The Vancouver Canucks continue to find ways to win.
On Sunday afternoon in Detroit, the Canucks defeated the Red Wings 5-4 despite a sleepy start to the game, a costly failed challenge in the third period and a penalty kill that appeared to spring a leak against the Detroit power play.
They did it with opportunistic finishing on the power play, some stellar saves from Kevin Lankinen and gutty performances from Elias Pettersson, Conor Garland, Erik Brännström and Pius Suter, all of whom have stepped up significantly while the Canucks have been short-handed over the past few weeks. They did it because Jake DeBrusk is on an absolute heater and scored a clutch hat trick, punctuated with a gorgeous finish on the overtime winner.
They pulled it off because the Canucks have Quinn Hughes on their team and the Red Wings, thanks to a massive whiff at the 2018 NHL Draft, do not.
The Canucks are now 4-1-0 on a road trip that has seen them play a condensed schedule without several key contributors. They’ve more than held the fort here — they’ve found a way to gain ground in the Pacific Division.
Here are three takeaways from Vancouver’s Sunday matinee victory.
Overtime winner.
Hat trick goal.IN DEBRUSK WE TRUST. 🫡 pic.twitter.com/9XzfHMk2ou
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) December 1, 2024
DeBrusk and the power play bail the Canucks out after a sleepy start
When DeBrusk was struggling to find the back of the net or find chemistry on a new team in early November, one of the troubling signs we were pointing to was he’d promptly lost his spot on the Canucks top power-play unit.
What a difference a month makes.
On Sunday, the Canucks started slowly. The Red Wings handily outplayed them in the first frame, peppering them with 11 shots and dominating play at five-on-five. A run of late-period penalties then spotted Vancouver a two-man advantage to open the second period, and the Canucks — led by DeBrusk — were able to capitalize and temporarily take control of the game.
Two of DeBrusk’s game-breaking goals were scored right at the net front. He first deflected home a Pettersson shot from the edge of the blue paint, and then he found some loose change in the crease after a Hughes wrist shot and beat Cam Talbot for his second power-play goal of the game.
In the absence of some key Canucks players, most notably J.T. Miller, DeBrusk has found himself back on the top power-play unit. And on this road trip, he’s been firing. He’s now scored four power-play goals across five games, helping to power Vancouver to an impressive 4-1 run and buying him a share of the team lead in goals.
DeBrusk’s slow start to this season is squarely in the rearview mirror now. In fact, he’s first among several key Canucks players who have stepped up at precisely the moment this club needed them most.
A tough afternoon on the kill
Vancouver’s new high-pressure penalty kill has been a welcome addition to its battery of weapons this season.
Five-on-four play has been an issue for years now, but this season, the Canucks’ penalty killing has found a serious groove. Vancouver has flirted with being a top-10 team by penalty-kill percentage over the past few weeks. The PK has been a key driver of its success on this road trip.
On Sunday in Detroit, however, Vancouver’s penalty kill sprung a significant leak. Even if the Red Wings could only score once, they applied continuous, dynamic pressure on Vancouver whenever they had an opportunity with the man advantage.
In a key moment of the game on Sunday, Detroit finally got its goal on the power play as Michael Rasmussen made a nice play to convert a goal-mouth scramble in the Vancouver crease on which Lankinen was lightly impacted. Rasmussen’s positioning was scrupulously out of the blue paint, and it looked obvious that it was a good goal the whole way.
But Vancouver, perhaps calculating cynically that the leverage of taking the game-tying goal off the board was worth the risk of killing off another penalty, challenged the goal for goaltender interference. It wasn’t the highest probability challenge in a vacuum, but the Canucks coaching staff has a better sense of its team’s energy level (especially while playing their fourth game in five and a half days on the road).
Ultimately, Rasmussen’s goal stood, Vancouver was assessed another minor penalty and Detroit’s power play again applied a withering amount of pressure. Thanks in part to some warrior-like defending from Noah Juulsen to block some high-danger Detroit looks, the Canucks were able to survive the kill, but the Red Wings found a key go-ahead goal shortly thereafter.
Sometimes the contributions or efforts of a penalty kill aren’t accurately captured by a club’s kill rate. The Red Wings went 1-for-4 on the power play but, without question, generated at will with the man advantage and turned the game in their favour on special teams.
It took special plays from Pettersson, Brännström and DeBrusk to dig the Canucks out of the hole the Red Wings power play ultimately put them in.
Hughes rewrites the franchise record books
With his third consecutive multi-assist game in Sunday afternoon’s win, Hughes became Vancouver’s all-time franchise leader in assists by a defender.
In 537 fewer games than it took Alex Edler to compile 310 assists, Hughes has now recorded 312 for his career. He’s just 49 points back of the Canucks’ all-time franchise leader for points by a defender, a mark he’ll surpass at some point this season provided he can stay healthy.
Hughes’ complete two-way mastery is the most important factor going for the Canucks this season. It’s the primary reason why this team has been able to sustain so many key losses without significantly altering its ability to pick up points and win games. When Hughes is going like this, the Canucks have one of the five or six most impactful skaters in the league on their side, and that’s enough to make them a wildly difficult out most nights.
Hughes’ run has also significantly closed the gap on Cale Makar’s scoring lead among NHL defencemen. He should not only be the Norris Trophy favourite at the quarter mark of the season but should probably be getting more Hart Trophy consideration than he is.
(Photo: Dave Reginek / NHLI via Getty Images)
