‘A good response’: DeSmith leads Canucks to bounce-back win

MONTREAL — There were two No. 29 goaltender jerseys in the Bell Centre on Sunday night. One hung from the cathedral's rafters in honour of Montreal Canadiens Hall-of-Famer Ken Dryden. The other belonged to Vancouver Canucks goalie Casey DeSmith. 

Growing up in New Hampshire, a little more than an hour’s drive north of Boston, DeSmith didn’t cheer for the Bruins but instead loved the Canadiens. His fondness for the Habs was genetic, inherited from his father.

Gary DeSmith was related to Floyd Curry, who spent most of the 1950s with the Canadiens and won four Stanley Cups with teammates named Geoffrion, Beliveau, Richard and Harvey. So the DeSmiths were a Canadiens family.

Dryden became Casey’s favourite player even though the iconic netminder retired more than a decade before DeSmith was born in 1991. DeSmith wears No. 29 for the Canucks as an ode to Dryden. And before Sunday’s game, as a gift from the Canadiens’ staff, he was given a Habs jersey about two months after his trade to the Canucks from Montreal.

DeSmith spent six uneasy weeks this summer as a member of the Canadiens organization, which accepted him from Pittsburgh in the three-way blockbuster trade that sent Erik Karlsson to the Penguins from the San Jose Sharks.

Even if it was always his dream to play for the Canadiens, DeSmith never believed during the summer that he’d actually play in Montreal. He was surplus, and elated when Montreal sent him to Vancouver on Sept. 19 in exchange for Tanner Pearson. 

The Canucks were happy then with the trade. They’re thrilled now.

On Sunday, DeSmith made 32 saves on the ice below Dryden’s retired jersey as the Canucks stamped out their losing streak at one game by beating the Canadiens 5-2. Vancouver finished its annual Eastern Canadian tour at 2-1, and DeSmith won both games, starting with Thursday's 5-2 decision in Ottawa.

The win in Montreal, however, was special.

“I always love playing here,” DeSmith said after improving his record to 4-0-1. “Always have, always will. I grew up a big Habs fan, so I relish every time I get to play in the Bell Centre against the Habs in front of Habs fans. So yeah, I enjoyed it tonight.”

He would have enjoyed it even more had he posted a shutout, but as a two-man Montreal advantage turned to a five-on-four power play, Mike Matheson scored through a pileup at 6:46 of the third period before Canadien Arber Xhekaj surprised DeSmith from distance with a shot in the final minute.

“I felt really good,” DeSmith said. “But I had to ruin it at the end, obviously.”

The only thing damaged were his stats, as the Canucks took over the game with three goals in the second period and were never really threatened after that.

Conor Garland had a goal and assist for the Canucks in his best game of the season. Linemate Dakota Joshua matched Garland's scoring numbers as Vancouver’s third line, centred by Pius Suter, had a dominant night five-on-five playing mostly against Cole Caufield and Montreal’s second line.

Shots were 11-0 for the Canucks when Garland, Suter and Joshua were on the ice.

Ilya Mikheyev also scored for Vancouver, while Brock Boeser scored one empty-net goal and helped set up another for Phil Di Giuseppe.

Overall, it was an impressive bounceback game, 24 hours after the Canucks were sloppy and sluggish in a 5-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday.

“It's a good response,” Canucks defenceman Ian Cole agreed. “I think there was a very real possibility we could have had a shutout that game, so that's a missed opportunity. It would have been nice to get that for Casey. But overall, it was a good game. We broke their forecheck well. They had a push there and while it got hairy, we handled it well.

“We came out against a team that skates hard, pressures hard, and we were able to handle that speed and handle that pressure well and push back and create a lot of stuff. So it was a good game. We can't be one of those teams that let losses snowball. Stop it at one, stop the bleeding, go back out and win the next game. And that's what we did.”

The Canucks headed home overnight at 11-3-1 and are 9-1-1 in their last 11 games. Sunday’s win wasn’t their best performance, but still one of Vancouver’s most important considering the circumstances. 

The game in Toronto was their second-poorest of the season, but also the culmination of a trend that had seen the Canucks struggle for significant stretches in three of their previous five wins. (By the way, that’s a nice, new problem for them to have: not playing as well as they’d like — while winning).

“Toronto was just one of those stinker games, and you move on,” centre J.T. Miller said. “I thought overall it was a pretty good game and that just feels good going home with a long flight. 

“I thought we had a lot of good shifts tonight as a team. We played really fast through the neutral zone, had a lot of good looks. I thought we broke the puck out. It seems when we break the puck out well, it kind of feeds our game and we play with speed. Just a nice bounce-back effort in general.”

Coach Rick Tocchet said it was a “really good game, 200-foot game, by everybody.”

The Canucks play three of their next four games at home, starting Wednesday against the New York Islanders in what could be the return of former Vancouver captain Bo Horvat.

“Good teams come out after a loss and play well, and I thought we did that tonight,” DeSmith said. “I thought we defended hard. I think we've been doing that all year, and if we keep doing it, we're a good team because we have a lot of guys who can score and put the puck in the net. As long as we keep defending hard, we're really tough to beat.”

The Canucks have allowed two or fewer goals in nine of their 11 wins.

“We don't want our game to slide too long,” Garland said, “and Toc was pretty direct about that — that we needed to find our game. He said something to me on the first road trip of the year. I was like, 'Yeah, we've got to win tonight.' And he said, 'We just had to play a good game. We just have to play our style.’ That's kind of a really cool point to know — like, if you go out and play your style, you give yourself a really good chance to win.”

ICE CHIPS — Speedy checking centre Teddy Blueger, injured when blocking a shot in the Canucks’ final pre-season game, made his debut and logged 14 minutes of ice time. Nils Hoglander came out of the lineup to make room for him. . . Defenceman Mark Friedman was also scratched as Noah Juulsen played his first game since Oct. 17. . . Carson Soucy left the game early in the second period after blocking a shot. Tocchet said the defenceman will be re-evaluated in Vancouver. Both Soucy and defence partner Tyler Myers, who fell awkwardly in collision with Juraj Slafkovsky a few seconds earlier, laboured to the bench as play continued as Montreal briefly skated five-against-three. “That was a weird scene there,” Myers said. “We were a long way from home (the bench).”