Heading into tonight, it was all about Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s NHL debut. The 20-year-old turned in a strong opening shift where he skated the puck out of the Canucks’ zone and made a nifty move in the neutral zone to turn the play into an odd-man rush for the Canucks before executing a give and go that Lekkerimäki couldn’t quite negotiate on the return feed.
So far, so good.
The Canucks’ opening frame was a mixed bag. They got some good looks on Dan Vladar, outshot the Flames, and for the most part, controlled play. They also needed to be bailed out by Kevin Lankinen a few times, which wasn’t the best start for a team that just got criticized by their coach for not starting on time.
There was also a JT Miller injury scare (father of three) who appeared to take a puck where the sun don’t shine.
Thankfully, Miller was okay.
We’ve all been there.
And as we could have expected, the Flames opened the scoring in this one. For the eighth game in a row, the Canucks had to play from behind.
The Canucks started the second period with a power play after Elias Pettersson drew a penalty in the dying moments of the first.
So it was fitting that it was Pettersson who created a Flames turnover with his work on the forecheck before going to the front of the net and redirecting a hard JT Miller pass to tie this one up just seconds into the period.
Teddy Blueger found himself on a breakaway right after, and then the Miller line turned in a very strong shift that ended with Pius Suter scoring his team-leading sixth goal of the year. And no, you didn’t misread that.
2-1 Canucks early in the second.
Later in the period, Vinny Desharnais had his second career goal waved off after Danton Heinen was penalized for slashing on the play.
#JusticeForVinny
The Canucks killed that one off and got a power play of their own, which gave us our first look at Jonathan Lekkerimäki on the Canucks’ first power play unit. Lekkerimäki got the Canucks’ best chance of the two minute sequence and oh man, that shot looks dangerous.
That’s one takeaway I certainly have from tonight: Lekkerimäki’s raw tools and baseline game look like he’s either NHL-ready or at least extremely close to being NHL-ready. Tonight was just game one, but it was a solid NHL debut for the youngster.
Lekkerimäki had another prime chance to score his first career goal early in the third when JT Miller hit him with a backhand pass that was just out of his reach.
Erik Brännström scored the first goal of his Canucks career after Elias Pettersson found him with a pass to give Brännström his second point of the night after a great shot from the point.
3-1 Canucks.
Andrei Kuzmenko took a late penalty after getting mixed up with Conor Garland near the benches. Not a sentence I thought I would ever be writing. They didn’t score, but the power play did manage to get set up and get some good looks off, which means that the club’s power play is improving.
The Flames pulled their goalie late, but the Canucks held down the fort and secured their second home-ice win of the season by a final score of 3-1.
Some other takeaways from tonight:
-That’s back-to-back two-point games for Elias Pettersson, and while it’s nice he’s getting the points, the more important thing is that he’s played his best hockey of the season over the past three or four games. He’s slowly but surely looking like the player we’ve all seen that he can be. Now it’s about consistency. Personally, you won’t find me declaring that Pettersson is “back” until I’ve seen this type of game from him for about 50 more games.
-A solid NHL debut from Jonathan Lekkerimäki. He got some chances and could have scored tonight for sure. Only a matter of time. I also really liked the idea of putting him onto PP1 and hope the team doesn’t go away from that.
-I know nobody was really worried about Kevin Lankinen, but it was good to see him immediately bounce back after being pulled after the Oilers’ seventh goal on Saturday night. A good night for him.
-Two points for Erik Brännström tonight, which was fitting and deserved because he was great tonight both offensively and defensively.
-A career-high 14 faceoff wins for Elias Pettersson tonight. WHAT A SUPERSTAR! RIGHT COMMENTERS?!
What are your thoughts on tonight’s game?
