Tom Willander and Elias Pettersson were the bright spots for the Canucks this week, with Kevin Lankinen also turning in a much-needed strong outing in net as Vancouver kept searching for its first win in two weeks.
The week had already taken a sharp turn before the Canucks even hit Long Island and the Sunshine State. Aatu Räty was waived and then traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Filip Chytil was reactivated from IR, leaving the lineup in constant motion as Vancouver continued its East Coast swing.
The roster shuffle gave more players a chance to make a mark, especially with the team still trying to sort out early-season struggles. EP40 is on a point-per-game pace, EP25 has already scored 3 goals after scoring 3 through 70 games last year, and Chytil is playing heavy even-strength minutes and has two points in his two games back thus far.
The ingredients to win games are there; they just aren’t coming together as a full meal quite yet.
The Canucks did manage to grab an overtime point against the Florida Panthers, leaving Florida technically-but-not-totally winless, like Al Gore in 2000.
Pettersson earned first-star treatment again, and he’s making a strong case to keep collecting it if this run continues. His play has been steady enough that the usual “young defenceman learning on the job” warning signs can be set aside for the moment, even if mistakes are always part of the package. On a team still early in its rebuild, there’s room for that growth, and there’s room for him to keep thriving under a new head coach.
His second goal of the season came after Tom Willander and Brock Boeser worked the puck free for Filip Chytil to get it over to EP25, who gets right into the slot. Florida’s players are nowhere to be seen until it’s too late, all still stuck on Willander and Chytil down low. Pettersson does a fantastic job here as the key player amidst this cartoon: “Quick, create a diversion while I get up to mischief!”
Willander was the other blue-liner who really stood out. He’s settled into a top-four role and has shown the most growth of any of Vancouver’s young defenders so far, which matters even more because this is only his sophomore season.
His board battle with former first-overall pick Aaron Ekblad led directly to Pettersson’s goal, and he also looked offensively dominant against Florida. That’s no small thing against a Panthers team that doesn’t exactly stay within the tidy boundaries of rules and discipline.
With Buium and Hronek broken up after failing to spark as a top pair, and Jamie Oleksiak having a difficult go of it, the Canucks’ defensive mix has been uneven. That made Willander’s progress easier to spot, and more encouraging.
Lankinen, meanwhile, gave Vancouver a performance it badly needed. His early-season numbers have been rough - a 6.40 GAA and .807 SV% through 7 games while sharing the crease with Leevi Meriläinen, who carries a 2.51 GAA and .925 SV% in 6 games - so expectations weren’t exactly soaring when he got the start after Meriläinen had already done a significant job of keeping the Canucks in it the game before.
Instead, Lankinen delivered. Against the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team that has been a baseline level of good since Elias Pettersson, the forward, was still a rookie, he kept Vancouver close against Nikita Kucherov and Jake Guentzel and made some genuine highlight-reel saves.
Tampa didn’t have superweapon Andrei Vasilevskiy in goal, but they did have Dennis Hildeby, and the Lightning still looked like the better team on paper. The game stayed far tighter than it had any business being because Lankinen was on his game.
Even in defeat, that kind of showing can matter. For Lankinen, it was the sort of night that could help steady his confidence.
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