Jeff Misenti
In what turned out to be a great Tuesday night at the Rogers Arena, the Vancouver Canucks beat the Florida Panthers 5-2.
Elias Pettersson scored twice, including the 200th goal of his NHL career, and Marco Rossi added a goal and two assists. Brock Boeser had three helpers, and Kevin Lankinen stopped 21 shots.
Pettersson had gone 20 games without a goal before breaking through twice on the power play, and Lankinen earned his first win in 10 starts.
The Canucks have now won two of their last three, which may not sound like much, but after the stretch this team has dragged through, it matters.
I’ve watched enough Canucks hockey to know when a game starts to feel fragile, even when the scoreboard looks safe. Vancouver came out with a real jump, yet there was still that familiar tension after Matthew Tkachuk tied the game in the first period.
Against a team like Florida, those are the moments that usually turn into trouble. This time, they didn’t.
The flow of the game
At 3:49 of the first, Pettersson opened the scoring on a one-timer from the right circle after a cross-ice pass from Rossi. Tkachuk answered at 11:41 after a strange bounce off Carter Verhaeghe left him alone in front.
Pettersson struck again on the power play at 13:40, with the shot deflecting in off two Panthers defensemen for goal No. 200. Rossi then made it 3-1 late in the period after Boeser won a puck battle and slipped him a pass in front. That first period had some bite to it.
Then came the tension. Sam Bennett cut it to 3-2 in the second, and it felt like the Panthers were hanging around long enough to flip the script. Instead, Aatu Raty restored the two-goal lead after a failed clearing pass, and later Drew O’Connor finished another chance from right on top of the crease.
As NHL.com put it, three Vancouver goals came with skaters left wide open in front of the Florida net, and Panthers coach Paul Maurice admitted those breakdowns were unusual for his club.
A better night, but not a clean slate
The Associated Press reported that Lankinen was playing in his 200th NHL game, while Panthers defenseman Seth Jones returned after missing 26 games.
Reuters found Sergei Bobrovsky was making his 800th NHL appearance, but the milestone night belonged to the Canucks.
Pettersson’s last goal came on January 13, making this his longest drought in the NHL. He said he has been trying to simplify and shoot more, and you could see that in the way he attacked his looks instead of overthinking them.
Boeser backed that up, too, saying a confident Pettersson needs to keep letting that shot go. For Vancouver, that matters more than one nice night in March. It changes the feel of the room a bit.
The reality is this win does not fix the season. I’m not pretending otherwise. Still, for Canucks fans who have waited a while to see Pettersson look dangerous again and the team actually finish its chances, this one felt like something worth holding onto for a couple of days.
The Panthers visit Edmonton next, and the Canucks stay home to face Tampa Bay on Thursday.
