Vancouver Canucks: 3 takeaways from 6-1 victory over Bruins

What a game that was! The Vancouver Canucks brought out their 2011 form and destroyed the Boston Bruins 6-1 on Saturday evening. Here are three big takeaways from the team’s best performance of the season thus far.

The Vancouver Canucks may be hanging near the very bottom of the NHL standings, but they sure look a lot more competitive than the 2016 and 2017 squads.

On Saturday evening, they showed they can match up against anybody when they really bring it. The superior Boston Bruins learned this, leaving the west coast with an ugly 6-1 defeat over their old rivals.

Anders Nilsson had arguably the best performance of his career, stopping 34 of 35 shots and making at least five saves that should appear on highlight reels across the continent. What a great performance it was for him.

Loui Eriksson scored two goals against his old team. Erik Gudbranson played like a guy who’s motivated to increase his trade value. The whole team played a near flawless game. Throw in the fact it was over Boston on Hockey Night in Canada, and it makes this victory all that much sweeter.

Here are three things we learned from Vancouver’s epic 6-1 route of the Bruins.

Scoring comes in bunches

The Canucks definitely lack depth in scoring, but the good news is that they know that anybody can step up and put pucks in the net at any time.

There have been plenty of games throughout the season were virtually all of their forwards have had something to contribute on the score sheet.

More from The Canuck Way

• Which team won the Bo Horvat trade?
• What to expect from newcomers Anthony Beauvillier, Aatu Räty
• Back to the future: How the skate uniforms became a regular Canucks’ feature night
• Canucks kick off 2023 with disappointing 6-2 loss to Islanders
• 2nd period penalty trouble sinks Canucks in 4-2 loss against Winnipeg

Eriksson scored twice, but Bo Horvat, Sven Baertschi, Nic Dowd and Daniel Sedin were all able to find the back of the net as well. 11 different Canucks registered a point in this contest, with three of them posting multi-point games.

Vancouver used their speed — namely from Horvat and Brock Boeser — to rush the puck up and crash the net. The Bruins aren’t exactly one of the NHL’s faster teams on the back end, and the Canucks had no problem generating offence in front. They made life miserable for Tuukka Rask, who’s having a Vezina-caliber season and got pulled after the first period.

It looked like Baertschi learned his lesson after being a healthy scratch. He scored a goal and posted a plus-two rating. Side note: Baertschi and Horvat now have 13 and 20 goals on the season, respectively. Can they join Boeser in the desirable 20-goal club?

Defence has top-notch performance

Yes, the Canucks were bailed out by a handful of heroic and miraculous saves by Anders Nilsson. But this was a terrific shutdown effort by the team, who executed the game plan of head coach Travis Green perfectly.

The Canucks shut down the league’s hottest line of Patrice Bergeron–David Pastrnak–Brad Marchand, limiting the trio to a total of seven shots on goal. And no, they didn’t get a single point. The line also didn’t generate many quality scoring chances, either.

Related Story: Travis Green on why kids don't get more ice time

Erik Gudbranson tuned in arguably his best game in a Vancouver uniform. He played 23:05, dished out three hits and logged in 6:39 on the penalty kill. Speaking of which, the Canucks didn’t allow Boston to score on any of their five power play opportunities.

The Canucks threw their weight around, battled hard for loose pucks, protected the net and didn’t let the Bruins earn an inch of ice. The pride and determination was there, now we just need to see more of it.

Anders Nilsson bounces back

After Thursday’s loss to the San Jose Sharks, I concluded my takeaways with Anders Nilsson struggling and needing to be held on a short leash. He entered Saturday having last won a game on Nov. 30 against the Nashville Predators. He had allowed four-plus goals in six of his previous 10 outings.

Well, Nilsson tuned in perhaps the performance of his career in this one. As I sat there watching the game, I asked “How did that not go in?!” a good seven to 12 times. Nilsson really stole the game with a bunch of phenomenal saves.

Nilsson frustrated Bruins shooters by taking away just about everything they threw at him. It was easily the best performance from a Canuck goalie this season. Really, the team could have lost this game 8-6 if he didn’t play like a brick wall.

Next: Canucks are looking at Max Domi and Tobias Rieder

Nilsson has to feel good about this one. On national television, he turned away one of the league’s elite teams on home ice. We’ll see if coach Green gives him more starts going forward after this performance.