Kiefer Sherwood brings star power to Canucks with elite performance vs. Avalanche

It's official: Kiefer Sherwood and the Vancouver Canucks are the winners of the battle of 'wood', defeating Miles Wood, Mackenzie Blackwood, Scott Wedgewood, and the Colorado Avalanche by a score of 3-1 on Monday night. Wood is on injured reserve and did not actually play in the game, but that is neither here nor there.

The real star of the show was Kiefer Sherwood, who scored his ninth, 10th, and 11th goals of the season to complete his first NHL hat trick and single-handedly steal a win for the Canucks against his former team.

For further context about Sherwood's memorable feat, the 29-year-old's previous career-high in goals was 10, set in 68 games last year as a member of the Nashville Predators. The Canucks' top free agent signing is already up to 11 goals, six assists, and 17 points in 30 games and has 52 more games to match his previous career-high of 27 points, which was also set last season.

Sherwood propels Canucks to much-needed victory vs. Avalanche

Heading into this game, the Canucks had lost three of their last four, with their most recent loss being a brutal 5-1 stomping at the hands of the head coach-less Boston Bruins. Naturally, the Canucks, via one of their heart-and-soul players, stepped up to the challenge against the Avalanche on Monday night.

Sherwood opened the scoring for the Canucks with 3:46 left in the first period, getting rewarded for his hard work along the boards. Calvin de Haan and Ivan Ivan were applying pressure to Sherwood in their defensive zone, but the gritty power forward did well to knock the puck back into a safe space, where Pius Suter was anticipating the play.

Suter alertly flung the puck towards a charging Danton Heinen, who attacking the net. And although Heinen was stuffed by Blackwood at point-blank range, Sherwood arrived on the scene to clean up the garbage in front.

Sherwood's most impressive goal of the night was his second, where he stood up Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon at the blue line while defending a power play zone entry. After realizing he made clean contact and stripped the puck, Sherwood raced through the neutral zone all by his lonesome before ripping a well-placed shot over Blackwood's glove hand.

And of course, to effectively kill the game off at 3-0, Sherwood hit the empty net from his own zone with 2:35 remaining. Valeri Nichushkin did buy the Avs a goal with 46 seconds left, but that, as we know, had no bearing on the final outcome of the game.

Sherwood signed a two-year, $3 million contract with the Canucks on July 1 and is eligible to sign a contract extension on July 1, 2025. If he can continue to extrapolate these world class performances over a full season, Sherwood will be due for a hefty raise in short order.