Now that’s what holding the fort looks like.
In a gritty 2-0 victory over the Boston Bruins at the TD Garden on Tuesday night, the Vancouver Canucks generated very little offensively, but got the goal they needed — from an ex-Bruin no less — and an empty netter on top of it to secure a 2-0-0 start to their East Coast swing. It wasn’t a pretty or appealing effort, but when you’re as shorthanded as Vancouver is at the moment, style points don’t matter.
What matters is the Canucks held off a Bruins team that controlled play by a wide margin, but was largely held to the perimeter and generated few especially dangerous scoring chances aside from a Justin Brazeau miss from in tight in the first period, a David Pastrnak breakaway opportunity and ensuing scramble early in the second frame, and an Elias Lindholm chance at six-on-five that almost surely would’ve been called off for goaltender interference if it had found its way past Kevin Lankinen to Vancouver’s net. While Vancouver’s possession and offensive game lacked venom on Tuesday night, their defensive effort was robust. Stellar. Suffocating.
It’s that solidity that has allowed Vancouver to get this crucial road trip off to a winning start. With their backs up against the wall coming off a dismal six-game homestand and absent some key contributors in the lineup, Rick Tocchet’s Canucks have found a way to grind out wins by finding their lockdown DNA again.
Lankinen was sharp when he needed to be and turned away a flurry of deeply hopeful Bruins shots from the perimeter to secure his 10th win and second shutout of the season, but make no mistake — this wasn’t one of those games where the goaltender had to steal one or in which the puck bounced Vancouver’s way. This was a vacant offensive performance, sure, but also a nearly immaculate defensive effort against a Bruins side struggling mightily to manufacture chances to get themselves back into the game.
Here’s three takeaways from Vancouver’s crucial win in Boston.
Jake DeBrusk’s triumphant Boston return
There was a “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” feel to Vancouver’s tilt with the Bruins on Tuesday night.
In one corner, Vancouver rode into Boston with a couple of evil ex-Bruins in DeBrusk and Danton Heinen in tow. The Bruins, meanwhile, answered with two ex-Canucks in Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov, both of whom played massive parts of Vancouver’s playoff run last spring.
And at the end of the night, it was DeBrusk who left town with the game-winning goal on his ledger and new linemates Elias Pettersson and Kiefer Sherwood spontaneously mobbing him on the bench as Conor Garland iced the contest with a late empty-net goal.
DeBrusk, apparently, is saving his goals for the road. The Canucks forward has now scored in five consecutive road contests, and somehow all six of his goals on the season have come during that streak. His goal on Tuesday night was the result of a fortunate bounce, as the puck effectively bounced into the blue paint on the rebound and right onto his stick, but to DeBrusk’s credit, he won his positional battle cleanly and showed a goal-scorer’s calm in directing the puck past Jeremy Swayman on the backhand.
Jake DeBrusk – Vancouver Canucks (6)
Power Play Goal pic.twitter.com/loJb4XzGKK— NHL Goal Videos (@NHLGoalVideos) November 27, 2024
The new-look defense pairs
We may never actually get a proper look at Erik Brännström in a top-four role.
For a second consecutive game, Brännström opened the contest on an ostensible second pair with Tyler Myers. And for a second consecutive game, the game script was so strange that Vancouver didn’t end up deploying their defenders in a predictable or repeatable fashion.
On Saturday night in Ottawa, Vancouver’s plans on the blue line were quickly scrapped when Quinn Hughes was assessed a game misconduct. On Tuesday night in Boston, the game was so low-event, so tight-checking, and Vancouver was so intent on nursing a narrow lead that Brännström ended up playing just over 12 minutes at five-on-five — the lowest minutes of any Canucks defender.
With Vancouver prioritizing their defensive solidity, Noah Juulsen played top-four minutes and interestingly logged more minutes than Carson Soucy — even with Soucy getting a couple of even-strength shifts on a pair with Hughes.
We still haven’t really seen what Vancouver’s plans on the blue line look like in a neutral game script, but their deployment on Tuesday suggests the new-look may be more about getting Soucy into a groove — or protecting his minutes more scrupulously — than it is about doling out additional opportunity to Brännström.
That most Hughes stat of the season
The ice was tilted toward the Vancouver goal mouth in Boston.
Vancouver might have played a solid defensive game — blocking a ton of shots and successfully denying the Bruins entry to the hard areas of the ice — but Boston dominated the run of play. The game was played in Vancouver’s end of the rink, as the Canucks appeared to pass on even trying to generate offensive zone pressure, content to defend their narrow lead.
By the end of the night the Bruins had registered 25 shots on 57 shot attempts at five-on-five, to just 12 shots on goal for Vancouver on a measly 23 shot attempts. Those figures are as slanted as anything you’re likely to see in a Canucks game all season.
And yet somehow, despite that game environment, with their Norris Trophy-winning defender on the ice Vancouver wasn’t outshot at even strength. In Hughes’ minutes, in a game in which the Bruins recorded two shots for every one Vancouver mustered, the shot counter read nine shots for Vancouver and nine shots for Boston.
You won’t find any stat that more neatly sums up Hughes’ impact, and his two-way mastery, than that.
(Photo of Jake Debrusk and Kevin Lankinen: Richard T. Gagnon / Getty Images)
