OUTLASTING
Hutton scores OT penalty-shot winner and Canucks stay ahead of last-place Coyotes
It can always be worse, right?
The Vancouver Canucks wore lavender jerseys in a Hockey Fights Cancer initiative during their warm-up skate Thursday with names of friends, family and others suffering from the disease stitched on their backs. It made their losing ways in an NHL season already off the rails seem irrelevant — at least for one day when they could think of the less-fortunate.
So they have something to be thankful for amid swirling speculation that change might be at hand. They have health, but they don’t have a wealth of hope to see their playoffs mantra come to fruition.
A loss to the last-place Arizona Coyotes at Rogers Arena would have been rock bottom, a pitiful place where the franchise would have to finally take a hard look at how it all came to this, a hard look at all those empty seats and who should be steering this team.
And whether you want to call it a stay of execution or a sign of life, the Canucks rallied from a twogoal hole and a 3-2 overtime decision was something. Not everything, but something.
The issue was finally settled when Ben Hutton scored on a penalty shot at 2:34 on a backhand deke after drawing a penalty on a breakaway with the same move.
It came after Daniel Sedin was stopped in tight with 2:48 left in regulation, Brandon Sutter thwarted in the final minute and Sven Baertschi at the buzzer to give the club 40 shots.
On a night when they lost Derek Dorsett to an upper-body injury in the first period — likely a shoulder — it looked like they lost their way yet again. They had lost the benefit of the doubt on a Coyotes challenge when Michael Chaput was called for goalie interference in the first period — tying up Louis Dominque’s stick — on what looked like an Alex Edler goal from the point.
And when they lost a second-period offside challenge on Brad Richardson’s opening goal — Laurent Dauphin’s back skate appeared to be in the air at the blue-line — they could have unravelled like a ball of string. Especially when Jacob Markstrom put himself out of position on an Anthony DeAngelo power-play goal.
However, Daniel Sedin would set up Brandon Sutter in the slot and then score a power-play goal of his own in a span of 2:13 and we were all left to wonder yet again if the league’s 28th-ranked offence, 29th-rated power play and 27th-ranked club at even-strength scoring could find an elusive third goal because they’re only averaging two per game.
Alex Burrows, who’s playing like he’s 25 and not 35, had a glorious chance early in the third period and then another, and Loui Eriksson followed up. And when Radim Vrbata had a chance to break a 2-2 draw with eight minutes left, the former Canucks winger looking for his seventh goal of the season, it would have been like pouring salt on a gaping franchise wound.
OF NOTE: The Coyotes lost Richardson in the second period in a collision with towering Nikita Tryamkin. He was bent over in his own zone when he collided with the Russian behemoth and his right leg was pinned under him. He left on a stretcher and went to hospital for further evaluation.