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I Watched This Game: Jesse Puljujarvi breaks out against the Canucks

Canucks 2, Oilers 5
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How did you spend your week without Canucks hockey?

I mostly had a brutal cold and dealt with two kids with the flu, but also managed to binge Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency season 2, and even found time to read a book. It’s amazing how hard it is to find time to read when you’ve got three kids and a job that takes up several evenings per week, so I took advantage of the lack of Canucks games to put a tiny dent in the backlog of books I intend to read.

I chose Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, which became the SyFy series The Expanse. Sure, it came out seven years ago, but I just got around to it now. Don’t judge me.

It was quite good, with wonderful world-building, a genre-bending plot that mixed space opera, horror, and noir, and some thought-provoking questions about the limits of humanity and just how free information should be. I recommend it: it was somehow less horrifying than this Canucks season has been.

After I finished the book, I watched this game.

  • Jake Virtanen had a rough game, getting caught looking more sheepish than Shaun on the first two Oilers goals. Some might unfairly point to his vacation in Vegas during the bye week, but every Canuck took a vacation somewhere during the break. Besides, this just seems to be who Virtanen is: sometimes his mind checks out without notifying the front desk.
  • It started early: with Troy Stecher caught up ice, Virtanen was the last man back. He took a Brendan Gaunce pass that wasn’t as crisp as it could have been and had to make a quick decision with Connor McDavid bearing down on him. He made the wrong one, trying to pass across his body instead of the safer pass to Stecher on the boards. McDavid got his stick on the puck, Patrick Maroon picked it up, and a quick give-and-go gave Maroon the goal.
  • Virtanen started the game on the checking line with Nic Dowd and Brendan Gaunce, but was swiftly demoted after the gaffe to the Sedins line. That may sound odd to call that a demotion, but the Sedins had the lowest even-strength ice time on the team. He went from the “fourth line” to the actual fourth line.
  • Derrick Pouliot returned to the lineup and, like scroggin bought from the bulk section, he was a mixed bag. His recovery to shutdown McDavid 1-on-1 after a bobbling the puck at his own blue line was perfectly executed, matching McDavid stride for stride and taking the body when he tried to step around him, but he also had some shaky moments in his own zone.
  • The more I watch Edmonton’s second goal, the less I’m sure of who to blame. When Jesse “Pool Party” Puljujarvi put the puck through Henrik Sedin’s legs, both Derrick Pouliot and Jake Virtanen moved to check him, then they each second-guessed themselves and ended up in a no man’s land between Puljujarvi and Jujhar Khaira, who snuck in behind them, took Puljujarvi’s pass, and roofed the puck on the backhand.
  • One of Pouliot and Virtanen is at fault; it’s just hard to tell which one. Hockey is a game of reads: reading the play as it develops, which includes reading and reacting to the opposition, but also reading your teammates. One of them had to commit to taking Puljujarvi and the other needed to read that, see Khaira, and pick him up as he headed to the net. They didn’t do the required reading and just ended up improvising a report based on the blurb on the back of the book.
  • Brock Boeser came into this game on a three-game point drought, the longest he’s gone without a point all season. Travis Green seemed eager to get him going, shuffling his linemates late in the game, replacing Thomas Vanek and Sam Gagner with Sven Baertschi and Brandon Sutter. Boeser came close to scoring a couple times and had a game-high 10 shot attempts, but only two were on goal and five were blocked. The Oilers were shadowing him intensely, getting into his lanes like a rude merger.
  • Boeser did pick up a point on the Canucks’ first goal, flipping a saucer pass to Alex Edler at the point after some nice passing by the Sedins. Edler didn’t have much time, but sent a hard pass skimming across the ice to Daniel Sedin, who redirected it back against the grain to beat Cam Talbot.
  • Sven Baertschi was fantastic in this game, his first without his jaw guard since fracturing his jaw. The added visibility seemed to help, as he was finding teammates with crazy passes all game. He set up Brandon Sutter on a 2-on-1 with a crisp pass, while thoroughly convincing Talbot he was going to shoot instead, giving Sutter the broad side of a barn at which to shoot.
  • The Oilers had chance after chance in the second period, but Jacob Markstrom did everything he could to keep the Canucks in the game. They had more chances than the TV show Chance, which admittedly isn’t saying much, as there are only three Chances on Chance: Hugh Laurie, his daughter, and his ex-wife.
  • It’s easy to blame Michael Del Zotto on the Oilers’ third goal, as he was caught flat-footed and away from the goal when Puljujarvi finished off an Adam Larsson rebound, but Del Zotto at least had a man that he was ostensibly checking at the time. Puljujarvi was Sutter’s man and he didn’t do enough to tie him or his stick up to prevent the scoring chance. A Pool Party needs to be taken seriously, as American Vandal so aptly demonstrated.
  • I feel like I’m going to lose my voice shouting, “Play Ben Hutton with Chris Tanev!” so much, but the Canucks keep not doing that, so what else can I do? Tanev and Del Zotto struggled all game, while Hutton and Pouliot had their own issues. Erik Gudbranson’s back spasms forced the Canucks to rejigger their lineup, but the pairings they landed on just didn’t work.
  • You might not like it, but Nic Dowd had an excellent game. He was dominant in the faceoff circle, going 11-for-13. He and his linemates, Brendan Gaunce and Loui Eriksson, were hard-matched against the McDavid line and they out-attempted them 16-4 and out-shot them 6-2. Holding the McDavid line to just two shots on goal in nearly 8 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time is a nice night’s work.
  • I had to laugh at the title for the NHL’s highlight video on YouTube for this game: “Maroon scores twice as Oilers down Canucks.” Sure, it’s factual, but no one watching came away thinking, “Patrick Maroon and his two goals, one of them an empty netter, was the story of that game.” Puljujarvi was dominant, putting up three points and firing a game-high six shots on goal, but sure, let’s lead with Maroon.