The Colorado Avalanche were coming off back-to-back shutouts; Thatcher Demko and the Vancouver Canucks handed them an UNO reverse card.
Along the way, the Avalanche completely lost their cool, with rookie defenceman Elias "Just Pete" Pettersson in the middle of it all.
The 20-year-old had a remarkable game considering it was only his fourth in the NHL. Sure, he played under 14 minutes and was pretty heavily sheltered — he wasn’t on the ice for a single defensive zone faceoff and he was kept as far away from Nathan MacKinnon as possible — but he had an out-sized impact, frequently literal with his game-high four hits.
The young Pettersson kicked off the biggest meltdown for the Avalanche, as he got under the skin of Avalanche tough guy Miles Wood. When Logan O’Connor kicked the feet out from under Conor Garland in a battle, Pettersson stepped up to give O’Connor a couple of shoves — not enough to get a penalty but enough to let O’Connor know that he shouldn’t do that again.
Wood took offence and went after Pettersson, breaking his stick on his arm with a crosscheck. Pettersson kept his cool and showed no fear in the face of Wood’s fury, even when Wood dropped the gloves and tried to goad the rookie into a fight. As a result, he earned the Canucks a power play.
That’s impressive poise from Pettersson and it led to the Canucks taking a 2-0 lead in the third period.
“He plays with no fear out there,” said Marcus Pettersson. “You can see how good of an athlete he is: he can skate, he’s strong, he made a couple of huge hits tonight and he’s fearless…The poise he has, it’s awesome to see in heated situations. To see a young guy like that not get flustered under pressure, it’s really fun to see.”
Pettersson (#25) threw a huge hit later in the period on O’Connor and you have to wonder how much of a role that played in Colorado losing their composure.
Shortly after Pettersson’s big hit, Nils Höglander drove up the left wing and drew a penalty on Wood, putting him on tilt like an amateur poker player after a bad beat. Linus Karlsson got in Wood’s ear after the whistle and the winger responded with a spear to Karlsson’s groin.
That led to a brouhaha, with Ross Colton following Wood’s example by blowing his top, dropping the gloves to give Tyler Myers some punches, while Myers tried to hold him at arm’s length with his gloves still on.
The fracas led to a four-minute power play that ate up more than half of the remaining time in the game, forestalling any attempt at an Avalanche comeback.
By the end of it all, Wood was dinged for six straight penalties: an earlier fight with Derek Forbort, crosschecking and roughing on Pettersson, holding on Höglander, slashing on Karlsson, and a ten-minute misconduct.
It was remarkably refreshing to see the Canucks cause another team to melt down rather than the other way around. And the young Pettersson deserves a lot of credit for helping that meltdown along.
I saw a lot of reasons to keep Pettersson in the NHL when I watched this game.
- The Canucks have been bringing Pettersson (#25) along slowly, easing him into more minutes and tougher situations. So far, he’s handled whatever has been thrown at him and looks like he belongs in the lineup, but it’s worth keeping in mind how sheltered he’s been before anointing him as the next Alex Edler.
- “I think young defencemen, you want to cocoon them a little bit,” said Tocchet. “You want to make sure you get them in some good situations. The D are the last line of defence; then, when you make a mistake, the spotlight is on them. So, we really wanted to kind of guard him a little bit. But now that he’s taken small little bites, we’ve got to give him more.”
- Thatcher Demko was full value for the shutout, as he had his best performance of the season, including some vintage Demko robbery. But, as is often the case with shutouts, he had a little help from his best friends, the goalposts. The Avalanche hit three posts in the first period, any one of which could have changed the course of the game.
- Here’s the thing: Demko actually made the save on one of those posts. Nathan MacKinnon caught Tyler Myers flat-footed and burst away 2-on-1 with Martin Necas. The two speed demons bore down on Marcus Pettersson and MacKinnon set up Necas for what looked like a wide-open net, only for Necas to hit the post. Only, if you slow it down, you can see that Demko actually gets a piece of the puck with his glove. It was an incredible save that no one noticed.
- As further evidence that it was a save, the NHL with their fancy puck-tracking technology called Necas’s attempt on the 2-on-1 a shot on goal and credited Demko with the save. Shots that hit the post are labeled as misses.
- “Demmer made some unreal saves,” said Brock Boeser. “I’m so happy for him. He works so hard. He does everything the right way, he’s such a good pro. For him to get a shutout tonight, just as one of his good friends, it’s awesome to see.”
- Demko’s first-period performance gave the Canucks a chance to settle into the game and they took over in the second and third periods. It also helped that Tocchet shook up the lines in the second. I know that Jake DeBrusk, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser are the team’s top three forwards but that doesn’t mean they should be on a line together. DeBrusk is the fastest player on that line, which is like saying Bandobras “Bullroarer” Took is the tallest hobbit; it may be true but he’s still not, strictly speaking, tall.
- Tocchet put Drew O’Connor and Filip Chytil with Boeser and it made an immediate impact, as the two speedsters created so much room for the slower Boeser. Then he put DeBrusk and Pettersson with Conor Garland and that trio looked better too. Who knew that adding a little bit of speed and pace could make such a difference?
- “I don’t want to overstate it but I think Chytil and Drew O’Connor, the speed and their willingness to take the puck to the middle on the rush is a little breath of fresh air,” said Tocchet. “Just adding those two guys has helped our rush game. You can see me and Yogi [Svejkovsky], we’re smiling because that’s the stuff we need, right?”
- “Those guys are fast, fast on the ice,” said Boeser with a smile, “so I’m trying to keep up.”
- The new Pettersson line opened the scoring in the second period, though it was Filip Hronek doing most of the work. Hronek made a strong play on the boards to win the puck from Juuso Parssinen, then jumped up to lead the rush down the right wing. Hronek fired a low pass looking for a low rebound to go to Pettersson or Garland but the puck popped into the air instead. DeBrusk went up for the jump ball and came down with it, dropping the puck at the top of the crease and swatting it in.
- “I grabbed it and just dropped it,” said DeBrusk. “I don’t even think you’re allowed to do that, to be honest. I tried to kind of hide it. It was kind of a quick play where I just kind of did whatever. It worked.”
- Hronek was absolutely fantastic in this game, picking up two assists while dominating his minutes at even-strength and firing nine shot attempts — tied with Boeser for the team lead. The Canucks needed him to step up in the absence of Quinn Hughes and, like Julio in Paperboy, Hronek delivered.
- The nice thing is that Hronek didn’t have to be the only defenceman moving the puck, as the Canucks actually had a puck-mover on every pairing. That’s been the most encouraging element of the rookie Pettersson’s game: he’s smooth with it. I would say that he breaks the puck out like a veteran but a whole bunch of the veteran defencemen we’ve seen on the Canucks this season are terrible at breakouts, so that would not be a compliment.
- “Both Petterssons back there — good first pass, transporting the puck,” said Tocchet. “That’s where you get the flow going.”
- Pettersson indirectly helped Demko earn his shutout with his defending and transition game but he also directly helped him by saving a goal. Midway through the second period, there was a wild sequence in the Canucks’ end, starting with a grade-A chance from the high slot for Cale Makar. Demko got his glove on it but the puck spilled out to the side. Before Makar could fire the puck in, Pettersson dove out to poke it away.
- “I like Pete,” said Demko. “He’s a guy that wants to do everything the right way. He’s young but his attention to detail is great. And I’ve enjoyed having him around as a guy too.” He grinned and added, “Obviously, we have a lot of Swedish guys, so we’re getting used to the culture and the type of guys that those guys are.”
- Later in the same sequence, Demko came up with his biggest save of the night. MacKinnon rotated around to the top of the left faceoff circle, then sent a cross-seam pass to Artturi Lehkonen, who is the Avalanche’s leading goalscorer thanks precisely to passes like that. But that’s when Demko said to himself, “Hang on a second…I’m Thatcher Demko!” and lunged sideways for a brilliant glove save.
- “Just trying to get a piece of something, you know?” said Demko. “That’s a big sequence there, a lot of bodies flying around and a couple of scoring chances. I thought the guys collapsed really well, kind of managed the guts of the ice. We’ve gotta get through those situations as a six-man unit and on that one, we were able to.”
- There was a huge “Thatcher Demko” chant throughout the building in the TV timeout that followed that sequence of saves and it felt like Canucks fans formally welcoming the real Demko back into the lineup. That was the Demko that fans have grown used to seeing in recent seasons.
- “Luckily there was a TV timeout, so I was just trying to catch my breath,” said Demko with a chuckle. “It’s great to hear [the chants]. I know it’s later in the year, but we’re trying to establish that home ice. We take a lot of pride playing here and we’ve struggled at times this year stringing games together but I don’t want [the fans] to feel for a single second that we don’t take pride and that we’re not aware of the impact they have on the game.”
- The Canucks’ power play went 1-for-6, which is less than ideal, but at least that one goal was the insurance marker that gave them some breathing room. Hronek collected the puck behind his own net, while DeBrusk and Boeser stayed up ice, trying to blend in with the Colorado blue line with their blue jerseys. It seemed to work, as the penalty killers got caught too high in the neutral zone by a Hronek stretch pass to DeBrusk, who flipped a lovely saucer pass to Boeser driving to the backdoor and he chipped it past Blackwood to make it 2-0.
- “We talked about it before the game and we wanted to look for it at some point tonight,” said Boeser of the play that led to his goal. “It just took — I don’t know what power play — the third power play to execute that. Jake made a nice pass.”
- After Wood went haywire and gave the Canucks a four-minute power play, Pettersson (#40) drew a hooking penalty on Makar to make it a 5-on-3. It was an ideal situation to put the game away and Tocchet called timeout to get everyone on the same page. To top it off, Parker Kelly broke his stick on the subsequent faceoff and bolted to the bench for a new twig, giving the Canucks a brief 5-on-2, only for Boeser to whiff on a pass and give the puck away.
- The Canucks didn’t get a single shot on the two-minute 5-on-3. It was such a bizarrely disheartening sequence that it was easy to forget that the Canucks were up 2-0 and 30 shots on goal, which is probably by one fan screamed, loudly enough that it was audible on the broadcast, “Shoot the ****ing puck!”
- “I think we had three shots from the middle,” said Tocchet. “Those are middle shots and we miss the net there. A down-low play, we rushed it. I think if there’s some poise there, if you just kind of relax a little bit, I think we were a little tight.”
- The Canucks eventually sealed the game with a third goal but it took the Avalanche pulling Blackwood for the extra attacker. A centring pass deflected out to O’Connor and he calmly accelerated past Makar out into the neutral zone and backhanded the puck into the middle of the net for his first as a Canuck.
- “O’Connor gets it standing still, most guys just throw it out and might ice the puck,” said Tocchet. “He skates it and gets the empty net. That’s a big play because he can skate.”
- There were flaws in this game but it was also one of the most entertaining games the Canucks have played all season. They were breaking the puck out cleanly, attacking the middle of the ice, and creating scoring chances while limiting the Avalanche to a bare handful of dangerous chances, with Demko there to take those chances away. Combine that with players standing up for each other and acting like a real team, all in the absence of Hughes, and this was a very encouraging performance.
