VANCOUVER -- The Vancouver Canucks were robbed, which actually seems pretty fair since their goalie, Thatcher Demko, was stealing goals from the Calgary Flames for most of the game.
The Flames’ 5-4 overtime win Friday night was made possible by a power-play tying goal with 3:13 remaining after a high-sticking call against Canuck Elias Pettersson that was highly-contentious, possibly wrong, and absolutely unauthorized as it appeared to be made by a linesman.
The National Hockey League rulebook allows linesmen to make a high-sticking call “when it is apparent that an injury has resulted from a high-stick that has gone undetected by the Referees and requires the assessment of a double-minor penalty.”
Pettersson, who happens to be the Canucks’ best player and one of their top penalty killers, was assessed only a minor penalty at 15:38 after linesmen Devin Berg and Trent Knorr huddled with referees Kevin Pollock and Kelly Sutherland. Neither veteran referee has his hand in the air when Berg whistled the play while the Flames were in possession of the puck.
If it wasn’t immediately apparent that Flame Walker Duehr was not injured, it should have been when he went back at Pettersson in the neutral zone after the whistle. It appeared on replays that Duehr had lifted Pettersson’s stick with his own as it came up and struck him.
“Very frustrating,” Pettersson said. “Yeah, I don't know what to say. I'm just pissed off.
“I don't want to comment (further) because then I'll probably get fined. They did their best and made a call I didn't agree with. But they’re stubborn, and they say they were right, so I just have to accept it.”
There are no judicial appeals on officiating calls, which typically even out over a season.
But Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet appeared on the bench to be as angry as he has been since he took the job 10 weeks ago.
Did he get an explanation from officials?
“I don't know, I haven't still got one,” Tocchet said. “I've got to figure that one out. I'm still trying to figure that one out.”
What was much clearer is that the Canucks didn’t deserve to win.
They were outshot 37-14 in regulation and led 4-3 late in the third period only because Demko made a handful of five-alarm saves – plus a second-period penalty-shot stop against Jonathan Huberdeau, who eventually scored the tying goal by converting a sharp rebound off the end boards from Noah Hanifan’s wayward shot.
For the second-straight game – after more than a month of mostly excellent, consistent defensive play by Tocchet’s team – the Canucks gave up goals from turnovers, yielded a pile of outnumbered rushes and back-door chances, and didn’t win nearly enough puck battles in their own zone.
That is going to trouble Tocchet far more than one blown call.
“We couldn't handle their forecheck,” he said. “They were dumping a lot of pucks. We tried to have a game plan. I think a couple guys didn't execute the way we wanted on that heavy forecheck, but we battled back, though. Twelve minutes of power-play minutes (for Calgary) is tough. Then some guys sit on the bench, so the flow of the game kind of sucked.”
But it was entertaining after a tedious opening period. Connor Garland, Pettersson, recent college signee Aidan McDonough and Anthony Beauvillier scored for the Canucks. Pettersson’s goal extended his points streak to 14 games, one shy of the 53-year-old franchise’s all-time record.
Former Canuck Tyler Toffoli scored twice for Calgary, including a top-shelf finish on a game-winning two-on-one at 3:27 of overtime, to fan the Flames’ unlikely playoff hopes. Ex-Canuck goalie Jacob Markstrom made his biggest save of the game to set up the winning rush, stopping Dakota Joshua’s point-blank attempt to convert Phil DiGiuseppe’s goalmouth pass.
BAD FINISH, GREAT STORY
It would have been a much happier story had the Canucks won, but McDonough and childhood friend Jack Rathbone celebrating McDonough’s first NHL goal is an incredible tale.
The 23-year-old Vancouver prospects, boyhood friends from Boston who began playing hockey together when they were six or seven years old, took different paths to the NHL but were on the ice to celebrate together when McDonough planted himself in front of the Calgary net and shoved in Sheldon Dries’ pass at 12:12 of the second period.
McDonough was a seventh-round Canucks draft pick in 2019 and joined the organization this month after finishing his four years at Northeastern University. He first goal came in his second NHL game. Rathbone was a fourth-round pick in 2017 who has spent most of the last three seasons in the minors (or on the injured list or pandemic taxi squad), but was recalled from the American Hockey League when the Canucks decided this week to shut down defenceman Filip Hroenk for the rest of the season.
“Obviously, you dream about scoring that on the driveway or in the backyard your whole life, and to get one there, it was pretty special,” McDonough said. “I think his smile and excitement was even more than mine. I think he was more happy than I was. I was a little shocked and he was fired up.
“I can remember playing street hockey; his dad would play goalie all the time. To have (Jack) be on the ice and the first one to hug me was pretty special.”
“Honestly, ever since I started playing hockey, I played with him,” Rathbone said. “My dad (Jason) coached us until around age 16, and then Aidan went to play Junior-A and I went to college.
“You always talk about (playing together in the NHL) but I didn't think it would ever line up the way it did. It was pretty cool to see it happen. I was just so fired up for him. It was a big goal in the game, too, so I think everyone was fired up for him.”
KUZMENKO SKIPS WARMUP
First-year Canuck Andrei Kuzmenko, who became an instant fan favourite with his sublime offensive skills and amiable, engaging personalty, was the only Vancouver player who opted out of wearing a rainbow warmup jersey for the organization’s “Pride Night” on Friday.
Tocchet said after the morning skate that it was a “family” decision for Kuzmenko, whose family lives in Russia.
Asked by reporters after the game to explain his decision, Kuzmenko said through teammate and interpreter Vitali Kravtsov: “We respect everybody and everybody's choices. And he asks: Can you respect his choice, too, and his family. That's all that he can say about it.”
Kuzmenko declined to elaborate on a follow-up question. Nineteen other Canucks acknowledged Vancouver’s large LGBTQ+ community by wearing rainbow-themed warmup jerseys.
Among the team’s other Russian players, Kravtsov was a healthy scratch and Vasily Podkolzin and Ilya Mikheyev are injured.
