came on Tuesday night as the Canucks played the Anaheim Ducks. Kuzmenko drew back into the line-up and Beauvillier was out, and on a flight to Chicago.
The first period was an exciting one and despite the Canucks being outshot 12-6, they ended the period up 1-0 thanks to Brock Boeser’s 16th goal of the season.
It’s also worth noting that Tuesday night was Hockey Fights Cancer night for the Canucks and for the second season in a row, Brock scored one for Duke, his late father who had battles with cancer.
In the second period, the first big chance came when Quinn Hughes Sprung JT Miller for a breakaway on the power play. Miller tried to outwait John Gibson but ultimately was not able to beat him on the backhand.
Ryan Strome scored the first goal of the period with a nice wrist shot on the Ducks power play. The second period only saw the lone goal, and the Canucks didn’t improve on their shot rate, being outshot 15-6.
The Canucks were outshot at a 2:1 ratio in the first two periods, but the scoring chances and high-danger chances were actually in the Canucks favour in the first period. However, the second period was a different story. The Canucks didn’t have much to write home about and were kept largely to the outside.
In the third, the Canucks came out flying. 32 seconds into the period Kuzmenko was causing havoc in front of the net and drew Gibson out of the night to give him a shot, all while Pettersson got the puck and completed a rap around goal.
Kuzmenko won’t show up on the score sheet for that goal, but it doesn’t happen without him. Tocchet will like that. A lot.
The Canucks looked like a new team to start the third, great chance after great chance, good offensive-zone time and even Pettersson was laying bone-crushing hits. I don’t know what Tocchet said, but it seemed to work.
The Canucks poured on the offense the entire period, even during penalty kills. The final goal of the game came from Boeser with a 163ft empty net goal to put the game out of reach for the Ducks.
The Ducks lost their seventh game in a row while the Canucks are now 8-1-1 on home ice. The Canucks return to second in the West and Brock Boeser takes a two goal lead in the NHL scoring race with 17 on the season.
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Trade Report
The Vancouver Canucks made two significant trades this week.
The first trade came on November 28th when the Canucks traded winger Anthony Beauvillier to Chicago in exchange for a conditional 2024 Chicago 5th-round pick. The condition is that the Canucks will receive the best of the 5th-round picks that Chicago owns. It’s worth noting that currently Chacago only owns their one solitary pick in this round.
The team’s next trade is closely linked to the moves from their first trade of the week, as two days later Vancouver sent their new conditional 5th-round pick to Calgary, in addition to a 2026 3rd-round pick, in exchange for Nikita Zadorov.
Now that the dust has settled, both transactions can be boiled down to this. It cost the Canucks Beauvillier and a 2026 3rd round pick for Nikita Zadorov. Beauvillier played only 55 games as a Canuck, being acquired during the Bo Horvat trade last season. In this time the 26-year-old notched 28 points, with just two goals and 6 assists to start this season.
The Canucks recent addition, Zadorov, has been a reliable third-line defender on an otherwise unreliable Calgary Flames team. The Canucks have slotted him in with Tyler Myers, relegating Mark Friedman out of the line-up for now.
The Zadorov move comes via the Canucks’ continued efforts to improve their defensive game. Management clearly has faith in a Beauvillier-less forward group and feels that they can chip away at the edges a bit to cash in on a new defensive piece. All eyes will be on Zadorov over the coming weeks, as his immediate performance will dictate how worthwhile both these trades were for the Canucks.
Game 24: November 30th vs. The Vegas Golden Knights
The Canucks got a chance to face off against the Pacific-leading Vegas Golden Knights for the first time this season. If all goes well the for the Canucks, this is a team that they could be playing very important games against moving forward, making this match-up an important first game between the two.
The first period started with Vegas controlling the bulk of the chances. The Canucks looked lost in their zone on multiple occasions early on, and the first goal of the game fittingly went to Vegas off of the back of a mad scramble deep in the Canucks end, which saw Demko lose his stick in the confusion.
Halfway through the opening frame, the Canucks had developed more chances for themselves, and despite two power plays that went uncapitalized, Vancouver appeared to be more of a threat to Vegas than they did during the initial puck drop.
Unfortunately for the home team, a second Vegas goal came with just a few minutes to go in the first period. A slightly unorthodox Vegas entry saw Mark Stone lose the puck in his feet during a centering pass that still ended up turning into a good scoring chance for Vegas as Jack Eichel put his team up 2-0.
The Canucks developed the bulk of the chances during the first half of the second period. They showed impressive control of the puck in Vegas’ end, but simply could not catch the same type of puck luck that the visiting team was able to capitalize on during the first period.
Unfortunately for the Canucks, Vegas got their names on the score sheet next as William Karlsson made the most of the team’s only power play during the second frame, caused by a Tyler Myers hold, with a quick wrister that put his team up 3-0 with less than half of the game to play.
This third goal didn’t seem to deflate the Canucks during the rest of the second period as they still developed a considerable amount of chances during the remaining minutes of the frame. One of which included a promising Hoglander break-in and snapshot. Yet again, Vancouver ended the period scoreless.
Vancouver saw a final streak of bad luck early in the third as an Alex Pietrangelo shot from the point deflected off Vegas’ Brett Howden and somehow found its way past Demko to put Vegas up by four goals.
Vancouver’s first goal finally came in the form of a Miller and Kuzmenko break-in, which saw Kuzmenko net a much-needed goal.
The Canucks however needed much more than just one goal to come back into this game, and despite a few more chances towards the end of the period Vegas’ 45 shots to Vancouver’s 22 told the final story in the end. Although Vancouver had several opportunities, the team with the most chances ended up running away with it.
Game 25: December 2nd vs. The Calgary Flames
Nikita Zadorov didn’t have to travel far from home to play his first game with the Vancouver Canucks. The Canucks came to Calgary to play the Flames for the second time this season. All eyes were on the new 6’6 defender and his even taller partner Tyler Myers. People were quick to point out that the pairing was 13’2 if you stacked them on each other, which is a useless stat in reality, but for me personally, I love it.
In classic Jacob Markstrom fashion, he let in the first shot of the game. Quinn Hughes scored his ninth goal, breaking his career high of eight in a season. Quinn broke his personal best in only 25 games, versus the 68 it took to get to his record. Quinn said he wanted to shoot more, and he wasn’t kidding. Right now, Hughes is on pace for 30 goals and 112 points. That is absolutely absurd.
Sam Lafferty was back on the top line with Pettersson and Mikheyev and he made quick work of capitalizing on the opportunity. Lafferty put away his sixth of the season after smacking home a rebound from Filip Hronek. Lafferty is looking more and more like a smart acquisition every day. He is fast, strong, can score and can play with the Canucks’ best players, and all that just for a fifth.
The period ended 2-1 however, thanks to a powerplay goal off the stick of Mikael Backlund. Backlund snuck off the wall when no Canucks defender had eyes on him and sneakily floated to the front of the net to finish up a strong passing play. The first period ended with the Canucks edging out the Flames in most fancy stats, but the game was indeed a close one.
The second period continued the theme of an exciting game at both ends of the ice. Only one goal was scored in the middle frame, and that goal was scored by Ilya Mikheyev. The lone tally came in the last 30 seconds of the period when Mikheyev scored another ugly goal for the Canucks, marking his eighth of the year, which amazingly is only fifth on the team in goals.
Elias Lindholm brought the game within one with an even-strength goal just over four minutes left in the third period. But the Canucks didn’t like their cushion being taken away, so Zadorov earned some trust from his new teammates and scored with 1:20 remaining in the game to re-establish a two-goal lead. However, it would be ruled later that Pettersson touched the puck ever so gently, so the goal became his instead. Either way, with 1:20 left in the game it was firmly put out of reach for the Flames right? … Right?
Wrong, the drama didn’t end there. With under a minute left and a 6-on-4 advantage, the Flames scored again to be within one. Lindholm scored again from the side of the net to make Canucks fans everywhere pucker a little bit. We’ve seen this movie before, we can’t lose, right? We have done that enough, we get to win right? Right. The Canucks hung on and won the game 4-3 and took a very important two points from the Flames to further separate themselves from the wildcard teams.
