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Stick-taps and Glove-drops: Canucks at Golden Knights, March 20, 2018

Kudos and critiques from tonight's game.
Stick-taps and Glove-drops

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. Feel free to leave your own stick-taps and glove-drops in the comments.


A tap of the stick to the Vegas fans, who showed up in force for a Tuesday night game against one of the worst teams in the league and cheered the roof off. The atmosphere in their arena is marvelous.

Stick-tap to Jake Virtanen, who may have taken a bad penalty in the second period, but was at least engaged all game. He had a team-high eight shot attempts, although just two got to the goal, and was credited with six hits. A lot of hits can often mean you just don’t have the puck much, but the Canucks out-attempted the Knights 24-9 when Virtanen was on the ice at 5-on-5.

I’m dropping the gloves with Bo Horvat, who had a couple good moments offensively, but looked lost defensively on two Golden Knights’ goals. On the opening goal, he chased William Karlsson as he entered the zone, then got caught puck-watching and never got back into position. By the time he got to the front of the net, Jonathan Marchessault was already putting the puck off the post and in.

I’ll drop a glove or two for Chris Tanev on that goal as well. He was tracking Marchessault, then turned away from him for a moment as the puck was sent down the boards. That’s when Horvat needed to be there to cover for Tanev as Marchessault went to the slot, but Tanev should have tracked him better as well.

Jacob Markstrom gets the gloves dropped on the 2-0 goal. Shea Theodore tried to deke past Alex Biega, but Biega disrupted his move and the puck slid through to Markstrom. Instead of covering it up, however, Markstrom poked the puck away, which was ill-advised; the puck popped up and Cody Eakin swatted it out of mid-air. It deflected off Derrick Pouliot’s shoulder and tumbled over Markstrom into the net.

Dropping the gloves with Michael Del Zotto for his dumb penalty on David Perron. The two players encountered each other behind the Canucks net, then Perron seemed to hold Del Zotto’s stick. That frustrated Del Zotto to the point that he dropped him to the ice with a body check miles away from the puck. Look, the team is struggling: don’t make it worse for your teammates by forcing them to kill an unnecessary penalty.

It’s too bad, because Del Zotto deserves a stick-tap for his overall strong performance. He had a few effective hits, as in plays where he separated the player from the puck rather than just finishing his check, and jumped up in the play to create some chaos and chances. Shots on goal were 13-6 for the Canucks with Del Zotto on the ice at even-strength and he had 21:40 in ice time.

Reid Boucher gets the gloves dropped on Pierre-Edouard Bellemare’s 3-0 goal, as he gave the puck away to Tomas Nosek. He made the poor decision to turn back instead of keeping the puck moving up the boards. Nosek pinned Boucher’s stick to the boards with a smart bodycheck, then came off the boards and fed Bellemare for a quick shot that fooled Markstrom.

A tap of the stick to Marc-Andre Fleury in hopes that he’s okay. He left the game after the first period and Malcolm Subban came in, possibly because of a shot he took off the mask from Brandon Sutter. Hopefully it was just precautionary given the concussion issues he’s dealt with this season and earlier in his career.

 

 

Dropping the gloves with Troy Stecher on the Knights’ fourth goal. He and Horvat ended up looking lost, but it was Stecher that was originally on Tomas Tatar in the slot and left him to try to block a backdoor pass. The puck came to Tatar all alone in the slot; his original shot hit Stecher, but he cleaned up the rebound and beat a down-and-out Markstrom.

Brandon Sutter scored a goal, so he gets a stick-tap. Pouliot hit Sutter in stride with an outlet pass and Sutter gained the offensive zone with some speed to beat Perron wide. Theodore cut off his lane to the net, but Sutter’s quick snap shot from a bad angle tipped off Theodore’s stick and beat Subban five-hole.