VANCOUVER, B.C. — Coming off of one of their worst performances of the Rick Tocchet era Thursday night, the Vancouver Canucks didn’t offer up much of a response Saturday night at Rogers Arena.
Thankfully for the Canucks, the Chicago Blackhawks offer such little resistance that it hardly mattered in a 4-1 Vancouver rout that wasn’t nearly as convincing as the scoreline suggests.
So what if almost no Vancouver players were on the right side of the puck throughout the first period? Who cares if the club’s defensive play harked back to the lows of the Bruce Boudreau era? What does it matter that the club needed a fortunate deflection off of a defender’s skates to get on the board?
Saturday night, none of that mattered at all.
As sloppy and apparently disinterested and porous defensively as Vancouver looked for large sections of Saturday night’s victory, by the middle part of the second the Canucks were firmly in control. Undisciplined penalties by the likes of Wyatt Kaiser helped Vancouver get back into the game, and preposterously unserious shifts like an absolute doozy from Tyler Bertuzzi further sapped Chicago’s efforts to build any momentum.
And so the Canucks were able to get back in the win column, in just about the least inspiring way possible. It was a result that told us far more about the appalling state of the Blackhawks than it did about the focus or quality of this Canucks team.
Here are three takeaways from an unsightly night of hockey at Rogers Arena on Saturday night.
Blackhawks star Connor Bedard made his debut NHL performance at Rogers Arena.
Bedard, who hails from North Vancouver, isn’t just a Vancouver-born prodigy. He grew up a die-hard Canucks fan, the sort of teenage hockey fan who had takes on Tyler Motte and admired him greatly for his contributions during the 2020 bubble playoffs.
This was a special night for Bedard and his family and many friends in attendance at Rogers Arena on Saturday night, and it’s too bad his teammates couldn’t offer up more resistance against a Vancouver team that was ripe to be defeated, frankly, based on their focus level.
In truth, however, as poor as Bedard’s team circumstances are at the moment, it was a quiet game for the Lynn Valley-born super sniper. The signature moment came in the final minutes when Bedard whiffed on a dump in an attempt with the Chicago net empty and was dumped unceremoniously by J.T. Miller, who then calmly deposited the puck into the Chicago net to ice the game 3-1.
Even when the offence hasn’t been there for Bedard this season, he’s typically helped the Blackhawks win his minutes at five-on-five — a remarkable achievement given his surroundings. That wasn’t the case Saturday, however, and truthfully, Bedard was more impactful in the first meeting between these two sides in October than he was in his debut performance in his hometown.
Regardless of how Saturday night went from a micro perspective for Bedard, he remains the standard bearer of a golden generation of Vancouver-born hockey prospects. To have him play live at the NHL level in this city is a moment we have to take stock of and note prominently.
Brannstrom getting ahead of the “not physical enough” narrative ASAP after that first Hawks goal pic.twitter.com/JcLufdjwZf
— Wyatt Arndt (@TheStanchion) November 17, 2024
Even before Erik Brännström scored the game-winning goal in the third period, Vancouver’s depth puck-moving ace was having himself a tremendous day at the office.
Physically assertive, dynamic off of the rush and sharp with the puck — a rare commodity Saturday night — Brännström had another standout performance for the Canucks against Chicago. We’ve reached the point where it’s difficult to imagine where this team might be without the veteran Swedish blue liner, who was acquired as a salary-cap throw-in before the beginning of the campaign.
Solid all night long, in the third period it was Brännström with the heads-up play to one-time a puck that fluttered to him off of the hand wall after Kiefer Sherwood flipped it through the Blackhawks crease. It was one of those slap shots with eyes, and it eluded Arvid Soderblom and found the back of the net.
The Canucks had been pressing before Brännström’s goal, their victory feeling inevitable, but hadn’t generated an overwhelming volume of quality scoring chances. And Soderblom had been up to the task throughout the evening.
Brännström stepped into one at exactly the right moment, which is fitting, given that ever since he arrived in Vancouver, Brännström has looked and performed like the right fit at the right time on the right team.
This was an important game for Artūrs Šilovs.
The young netminder came into the season as Vancouver’s presumptive starter in Thatcher Dekmo’s indefinite absence, and almost immediately was supplanted for that role by Kevin Lankinen. Now with Demko’s return seemingly imminent based on his increased practice participation this week, Šilovs is facing an uphill climb to even remain in the NHL.
Given his waiver-exempt status and the way this club has prioritized tolling cap space this season, it seems like a foregone conclusion that Šilovs will end up back in the American League in relatively short order. That might be baked in regardless of how Šilovs performs in whatever NHL opportunities he’s able to carve out over the next couple of weeks.
Nonetheless, it matters that Šilovs performs well. We’ve never seen an NHL player, much less a goaltender, suffer the injury Demko is rehabbing from. As Demko looks to return to performance, not just play, we have no historical comps that would indicate what performance impacts we should expect, what sort of workload Demko can hold down and whether he’ll be working through an elevated reinjury risk in the weeks and months ahead.
Vancouver, frankly, is going to need as much reliable goaltending depth as it can get. And Šilovs is an essential ingredient in that recipe.
Saturday night, Šilovs was sharp. The Blackhawks aren’t exactly an offensive powerhouse at the moment, but Šilovs nonetheless navigated layered traffic ably, stopped several high-quality Blackhawks scoring chances from in tight, and arguably kept the Canucks close during their many defensive lapses in the opening 20 minutes of the game.
It was Šilovs’ first quality start of the season, and it was one the club sorely required.
(Photo: Derek Cain / Getty Images)
