VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The Carolina Hurricanes and Vancouver Canucks are attempting a similar evolution this season.
Long one of the NHL’s most consistently dominant two-way teams, the Hurricanes have repeatedly bowed out of the playoffs at the hands of some rival goaltender standing on their head. The consistency with which Carolina has been eliminated in precisely this fashion is something you can set your watch to, an annual rite of spring.
Carolina’s current program has been around longer than the Jim Rutherford–Patrik Allvin era in Vancouver. This Hurricanes franchise has enjoyed a longer period of sustained success than this iteration of the Canucks and has had incredible continuity behind the bench with Rod Brind’Amour, who’s in his seventh season as Carolina’s head coach.
The Hurricanes’ model is more an aspirational standard for the Canucks at the moment than an apt comparison, something that was underlined when Vancouver head coach Rick Tocchet noted Monday that he has borrowed some ideas and tactics from Carolina.
Under the hood, however, the process the Canucks have been attempting to undergo this season — evolving from a high-end defensive team into a more well-rounded side capable of punishing opponents off the rush when it matters most in the Stanley Cup playoffs — is nearly an exact match for Carolina’s attempted metamorphosis. Both teams are seeking to raise their championship ceiling by upgrading the quality with which they play attacking hockey.
Though Vancouver’s success off the rush in the early going has been impressive but intermittent, the NHL’s foremost purveyors of “stress hockey” have suddenly become a powerhouse of vertical attacking hockey.
Carolina has enjoyed enormous success attacking off the rush in the early going, too, and it kept that success going Monday night in Vancouver, speed-bagging the Canucks for three rush goals in the first and second periods, then narrowly holding off a furious Canucks rally on their way to a 4-3 victory in overtime at Rogers Arena.
The Pettersson line’s reduced ice time
The Canucks can say what they like about Elias Pettersson, who scored his first goal of the season over the weekend, and how his game is trending in the right direction, but the Pettersson line was Vancouver’s least commonly used five-on-five forward line throughout most of Monday’s game. And Pettersson’s line with Conor Garland and Nils Höglander was eventually split up for long stretches in the third period, with Arshdeep Bains bumping up into Höglander’s usual left-wing spot.
It seemed especially notable that Vancouver’s usage of its top line dipped after a lackadaisical backchecking sequence from Höglander in particular on Martin Necas’ first-period go-ahead goal. Thankfully for Höglander, who has enjoyed a level of trust and responsibility that’s been hard for him to come by in his young NHL career until the past few weeks, he was able to secure a spot of redemption when he assisted on Pius Suter’s late tying goal in the final frame.
PIUS OF ART 🤌 pic.twitter.com/l2UtCFur4f
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) October 29, 2024
The first-period breakdown that seemed to restrain the Pettersson line’s usage was hardly the worst breakdown of the game, and the Pettersson line wasn’t alone among Vancouver’s forward lines in having trouble in key moments handling Carolina’s counterattack. But given how much the star Vancouver centre has dominated the conversation in the Vancouver market this season, it’s worth noting that this wasn’t a performance in which the Canucks’ star centre — or his linemates — was able to build on his breakthrough showing Saturday.
The Non-Hughes minutes
Vancouver has regularly been outshot this season in those five-on-five minutes when Quinn Hughes isn’t on the ice. For the most part, the Canucks have been able to escape those minutes without too much damage.
Meanwhile, when the Hughes pair with Filip Hronek is on the ice at five-on-five, Vancouver has generally won the minutes so decisively that it hasn’t prevented it from getting off to a hot start.
This trend line held mostly steady Monday, although against higher-calibre teams like the Hurricanes, the seams can show a bit more obviously.
As much as Erik Brännström’s emergence has helped in this area — and he had another sturdy showing Monday — through the first 55 minutes, Vancouver had outshot the Hurricanes 14-8 when Hughes was on the ice at five-on-five. In all other minutes, the shot counter favoured Carolina by a 15-7 margin.
Hughes has been Vancouver’s best skater in the early going and is playing at a dominant level. He was the best skater for either team once again Monday, and his efforts keyed Vancouver’s third-period rally, with his third-period goal off a rare slap shot standing out as a crucial moment.
To consistently beat teams as good as the Hurricanes, however, Vancouver will have to find more ways to control play without its captain on the ice. Adding Brännström has made a difference, but even more will likely be required.
This team is tough to beat
The Hurricanes could’ve put Monday night’s game to bed earlier. Key missed opportunities from Jackson Blake and Seth Jarvis to add to Carolina’s lead loomed large as Vancouver clawed back into the game and seized on a spot of wild-horse puckhandling decision-making from Hurricanes netminder Pyotr Kochetkov to level the score late in the third.
The Canucks, however, are extraordinarily difficult to kill. They proved that in the postseason last year, and Monday was more evidence of the special stuff this core group of Canucks players appears to store in its jerseys. Whether it’s guts or a certain clutch gene, the Canucks never seem to be all the way out of a game. Their ability to improbably rally has become something of a calling card for this group, it seems.
It’s a major reason Vancouver has been defeated only once in eight games in regulation. Vancouver’s win streak might have ended Monday, but that third-period rally and the obvious difficulty teams are having in defeating this Canucks side in regulation is something the club can hang its hat on heading into another fascinating matchup Wednesday night against the New Jersey Devils.
(Photo of Hurricanes forward Sebastian Aho after scoring the game-winning goal on Canucks goalie Kevin Lankinen: Bob Frid-Imagn Images)
