The Vancouver Canucks have won seven of their last eight games.
Yes, you read that right. The Canucks now trail Montreal by a single point for fourth in the division, and they’ll have a chance to move into a playoff spot with a regulation win tomorrow.
More importantly, the team didn’t even need to rely entirely on Thatcher Demko to earn the win last night! At this point, I honestly can’t tell if I’m dreaming or not.
The best part of the victory is that it came against the Canadiens, and Vancouver even kept Tyler Toffoli off the scoresheet after he turned into prime Alex Ovechkin in earlier meetings between the two teams.
Here are three takeaways from the 3-2 win against Montreal last night.
Solid debut for Vesey
After getting claimed off waivers a few days ago, Jimmy Vesey made his Canucks debut last night and played a solid game.
Vesey lined up beside J.T. Miller and their familiarity was evident; the two forwards were teammates for almost two seasons with the Rangers from 2016-18. In what came as a bit of a surprise, the newest member of the Canucks was inserted directly on to the team’s first power play unit, even though he had only practiced once with Vancouver.
Although they didn’t score on the man advantage, Vesey looked comfortable on the ice and he should get even better after developing more familiarity with the team. More importantly, it seems like the Canucks might’ve discovered a new line combination, as the trio of Vesey, Miller and Jake Virtanen dominated play for the entire game.
According to Natural Stat Trick, that line controlled shot attempts 62.5% of the time and had an expected goals percentage of 77.28%. In other words, Vancouver generated a lot more scoring chances than they gave up with that trio playing. Injuries have been piling up recently so it’s especially important for the Canucks to find chemistry and perform better than the sum of their parts, and Vesey will help them achieve just that.
And the best news is that he should get even better with each passing game.
Strong showing by the bottom six
The Canucks’ bottom six has been maligned all season long, but they played a relatively strong game last night.
Adam Gaudette was the first to put Vancouver on the board in the second period, tipping home a nice pass from Antoine Roussel.
Adam Gaudette drives the net and deflects Roussel's pass off the post and in and the #Canucks have tied it at 1 early in the 2nd! pic.twitter.com/5XPPNDYttj
— Sportsnet 650 (@Sportsnet650) March 20, 2021
In fact, the third line of Gaudette, Roussel, and Zack MacEwen registered an absurd expected goals percentage of 80.11%, which was the best number for any Canucks line last night.
Virtanen also played a very strong game, as he lead all Vancouver players in both corsi (54%) and expected goals percentage (83.15%). However, in typical Virtanen fashion, he also made a dumb decision late in the game by punching Toffoli and putting Montreal on the power play when the Canucks were only up by one.
Although the Canadiens failed to score on that opportunity, it was still a bad move that indirectly led to the tying goal that forced overtime. Those ebbs of highs and lows is exactly why Virtanen is the most polarizing player on the Canucks since he often flashes signs of potential but immediately squanders it with a questionable decision.
Thankfully, Vancouver got more of the “good Virtanen” last night.