VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Canucks played like “a team like that” on Saturday and still beat Drew Doughty’s Los Angeles Kings.
This wasn’t so much an indictment of the Kings as it was a reflection on Vancouver goalie Jacob Markstrom, who had to earn his 100th win in the NHL with a career-high 49 saves in the Canucks’ 3-2 robbery.
Doughty, who seemed to deride the Canucks when he said the Kings shouldn’t be losing 8-2 to a “team like that” after a Vancouver blowout on Oct. 9, was booed each time he touched the puck in his first game back at Rogers Arena.
But on a night when the Kings outshot the Canucks 39-16 in the final two periods and 51-26 for the game, the scorn seemed as misguided as the brazen in-house, pre-game promotion of the contest as Los Angeles versus “a team like that.” Doughty was on the ice when the PA announcer said it.
For most of the game, the Canucks were a team like that, and only Markstrom prevented the Kings from climbing within four points of Vancouver in the Pacific Division standings.
Instead, the Canucks matched a season-high with their fourth straight win and climbed back into a playoff position in the Western Conference wild-card race.
“Coming off a break, you never really know what you’re going to feel like,” Canucks winger Tyler Motte said. “I thought we played pretty well in the first, (but) the second got away from us. We didn’t take care of the puck. We got better there in the third, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”
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“We shot ourselves in the foot there,” forward Tanner Pearson, the ex-King, said. “We weren’t strong enough on the walls. Making turnovers at the blue lines makes it look like you’re getting stomped on all night. We were able to hold off the siege there and still get two points. But it’s pretty clear, we’ve got to play better than that.”
Motte, who scored his first goal of the season in Monday’s 4-2 win against the Edmonton Oilers, blew a wrist shot past Los Angeles goalie Jonathan Quick’s catching glove from above the left-wing faceoff dot to make it 2-0 for Vancouver at 19:32 of the first period.
Jake Virtanen had opened scoring at 10:22 by accepting Austin Wagner’s ghastly cross-ice turnover and converting the generous rebound Quick offered up on the Canuck’s initial shot from the slot.
Most of the rest of the game was played in Vancouver’s zone. Total shot attempts were 94-38 for the Kings. (We just checked; that is not a typo).
Brilliant in a nine-game run since returning from his father’s funeral in Sweden, Markstrom single-handedly kept the Canucks in the lead when the Kings were outshooting them 18-7 in the middle period.
When Los Angeles finally tied it 2-2 on Tyler Toffoli’s rebound goal at 6:46 of the third, Vancouver answered just 19 seconds later when Elias Pettersson converted an excellent pass from J.T. Miller on a two-on-one after the Canuck got behind Kings defenceman Sean Walker.
“We didn’t have our best game,” Pettersson understated. “We made a lot of turnovers, but that’s why you have a good goalie. He got us the win today.
“We were sloppy with the puck. We tried to make too many plays at the blue line, and that cost us a lot of chances. It’s a good thing we can come away with a win, but we can’t play like this next game.”
The next game is Sunday in Calgary, and it seems impossible after Markstrom’s workload on Saturday that Thatcher Demko, back from a concussion, won’t make his first start since Dec. 7 against the Flames.
When Pettersson was asked about Markstrom facing 50 shots, the Canucks centre corrected the questioner: “Fifty-one.”
It was the most shots surrendered by the Canucks since the St. Louis Blues outshot them 50-19 in a 3-0 shutout in Vancouver on March 19, 2016. In 50 years in the NHL, the Canucks had never won a home game when allowing 50 shots.
“If you look at it again, they throw a lot of pucks at net,” Markstrom said. “There were some rebounds where they got a couple of whacks at it where maybe I could have held the first puck. When you get the win, it’s way easier to go through video after.”
Reeling from four losses in five games just 11 days ago and in danger of losing touch with the playoff race, the Canucks have been carried back into the fight by Markstrom. He is 5-3 since Dec. 10 and has won three times while facing at least 43 shots.
“A huge win,” Markstrom, 29, said after his milestone victory. “To get right back in the win column after the break is obviously a good feeling.”
“Unbelievable,” Pearson said. “He definitely won that one for us.”
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