VANCOUVER — Last week, as an inferno raged at home over his team’s lack of response to the hit that injured their best player, Vancouver Canuck Bo Horvat said incredulously that it was like fans would have rather he got in a fight instead of scoring the game-winning goal against the Florida Panthers.
Saturday, against the Boston Bruins, he did both.
Nobody could possibly find fault with Horvat now, except maybe anyone wishing he had an assist to go with his fighting major and winning goal in his team’s gritty 2-1 overtime victory.
“That would have been my first Gordie Howe (hat trick),” Horvat said. “I’m just thankful we got the winner.”
After two weeks on the road left the Canucks playing what amounted to Game 7 of their trip, Vancouver hung on the final two periods against the Bruins before winning at 3:12 of overtime when Horvat finished a give-and-go with Brock Boeser by scoring on a goalmouth backhand.
It was seven nights earlier that Horvat scored a beautiful third-period winner in Florida that was largely ignored back home amid the fan outrage that no one on the Canucks went after Panthers defenceman Mike Matheson for the body-slam that injured rookie Elias Pettersson in the third period.
Against the Bruins, Horvat answered Noel Acciari’s challenge to fight after the Canuck flattened Boston’s Joakim Nordstrom with an open ice hit. Naturally, social media lit up with buzz comparing the incidents a week apart.
But, Horvat said, there was little comparison. He said everybody saw his hit on Nordstrom early in the second period. None of the Canucks saw what happened to Pettersson slightly behind the play a minute before Horvat scored the game-winner against the Panthers halfway through the third period.
“Some guys, if they saw the hit, they’d definitely have done something with Pettersson getting hurt,” Horvat said. “They would have stepped in. On this one, I kind of did (the hit) myself. So I wanted to answer the bell for myself. I saw him come over to me and at that time, you just have to choose if you’re going to drop them.
“I didn’t know anything about (Acciari). I had no idea, no clue. I found out pretty quick when he got a hold of me that he was a lefty.”
Horvat won the fight.
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The Canucks won the game thanks largely to goalie Jacob Markstrom, who watched backup Anders Nilsson get on a roll on the road trip and play its last four games.
In his first start in 11 nights, Markstrom stopped 30 of 31 shots and was extremely sharp over the final 40 minutes of regulation time when the Canucks, looking tired after their fortnight away from home, were outshot 25-13.
By contrast, Bruin goalie Jaroslav Halak got a piece of Horvat’s winner but was awful on Brandon Sutter’s scuff-in that made it 1-0 for the Canucks just 3:40 into the game.
Nordstrom eventually tied it for the Bruins at 7:45 of the third period, using defenceman Ben Hutton as a screen while rifling a wrist shot past Markstrom’s glove.
“If you want to play, you’ve got to play good,” Markstrom said. “And I want to play. It’s nice to see Nilsson playing good and the team getting wins, but you want to be in there, too. Me and Nils push each other every day, so it’s good.”
Markstrom conceded the time off on the road allowed him to reset and work extensively with new goaltending coach Ian Clark on technical changes.
“We had pretty much over a week working on stuff every day,” Markstrom said. “It’s been going good but at the same time, when you come out there (to play), you’ve got to just let it come to you and if it’s ready to come into your game, it’s ready.”
The Canucks, at least, were ready for overtime.
“My first four years, I sucked in overtime,” Horvat said. “I got scored on all the time. It’s definitely something I want to be better at this year. Brock and I have some good chemistry out there and thankfully the pucks are going in right now.”
The winning combination – Boeser to Horvat – was the reverse of the Canucks’ game-winning goal Tuesday in Pittsburgh, when Boeser scored from a Horvat pass in overtime. Boeser didn’t initially see the puck go in that night, and his celebration after setting up Horvat on Saturday was far more effusive.
“I saw all of this one luckily,” Boeser said. “It was a great play by Bo to get it over to me, and I just wanted to get it back to him because the puck was rolling. Thankfully, it got to him because I was gassed and needed a change after that.”
A lot of the Canucks looked gassed in the first game at home, preceded by travel, after the last six on the road.
“Game by game, we’re creating an identity for ourselves,” Horvat said. “We’re playing hard every night. Our compete level is there, and our resiliency. I think this says a lot about our club right now.”
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