Stick-taps and glove-drops is a recurring feature after every Canucks game giving some quick kudos and criticism before the longer I Watched This Game feature. That’s right: two post-game articles for the price of one! That price is still zero dollars.
A tap of the stick to Hockey Fights Cancer, which has raised more than $18 million for cancer research since it began in 1998. Unlike the NFL’s breast cancer awareness initiatives, the money raised by Hockey Fights Cancer goes directly to cancer research, and the NHL does not make a profit from selling Hockey Fights Cancer merchandise. The Bruins wore lavender practice jerseys for warm-up that will be auctioned off to support the initiative and a young cancer survivor dropped the puck for the ceremonial faceoff.
A tap of the stick to Derek Dorsett for opening the scoring and another tap of the stick to David Pastrnak, whose stick reaching in caused Dorsett’s shot to flutter softly past Anton Khudobin. Don Cherry is going to lose his mind.
Like Tim Schaller, I’m dropping the gloves with Erik Gudbranson, though not literally, because oh boy, would that ever end poorly for me. Not only was Gudbranson’s hit on Frank Vatrano ugly, unnecessary, and likely suspension-worthy, but the five-minute major penalty that followed essentially ended the game. The Bruins scored three goals on the five-minute power play.
Dropping the gloves with John Garrett as well. It may not have been his intent, but he seemed to look for ways to excuse Gudbranson’s hit, bringing up the size difference — Vatrano is 5’9” — then complaining about there being no instigator penalty Schaller challenged Gudbranson after the hit.
Let’s drop the gloves with the Canucks’ penalty kill. After shutting down the first three minutes of the major penalty, they gave up three goals in 1:37. Lots of gloves to go around on the three goals: Michael Del Zotto for getting walked by David Pastrnak, Alex Burmistrov for playing too high on the penalty kill and letting Anders Bjork step past him, and Burmistrov again for not picking up David Krejci off a rebound.
A commiserative stick-tap for Anders Nilsson, who followed up his 32-save shutout against the Senators by getting pulled in the first period. He gets a stick-tap not because he played particularly well, but because I feel sorry for the poor guy. He played less than 11 minutes and faced 17 shots, 10 of them while shorthanded.
Ben Hutton gets the gloves dropped, as he got his pocket picked by Patrice Bergeron in the defensive zone when he took too long to move the puck. That led to the fifth Bruins goal; worse, it was Brad Marchand who scored.
The Canucks’ power play gets a confused stick-tap. For most of the game, it wasn’t very good, but then something seemed to click, leading to a nifty Thomas Vanek tip in front of the net to make the score 5-2.
Stick-tap to Bo Horvat, who took a nice pass from Sven Baertschi, cut to the middle of the ice, and ripped a low shot past Khudobin for the Canucks’ third goal of the game. Ben Hutton gets a tap as well, for jumping up in the rush and screening Khudobin. The goal at least made things interesting heading into the third period.
Bowie Horvat with the nice power move to cut the lead to 5-3#Canucks pic.twitter.com/7yvPY7iS60
— Ryan Biech (@ryanbiech) October 20, 2017
Dropping the gloves with Dorsett for his over-aggressive play on the penalty kill that led to the sixth goal for the Bruins. Dorsett took himself out of the play sliding into the boards, leading to a 5-on-3 and a goal for Bergeron to go with his three assists in his return to the Bruins lineup.
Stick-tap to Adam McQuaid for putting himself in the line of fire as Brock Boeser teed off midway through the first looking for the comeback. McQuaid collapsed to the ice in agony after the second shot, a blistering slap shot that caught McQuaid in the right ankle. Seems like Boeser can really rip the puck.
