VANCOUVER — The young, upstart Columbus Blue Jackets wore down just as the wily Vancouver Canucks found their legs and their spirit.
It was a correlation of forces that made for an occasionally baffling, but ultimately exciting, tilt Friday night at Rogers Arena. Outplayed by a wide margin for 30 minutes, and on balance throughout the evening, the Canucks found a way to overcome a two-goal deficit and defeated the Blue Jackets 5-2.
Did it take some opportunistic finishing, some stellar performances from Vancouver’s stars, another sturdy showing from Kevin Lankinen — with Thatcher Demko backing him up in his return to active duty — and one of the most baffling puck-handling decisions of the season from the Blue Jackets starter for Vancouver to earn its schedule win over Columbus? It did.
Does any of that matter at all given the club will happily take whatever points it can bank in the continued absence of J.T. Miller, Filip Hronek and Demko? Perhaps in time, but there’s plenty of time to worry about that.
Friday night the Canucks picked up 2 points, winning for the fifth time in their past seven games. This is a team that’s finding ways to get it done at the moment. Whether it’s pretty or sustainable is sort of beside the point. It’s working.
Here are three takeaways from Vancouver’s impressive comeback victory over Columbus on Friday night.
The speed problem
This Blue Jackets side isn’t the punchline Columbus sides of yore, the stand-in opponent most often used as a reference point for describing an unexciting, low-stakes tilt in November or February.
Columbus is young and exciting. It plays dynamic, high-octane attacking hockey. Kent Johnson has pace and creativity for days. Ditto Kirill Marchenko. Dmitri Voronkov is massive and has real scoring touch. Zach Werenski is authoring a dark horse bid for the Norris Trophy. Sean Monahan has looked reinvigorated and is performing at the level of a genuine top-line player.
The Blue Jackets, this season, are a lot of fun and attack with a lot of speed.
In the first period, despite playing in the second leg of back-to-back games and finishing off a slate of three games in four nights, the Blue Jackets had legs and skated circles around the Canucks. If the Blue Jackets had taken their chances with more conviction — a Johnson miss on a wide-open net on the third shift of the game, a tremendous rush opportunity Jordan Harris put well wide — Columbus might’ve put Vancouver to bed early.
Instead, the Blue Jackets were only able to put up a crooked number on the shot clock, finishing the first period with a 17-2 edge in shots on goal. The Blue Jackets were buzzing, as if a hockey personification of their incredibly random mascot Stinger, but couldn’t make their massive edge in scoring chances count on the scoreboard.
By the start of the second period, the Canucks found their fight and their legs. With a dash of cynicism, a few game-breaking plays and a far-more-mature ability to avoid game-breaking mistakes, Vancouver started to pounce on opportunities and manage the game at a superior level than this young Columbus team is capable of, especially with tired legs.
Though the Canucks deserved a fair bit of credit for the hardscrabble overachievers they’ve become under Rick Tocchet, the fact remains there is a variety of team with a hyperspeed gear and an ability to attack in waves off of the rush — teams like the Edmonton Oilers, the Carolina Hurricanes, the New Jersey Devils and, yes, to a lesser extent, this Blue Jackets side — that seems to reliably cause this version of the Canucks trouble.
We’ve seen it all season, and though the Canucks were able to bounce back from their slow start Friday night, we saw it again against the Blue Jackets.
Kiefer Sherwood ties the game after Elvis Merzlikins comes way out of his net and misplays the puck. 😅 pic.twitter.com/oZ7czt8dq3
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) December 7, 2024
In the defining moment of the game, Blue Jackets goaltender Elvis Merzlikins made a baffling decision.
With the puck rolling slowly toward the Blue Jackets end and Canucks forwards Teddy Blueger and Kiefer Sherwood in hot pursuit, but trailing in the race decisively behind Zach Werenski, Merzlikins decided to leave his crease and attempt to play the puck.
Given Werenski’s positioning, it was a bad read by the Blue Jackets netminder. He was going to win the race to the puck, and in any event, is the sort of defender capable of making a skilled play under pressure. In fairness to the Latvian-born goaltender, on the other hand, Werenski deferred to Merzlikins at a key moment.
When Merzlikins finally played the puck, he went to shoot it off the glass. This is where the Canucks’ veteran savvy, their institutional know-how, made the difference.
Most forwards in Blueger’s position would rush the puck, but Blueger read it perfectly. He knew Merzlikins was going to win the race and was feeling the pressure anyway. He wagered he’d try to put the puck off of the glass, and that bet paid off. Then Blueger made a calm play to set up Sherwood, and suddenly the score was level.
It looked like a gift, and it was to some extent, but it was also a massive score-tying goal engineered explicitly by Blueger’s quick thinking and sky-high hockey IQ.
The top of the lineup edge
In a lot of ways, Vancouver’s victory Friday night constituted something of a smash-and-grab.
As much as the Canucks came on strong as the game went on and the Blue Jackets faded and Vancouver’s winning know-how made the difference, all of which is true to some extent, the Blue Jackets performed like the better team Friday night and were unfortunate not to come away with the road win.
In particular, Vancouver’s depth minutes looked problematic. By roughly the 10-minute mark of the third period, with the Canucks leading by two goals and score effects about to kick into overdrive, Vancouver’s only real bright spot in terms of its five-on-five performance was that it won the minutes at the absolute apex of the lineup.
The Quinn Hughes pair and the Elias Pettersson line were self-matched by Vancouver’s coaches Friday, and in 6 1/2 even-strength minutes they spent together at five-on-five through the first 50 minutes of the game, Vancouver outshot Columbus five-to-one and outscored it one-to-nothing. In all other five-on-five minutes, however, Columbus outshot Vancouver 23 to six.
Ultimately the defensive acumen of key Canucks players like Pius Suter, Carson Soucy and Blueger helped the club save goals and outpunch the game environment on the scoreboard. If the Canucks play too many games that look like this one, however, this recent run of sterling results is unlikely to last.
(Photo of Danton Heinen, Kiefer Sherwood and Teddy Blueger: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
