It was almost a moment out of a sports movie.
Down by a goal in the dying seconds, the plucky underdog Vancouver Canucks came up with a miraculous goal to beat the buzzer, scored by none other than the much-maligned Brock Boeser, emerging from the drama and recriminations of recent weeks to be the hero once more.
Only, the plucky underdogs tend to go on to win the game, unless it’s some sort of sports drama where learning some sort of lesson about the human spirit outweighs the catharsis of victory. Ugh.
Still, Boeser’s brilliant goal with 3.9 seconds left against the St. Louis Blues on Thursday deserves a closer look. It deserves to be broken down and analyzed. It deserves a Breakdowning.
Let's get started.
Justin Faulk makes a careless error
I typically kick off a Breakdowning with a roll call of who’s on the ice for the play in question, but on this particular goal, we have to go back to the previous play.
Let’s just take a moment to look at Justin Faulk with the puck here. He’s the Blues’ top defenceman with Colton Parayko out, a 33-year-old veteran with plenty of poise, who has played in a lot of big games in his career.
He’s got the puck with no Canuck anywhere near him. He’s got two obvious options for an outlet pass or he could skate the puck up ice himself, taking advantage of the acres of space ahead of him.
Alternately, since Kevin Lankinen is on the bench for the extra attacker, Faulk could be ambitious and shoot for the empty net to seal the game away. But since an icing would bring the faceoff back into the Blues’ zone, it seems obvious that he’ll just make the safe play. Right?
Somehow, with all that time and space, Faulk launches the puck into the Canucks’ bench. I hadn’t even considered that as an option.
It’s a stunning lapse in judgement that leads to everything that happened next.
Canucks call timeout to set up completely irrelevant play
With 17.5 seconds remaining — adjusted to 18.3 seconds after the officials determined that precisely 0.8 seconds had come off the clock after the puck went out of play — the Canucks called a timeout to give their top players a breather and let Yogi Svejkovsky draw up a play.
It’s a hilarious moment to me because everything completely fell apart after the faceoff and the Canucks had to improvise, so whatever play Svejkovsky was drawing up ended up being completely irrelevant.
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe what Svejkovsky drew up was exactly how it played out, like Bill Hader writing a letter to his sister detailing exactly how everyone would get shot in a Lonely Island sketch.
In all honesty, part of what they would discuss is what would happen after a lost faceoff and the Canucks actually played that moment pretty well before things fell apart.
Roll call for the offensive zone faceoff
Okay, let’s get to the roll call.
The Blues have two centres on the ice for faceoff insurance: Robert Thomas and Brayden Schenn. They have their two veteran defencemen, Justin Faulk and Ryan Suter, as well as winger Pavel Buchnevich.
The Canucks have Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Conor Garland, and Jake DeBrusk at forward, with Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek on defence.
The Blues had the Canucks’ number in the faceoff circle in this game, as can be seen by the foreshadowing numbers in the top left corner, but Pettersson had been the Canucks’ best faceoff man on the night and had split his faceoffs 50-50 with Thomas at this point. It was a coin flip.
Meanwhile, the Blues also had Fist Guy — no relation to Kit Fisto — in the stands, blocking out part of the ice thanks to the terrible broadcast angle in St. Louis.
Consequences of a lost faceoff
Pettersson loses the faceoff to Thomas, who draws the puck cleanly back to Faulk.
Once again, Faulk has a chance to make a play to end the game, but Boeser bursts between Thomas and Schenn to put pressure on Faulk immediately, while DeBrusk pushes past Suter to create a double team on Faulk.
This is where it would have been nice for Faulk to have the option to reverse the puck behind the net but there’s no one there. Understandably, the Blues had to prepare for the possibility of Pettersson winning the faceoff, so Schenn is heading toward Hronek, while Buchnevich bears down on Hughes, intent on making sure that the Canucks captain has no impact whatsoever on the play.
That does not go well for him, but more on that later.
Boeser’s pressure on his back forces Faulk to go into the boards, where DeBrusk knocks the puck off his stick.
That forces the puck into the corner for a battle, while Garland darts to the front of the net, desperately hoping that DeBrusk can get the puck and swing it out front, because boy oh boy, is he ever open.
Either that or he was singing Sabrina Carpenter to himself.
DeBrusk wins the puck off Faulk. It comes free to Pettersson but he’s immediately checked by Thomas.
Pettersson has few options here. Hronek is being marked by Schenn, so going up the boards could easily result in a turnover. Going down the boards to Boeser could just lead to the puck being tied up along the boards by Faulk. Kicking it out to Garland would be a good option, as he’s open, but Thomas is in that lane.
That leaves a pass to the point to Hughes but Buchnevich is ready and waiting to disrupt the play.
What can’t be seen is that Hughes had started sneaking up the right side of the ice behind Buchnevich’s back. He was hoping for either a cross-ice pass from Pettersson or for Garland to relay the puck to him for a scoring chance.
That meant Hughes wasn’t in the middle of the ice where Pettersson sent the pass and it came outside the blue line. On the plus side, it was out of the reach of Buchnevich, so it wasn’t a turnover, allowing Hughes to collect the puck in the neutral zone and regroup.
Hughes is good at hockey
With exactly ten seconds left on the clock, Hughes has the puck at centre ice, right on the red line.
The Canucks have to tag up and the Blues are all back in a strong defensive position, so the Canucks are in some serious trouble.
Boeser beats feet to the blue line, getting as far to the right as possible in hopes of spreading the Blues’ defence. This works out very, very well for him.
Garland presents a passing option for Hughes, probably saying, “Feed me the rock,” because he likes sports and doesn’t care who knows.
Buchnevich confidently rushes toward Hughes, thinking he can force a turnover and maybe even get a chance at the empty net. What he doesn’t know is that he’s falling right into Hughes’ trap.
A moment ago, Buchnevich had Hughes in his crosshairs and the Canucks captain was completely contained. Two seconds later, Buchnevich is behind Hughes, who suddenly has a whole bunch of space in the neutral zone.
How?
That’s how.
We never got a perfect replay of Hughes’ dangles on the broadcast but Hughes sends Buchnevich into another dimension with a quick fake to the backhand, then puts the puck through Garland’s legs into open space.
As a result, every Blues player on the ice is suddenly fully focused on Hughes and the puck, including the two players who really ought to have been keeping an eye on Boeser: Suter and Thomas.
Caught puck-watching and a brilliant pass
Hughes moves the puck to Pettersson at the Blues’ blue line.
I know it’s hard to see Pettersson and the puck because of the low broadcast angle and all of the Blues fans standing up but it’s not too hard to figure out where they are: they’re where every single Blues player on the ice is staring.
That leaves Boeser on the opposite side of the ice with the most space any hockey player has ever had in the history of the game.
It’s not just Boeser either. As the Blues all overload to the one side, DeBrusk and Garland reload and are also heading up the right wing. Just look at this screenshot from the NHL’s goal visualizer with all five Blues skaters on the one side of the centre ice dot.
Pettersson, with all eyes on him, threads a cross-ice pass through to Boeser and I do mean threads, as he fired the pass through Faulk’s legs.
For some reason, the Blues fan with his arms crossed behind Pettersson makes me laugh. That guy was very grumpy about this entire situation, even before Boeser scored.
Maybe that guy doesn't actually like hockey. Someone forced him to put on that Blues hoodie and to sit in a seat on the glass.
Boeser’s perfect shot
Boeser takes one touch of the puck to settle it and place it perfectly in front of him so he can skate into a slap shot. That gives the Blues just enough time to think about the choices they made that led up to this point.
Suter bears a big share of the blame, as it made no sense for him to come so far across the ice with Faulk already containing Pettersson.
Faulk deserves some blame, not only because he didn’t block the Pettersson pass but because it was his poor clearance that led to the offensive zone faceoff in the first place.
Buchnevich got deked out of his hockey pants by Hughes but at least he kept Hughes from scoring, so he’s got that going for him.
Then there’s Jordan Binnington, who had to stare down a Brock Boeser slap shot and try to read where it was going. Boeser had already beaten him past the blocker earlier in the game with a wrist shot, so perhaps that was weighing on his mind as he cheated to the blocker side.
Boeser did not go blocker side.
That’s a laser beam past Binnington’s glove arm on the short side. It beats Binnington completely cleanly, with no deflection off Suter’s stick. It’s just a great shot.
Let’s just take a moment to appreciate Boeser’s form on this shot.
If the NHL ever wanted to make a logo similar to the NBA’s silhouette of Jerry West, they could use this image of Boeser’s follow-through on this shot.
I’m just saying, it kind of works.
Cue the celebration.
That is the most emotion Filip Hronek has ever shown. I didn’t know he could do that.
For now, let’s just ignore everything that happened after this goal, because this was a special moment.
These moments are what sports is all about: elite athletes doing things that seem impossible, creating a brief period of time where everything outside of that moment disappears and it feels like anything could happen.
In that moment, the Canucks suddenly felt unstoppable. If they can score a goal like this, when it felt like all of the odds were stacked against them, what can’t they do?
These moments can be fleeting, which is why it’s so important to grasp hold of them when you can. Treasure them and cherish them, because they won’t last forever.
