VANCOUVER — Those concerned Tuesday that the Vancouver Canucks might have been wronged on a penalty-shot call for the second time in two weeks — they probably were — missed a larger point.
During garbage time of the National Hockey League season for non-playoff teams like the Canucks and Anaheim Ducks, it doesn’t much matter whether a penalty shot is earned. It matters more about whether the opportunity is seized.
And Ducks prospect Sam Steel, who for all Canuck fans knew before Tuesday’s game may as well have been famous Mountie Sam Steele who policed the Klondike Gold Rush, seized his penalty-shot moment.
Sam Steel grabbed the whole game, scoring three times as the Ducks held on to beat the Canucks 5-4 at Rogers Arena.
Apparently, Steel badly wants to be on Anaheim’s NHL team next season and the 21-year-old rookie, who won a Western Hockey League scoring title a couple of years ago, played Tuesday like a prospect determined to build a better future.
It was impossible to miss him as he scored on a beautiful breakaway deke, bashed in a loose puck that Canuck goalie Jacob Markstrom had fumbled, then buried a backhand top corner on his contentious penalty shot that broke a 2-2 tie with 51 seconds remaining in the second period.
It hardly mattered, despite the specific wording of NHL rule 53.6, that Canuck Markus Granlund didn’t actually play a broken stick at the puck, but instead pushed the kindling out of his way before Duck Cam Fowler’s pass struck it from a perpendicular angle. The referees and linesmen huddled, talked to the war room in Toronto, and called a penalty shot. It should have been taken by Fowler, a defenceman, but the officials let the Ducks decide the shooter and the players chose Steel.
Why wouldn’t they?
After scoring just once in his first 17 NHL games, the 2016 first-round pick had already scored twice in a span of 23 minutes against the Canucks. He was recalled from the minors last week.
Listen, if the league can allow Dallas Stars goalie Anton Khudobin to launch his stick at Canuck Elias Pettersson on a penalty shot like Captain Ahab launching a harpoon at Moby Dick, as occurred in a far more meaningful game on March 17, officials can certainly interpret a subjective ruling in the Ducks’ favour.
The point, again, is that Steel seized the day. Which is more than could be said for most of the Canucks who, as team leader Bo Horvat conceded, had a 30-minute lull from the end of the first period until the middle of the third, by which point Vancouver trailed 5-2 on home-ice against a divisional rival two points behind them in the standings.
Draftists rejoice!
“It’s pretty special to accomplish that,” Steel, who is from Ardrossan, Alta., said of his hat trick. “I wasn’t really sure why there was a whistle there. Guys were saying it was a penalty. And then the penalty shot came up. Guys were saying my name, so they gave me the shot.
“I just got the callup, so I’m trying to make an impact every game and just do whatever I can.”
An undrafted player named Kiefer Sherwood, who sounds like he could have written Moby Dick, also had a goal and assist for Anaheim, which is 8-4-1 this month. Another young prospect, Troy Terry, had an assist and finished plus-three for the Ducks.
The Canucks checked out after getting a couple of bounces on goals by Jake Virtanen and Alex Edler to build a 2-1 first-period lead, and didn’t re-engage until they trailed by three in the third period. Josh Leivo and Tanner Pearson scored for Vancouver in the final seven minutes.
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“We had a 30-minute lull and we can’t be doing that,” Horvat said. “We showed what we could do there in the last 10 minutes of the game; we were all over them, in their zone all the time. We’ve got to play like that every single game, every shift, everybody.”
The Canucks’ lack of urgency and execution in the middle part of the game was disconcerting because Vancouver was mostly awful in Sunday’s 5-0 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets and coach Travis Green had talked to his players about a bounce-back effort.
“I thought we did respond pretty well in the first period,” Horvat said. “And, I don’t know, we just thought it was going to be an easy game after that. That’s not how it works, especially against a team that’s playing well right now and has a lot of young guys that want to prove themselves.”
The Canucks have guys, not all of them young, who should be trying to prove themselves, too. They’ve lost three straight.
“We’re trying to build something here for the future,” Edler, whose 93rd goal as a Canuck tied Mattias Ohlund’s franchise record for defencemen, told reporters. “We’ve all got to be hungry and play hard. It’s a little bit frustrating that we could be so good and so bad in the same game.”
