Canucks: Recapping their 4-1 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks

The Vancouver Canucks rolled into The Windy City on Thursday night, squaring off against the Chicago Blackhawks for the first of three matchups this season.

Having dropped their previous two road games to Buffalo and Detroit, Vancouver was looking to bounce back and return to the winner’s circle.

Head Coach Travis Green elected to shake things up heading into Thursday night’s contest, scratching rookie forward Vasily Podkolzin in favour of veteran net-front presence Alex Chiasson. Green also made adjustments to the blueline, replacing defencemen Brad Hunt and Luke Schenn for Kyle Burroughs and Quinn Hughes, who missed Tuesday’s contest with a lower-body injury.

Here’s what the line combinations looked like in Chicago:

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Prior to the game, the Blackhawks held a ceremony for forward Patrick Kane in honour of his 1000th NHL game. Kane hit the milestone during the 2020-21 season, but the Blackhawks wanted to honour the nine-time All Star in front of a full crowd at the United Center.

Kane received a silver stick for the accomplishment, adding it to his collection that already includes three Stanley Cups, an Art Ross Award and a Calder Trophy. It was definitely fitting for the ceremony to take place with the Canucks in town, but Vancouver still knew that they would need to do whatever they could to spoil the celebrations.

Let’s see what happened!

First Period

It took a few minutes for the Canucks to get going, but they were eventually able to open the scoring for the second consecutive game, thanks to a tally from Jason Dickinson. This was his first goal as a Vancouver Canuck, and it came after an excellent tic-tac-toe style play was executed by linemates Matthew Highmore and Nils Höglander.

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Just under two minutes later, Blackhawks’ forward Alex DeBrincat found a way to tie the game on the man-advantage, and it came with a splash of revenge. After drawing the tripping penalty on Burroughs, Debrincat was able to find some open space on the powerplay, firing the puck past Thatcher Demko to knot things up at 1-1.

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The game went on with both teams trading blows back and forth, including a scary moment where Tyler Myers took a flying puck directly to the knee. He was slow to get to the bench and appeared to be in serious discomfort. Myers did not take another shift that period, but fortunately did not leave the contest.

The action continued to heat up as the first period was coming to a close.

Höglander took a big hit from Riley Stillman along the boards, sparking a response from Burroughs to retaliate and convince Stillman to drop the gloves. The two blueliners traded punches in what many would consider a good, evenly-matched hockey scrum.

The scored remained deadlocked heading into the first intermission, with Chicago outshooting Vancouver by a margin of 12-9. Both teams were clearly playing hard in order to earn two points, and desperately wanted to gain some ground in their respective standings.

Second Period

After getting the Canucks on the board in the first period, Dickinson took a boarding penalty, with the infraction once again drawn by Debrincat. Despite the opportunity, the Blackhawks coughed up the puck, leading to a shorthanded scoring chance off the rush by J.T Miller.

Miller’s quick wrist-shot was denied by Kevin Lankinen, and the Canucks went on to kill the remainder of the penalty.

Vancouver took the lead once again, just five seconds before the midway mark of the game. After a couple of hard-working shifts, Tanner Pearson parked himself in front of the net, eventually deflecting Hughes’ point shot past Lankinen for his first goal of the season.

Conor Garland picked up the secondary assist.

Chicago pressed hard to find the equalizer, with Kane sending a lengthy cross-crease feed to a wide-open Seth Jones just moments later. Fortunately for the Canucks, Demko managed to get across the crease, sprawling to make the save just in the knick of time. It was his best stop on a handful of mid-period scoring chances from the Blackhawks.

With just over two minutes left in the middle frame, Vancouver found themselves on a 5-on-3 powerplay, and they didn’t waste any time padding their lead. Off his own rebound in the paint, Brock Boeser was able to roof the puck over a down-and-out Chicago goaltender for his first goal of the season.

Miller and Elias Pettersson collected the helpers on the play.

The Canucks entered the second intermission with momentum on their side, and were looking to close out the game in the final 20 minutes.