You can’t win a series in Game 1, but you can make playoff magic.

On Wednesday night, the Vancouver Canucks pulled off one of the most thrilling postseason comebacks in team history. It was a remarkable show at Rogers Arena, one that fans in attendance elevated with a high-decibel noise level and unmistakable passion.

As fun and exciting as Vancouver’s 5-4 victory over the Edmonton Oilers was in Game 1, Vancouver still has a long way to go in this series. And Game 2 on Friday night will probably look completely different from what we saw on Wednesday.

CALL IT A COMEBACK‼️

Watch how the #Canucks clawed back from a 4-2 deficit going into the third period to win it 5-4 in Game 1! pic.twitter.com/bPFQcG4YqP

— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) May 9, 2024

This is what makes playoff hockey so fun. Momentum doesn’t necessarily transfer from game to game. What’s true one game, can easily be reversed in the next.

Some of what we saw in the first game will matter as the series goes on, and some of it is just noise. As we consider what to expect in Game 2 at Rogers Arena on Friday night, here are five observations from Game 1 that could echo throughout the balance of this all-Canadian series.

Arturs Silovs’ tough night

With victories in three of his four starts since Casey DeSmith was injured (after Thatcher Demko was already injured), precocious Canucks netminder Arturs Silovs has — as Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet put it — earned the right to push this incredible run he’s on for as long as it lasts.

In Game 1, however, there were some signs of slippage in Silovs’ form. And it wasn’t necessarily the goals against that revealed them.

In truth, Edmonton’s third and fourth goals were the goals against that most frustrated Canucks fans, but both of those were just bad bounces; a deflection off of his defender’s knee, a weird bouncer off of a defender’s stick. Those are bounces that happen, even if they rarely happen within a minute of one another.

If Silovs had stopped either deflection, that would’ve been great. It also would’ve been one of those really tough saves that NHL netminders don’t get enough credit for making.

The first Oilers goal, a near perfect setup on the power play, was more or less a no doubter. And the second goal was a genuinely dangerous Mattias Ekholm shot that beat Silovs top corner through layered traffic (the screens set by Vancouver defenders), although Silovs looked the wrong way around Ian Cole before Ekholm released it, compounding the issue.

Ultimately, Silovs found his game when Vancouver needed it late, as the Oilers were pressing. Silovs got the win and that’s the only standard that really matters at this time of year.

Despite how steady and calm Silovs has been in net over the past week, including eliminating the Nashville Predators with a stellar shutout performance in Game 6 of Round 1, watching Game 1 there was a sense that his footwork was a bit off. He seemed more excitable than he has in most of his other starts this postseason. He also seemed to struggle somewhat tracking the puck, relative to his usual standard.

It seems unlikely that Vancouver goes to Casey DeSmith in Game 2, but it might be worth considering in this series if some of those signs of technical slippage continue to surface in Silovs’ game. Vancouver is asking a lot of their prized young netminder and although he’s been up to the task and then some, it’s still possible he may need a reset at some point this series.

Elias Pettersson faces off against Connor McDavid in Game 1. Pettersson looked more like his usual self. (Derek Cain / Getty Images)

Pettersson’s bounce back

Quiet all postseason, Elias Pettersson looked like himself again in Game 1 against the Oilers.

He picked his teeth with Edmonton at five-on-five, while matched up primarily with Ryan McLeod’s third line. He threw five hits. He led all Canucks forwards in third-period ice time, as the club closed the book on an incredible comeback victory.

And, perhaps most importantly, Pettersson looked for his shot far more decisively than he has since the early phases of the Nashville Predators series. He even took a one-timer on the power play off of a cross-seam feed from J.T. Miller, something we’ve seen far too infrequently since the postseason began. On another rush chance, Pettersson didn’t look pass and instead launched a dangerous wrist shot that Stuart Skinner only just fought off.

In those moments, Pettersson’s game looked far more recognizable than it has over the past weeks.

Now, Pettersson has never been a high shot-volume player. He’s a dual threat processor, who looks to make the right play, as opposed to looking for his shot first.

On Wednesday in Game 1, however, it looked like Pettersson was getting to his shot far more decisively — like it was a higher-priority consideration in his decision-making tree. It was as though he was somehow putting his Round 1 struggles behind him and playing confident hockey, arguably for the first time this postseason.

Pettersson didn’t beat Skinner on Wednesday, but it was his best two-way performance of the playoffs. Vancouver is going to gain an edge if Pettersson’s game keeps trending this way over the balance of the series, particularly given the possible knock-on effects in the event that Oilers star centre Leon Draisaitl — who was absent from Edmonton’s practice on Thursday afternoon — is unable to go in Game 2 (or beyond).

Containing McDavid

How hard is it to shut down Connor McDavid?

Well, consider the following: sports books handicap his odds of recording a single point in a game (which he managed in Game 1) at about -750, a price that carries an implied probability of over 88 percent. The price for him to record two points (or more) in a game typically hovers between -150 and -160, which translates to a roughly 60 percent implied probability.

Keeping McDavid from doing real damage is a near impossible feat, but Vancouver managed it in Game 1. McDavid was held to just one point and zero shots on goal, which seems impossible.

There are a lot of Canucks players who deserve credit for limiting McDavid in Game 1, but the work of the Carson Soucy-Tyler Myers pair stands out. In a relatively hard match head-to-head with McDavid, Vancouver only surrendered three shots against in roughly 10 minutes of ice time between the Soucy-Myers pair and McDavid at five-on-five.

That level of performance is stupendous, but it’s also unlikely to be sustained. McDavid is going to get his at some point this series, and there’s a real possibility that this particular matchup turns out to be an example of Vancouver playing with fire.

While Soucy-Myers drew the short straw on the back end, Vancouver was even more disciplined about gluing the Miller line to McDavid at five-on-five. And in these minutes, Vancouver had a meaningful edge in the matchup, out-shooting and out-chancing Edmonton in Miller and McDavid’s head-to-head minutes.

Once again, asking Miller to keep up that level of two-way play against the most impactful hockey-playing human on the planet seems like a stretch as we get deeper into this series. Watching it all play out, however, I was struck by how many sequences Miller and Brock Boeser were able to accumulate in which they protected the puck down low against McDavid, while he struggled to contain them.

Miller and Boeser weren’t able to generate any goals in this matchup, but if Vancouver is able to play the McDavid line to a draw at five-on-five, it’s going to go a long way toward winning this matchup. And even if McDavid is all but inevitable to put his stamp on this series, it’s going to be an awful lot more difficult for the Oilers megastar if Miller and Boeser continue to make him expend energy beneath the hashmarks in the defensive end.

Hyman’s intelligence

I used to love watching Marian Hossa whenever Vancouver played the Chicago Blackhawks (or the Detroit Red Wings). Hossa was a genius-level two-way winger, and what always struck me about him was the way he always seemed to know precisely how to attack his opponents.

Now that I’ve been around a bit, I know that Hossa was famous for watching film and pre-scouting the tendency of his opponents. Which makes sense. Because entering the zone against Christian Ehrhoff, he’d try to put his shoulder into the skilled Vancouver defender and protect the puck on the other side of his body. Against Willie Mitchell, he’d chip it by him and apply pressure, trying to force the veteran Canucks shutdown guy into an error.

Eventually I started to think of it as the “Marian Hossa test.” The idea is simple. Watch Hossa attack various NHL defenders off of the rush or in-zone, and you’ll learn what one of the most cerebral attacking forwards of his generation thought he could exploit in the game of his opponents.

I was reminded of the Marian Hossa test throughout game one because I thought Oilers winger Zach Hyman brought similar foresight and thoughtfulness into how he attacked various Canucks defenders. He had an entry, for example, where he simply put his shoulder into Filip Hronek and used his body to protect the puck. Against Vancouver’s bigger second- and third-pair defenders, Hyman regularly tried to take them wide or attack their heels (as he did with Myers on his second goal) in an effort to force them to turn and move.

Watching it transpire in Game 1, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen that particular film before. If you just watch Hyman go about his business in Game 2, you’ll learn an awful lot about how one of the smartest wingers in the game wants to attack various Canucks defenders to maximize his probability of generating a quality look.

The Oilers’ dare

The Nashville Predators made a game plan of fronting Vancouver’s perimeter shots, attempting to limit the Canucks’ bread-and-butter looks from the point through layered traffic.

It was an approach that frustrated Vancouver on occasion, but also, arguably, left the Predators too compact in the defensive zone and ceded too much sustained offensive zone time to the Canucks as the first-round series went along. The Canucks may have struggled to score against the Predators, but because they dominated the puck so frequently, Nashville struggled to generate much of anything at all.

The Oilers tried something different in Game 1, and it’ll be fascinating to see if they stick with it in Game 2. Unlike the Predators, the Oilers want this series to be decided by their host of high-end shooters and playmakers. If each game is decided by a single scoring opportunity converted or missed, the way Vancouver’s first-round series was, that cedes the advantage to the underdog Canucks — who also happen to be the kings of the high-variance game script.

Edmonton, in contrast, wants more scoring chances both ways. The more wide open the game is, the more these two teams trade chances, the better off the Oilers should be.

In an effort to bring about a faster pace to this series than Vancouver had in the bumper-car hockey of the first round, the Oilers pressured the points with near reckless abandon. Cutting off the top wasn’t just a priority, it was something Oilers defenders regularly sold out to try to accomplish.

I wonder how much Edmonton’s distinct approach to defending Vancouver in-zone is actually something of a dare to Vancouver’s personnel. By pressuring up high as intensely as Edmonton did, there should be space down low for the Canucks to attempt to make plays and work the puck into dangerous scoring areas. This Canucks team, however, is wired to maintain possession and make conservative puck management decisions when set up in the offensive zone.

If Vancouver tries to make skilled plays down low and either coughs up the puck or misses a shot, it leaves the Oilers in a good position to counter quickly, especially because their forwards are already positioned high in the zone to make their breakout more like a jailbreak. It’s a potentially novel approach to impose Edmonton’s preferred pace and style on this series, and one that worked particularly well in the first half of Game 1.

I’ll be curious to see how Vancouver adjusts in Game 2 now that they’ve seen this tactical approach in action. Will they take what’s given to them, or continue to play the relatively rigid style that has brought them here?

(Top photo of Arturs Silovs: Derek Cain / Getty Images)