The Vancouver Canucks and Chicago Blackhawks squared off on Saturday night in their second meeting of the season with this game being in Vancouver. The big story heading in was that this game would be Blackhawks superstar Connor Bedard’s first-ever game played in his hometown of Vancouver. Before the game, Bedard was asked about the demand for tickets he was asked for from friends and family and he remarked, “I’ll be paying to play for a night.” But aside from Bedard’s homecoming, both teams had something to prove in the game. Vancouver had just come off of a disappointing loss against the New York Islanders where their coach Rick Tocchet apologized to Canucks fans for his team’s performance and the Blackhawks were coming off of a stretch of games where they have only one win in their last four contests.
Game Recap
The first period saw the Blackhawks controlling play for the first 10 minutes. Although the Canucks were getting some chances, the Blackhawks were getting better quality chances and were generating more offence than Vancouver. The Blackhawks would capitalize on one of their chances just under seven minutes into the period with a great play by Nick Foligno to take the puck to the net and create a rebound for former Canucks forward Ilya Mikheyev and he made no mistake on the wide-open net giving the Blackhawks the opening goal of the game. With that goal, Vancouver has now allowed the game’s opening goal in nine of their last 10 games. The remainder of the period saw a lot of neutral zone play and didn’t have many great offensive chances for either team. Arturs Silovs and Arvid Soderblom played great in net for their teams for the rest of the period and the Blackhawks took their lead into the first intermission.
The second period saw Vancouver get a bit of their mojo back. The team started to create more threatening offensive chances and Chicago gave the Canucks a powerplay early on in the period. On that second-period powerplay, the Canucks star players helped put them on the board. Quinn Hughes sent the puck to J.T. Miller, and Miller sent the puck to Elias Pettersson. Pettersson tried to send the puck to Conor Garland for a backdoor one-timer but the puck deflected off of Connor Murphy and into the net to tie the game up for the Canucks and bring the team back into the game. The goal may not have been pretty but they don’t ask how, they ask how many. Both teams tried to break the deadlock in the second period but goaltending reigned supreme after the Pettersson goal and the game was still tied at the intermission.
Related: Rick Tocchet’s Comments Show Canucks Are Not Meeting His Standards
The third period saw the tie game get broken rather quickly. Just under five minutes into the third period, Kiefer Sherwood tried to get a shot on Soderblom but missed the net. The puck rang around the boards to newly acquired defenceman Erik Brännström and he took a slapshot that beat Soderblom five-hole giving the Canucks a 2-1 lead. Once that goal went in, the Blackhawks tried their best to get the equalizer. The team tried their best to beat Silovs and tie the game to potentially send the game to overtime but the Canucks defence and Silovs held strong and kept the score at 2-1. Once the Blackhawks pulled their goalie, Bedard tried to dump the puck into the Canucks zone but whiffed on the attempt and turned the puck over to J.T. Miller. He shot the puck into the empty net to give Vancouver a 3-1 lead and all but seal a victory for the Canucks. After Miller’s goal, Teddy Blueger scored a second empty-net goal sealing the 4-1 win.
