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.
Let’s start with some glove-drops for Jake Virtanen, who gave the puck away with Connor McDavid bearing down on him when he was the last man back. It was a rough start for Virtanen, who was helpless to stop McDavid’s pass to Patrick Maroon on the subsequent 2-on-1, and Maroon opened the scoring 1:25 into the game.
I’ll give a stick-tap to Travis Green for not benching Virtanen after the mistake. While he took Virtanen off the checking line with Nic Dowd and Brendan Gaunce, he moved him to the wing with the Sedins. Virtanen didn’t have a great game, but there wasn’t any need to further crush his confidence.
Dropping the gloves with Derrick Pouliot, who got caught out of position on the 2-0 goal. Pouliot came back into the lineup with Erik Gudbranson dealing with back spasms and looked a little out of sorts. He completely lost sight of Jujhar Khaira as he stepped up in the slot, and Jesse Puljujarvi slipped the puck in behind him for Khaira to finish on the backhand.
You could drop the gloves with Virtanen on that goal too: he could have and probably should have followed Khaira instead of turning towards Puljujarvi, but Pouliot was over-aggressive too. Two people can mess up at the same time.
Stick-tap to Alex Edler, who took a tough saucer pass from Brock Boeser on the power play and sent a low, hard shot/pass to Daniel Sedin, who deflected it neatly past Cam Talbot to make it 2-1. That gave Edler a five-game point streak and ended Boeser’s three-game point drought.
The Sedins deserve a tap of the stick on the goal too. Their puck movement on that power play was superb, wearing down the Oilers penalty kill leading up to the goal.
Big tap of the stick to Sven Baertschi, who was the Canucks’ best skater in this game. His passing was excellent in this game and he set up Brandon Sutter for the 2-2 goal on a 2-on-1, looking shot the whole way before whipping the puck across to Sutter.
Nice play by Baertschi to get the rolling puck to sit, stare Talbot down and force him to think shot before making a crisp tape-to-tape pass to Brandon Sutter. #Canucks pic.twitter.com/LXx6aRydkw
— Grady Sas (@GradySas) January 21, 2018
Two glove-drops on the 3-2 goal: Michael Del Zotto and Brandon Sutter. Del Zotto got caught in no man’s land, covering neither a man nor the front of the net, but Sutter is the one who was on Puljujarvi and failed to tie up his stick as he went to the goal.
I have to drop the gloves with Nolan Baumgartner. At least, I assume he’s the one who paired Michael Del Zotto with Chris Tanev. The duo played mainly against the line of Leon Draisaitl, Jesse Puljujarvi, and Milan Lucic; they got crushed. The Canucks were out-shot 12-4 when that pairing was on the ice and out-attempted 18-5. It wasn’t pretty.
Dropping the gloves with linesman Trent Knorr. As the puck came up the boards, Troy Stecher moved to keep it in at the point, but it hit Knorr’s skate and went to Lucic instead. He sent Puljujarvi away with the puck on a 2-on-1 and he set up Draisaitl for the 4-2 finish.
He may have given up four goals, but Jacob Markstrom still gets a tap of the stick. The score could have been far more lopsided without some of his excellent saves. He stopped 30 of the 34 shots he faced and couldn’t do much about the pucks that got past him.
A tap of the stick to Nic Dowd, Brendan Gaunce, and Loui Eriksson, who were hard-matched against the McDavid line and performed admirably in the role. When Dowd was on the ice against McDavid, the Canucks out-attempted the Oilers 16-4 and out-shot them 6-2.
Stick-tap to Alex Edler and Troy Stecher, who were also matched against the McDavid line and did a pretty solid job, apart from the multiple times Stecher got caught pinching. So, Stecher gets the gloves dropped too.
Glove-drops for Thomas Vanek and Sam Gagner, who struggled to create anything offensively in this game, getting badly out-shot when they were on the ice. By the end of the game, they had been replaced by Sven Baertschi and Brandon Sutter, who had much stronger games.
