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Pettersson's penalty shot winner highlights Canucks' 5-3 win over Nashville

December 7, 2018, 3:03 PM ET [248 Comments]
Carol Schram
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Thursday December 6 - Vancouver Canucks 5 - Nashville Predators 3

A little rest. Better special-teams performances. And an overworked goalie on a banged-up opponent that may have taken the Vancouver Canucks a little lightly.

Those were the key ingredients of a fun night at Rogers Arena on Thursday, when the Canucks earned their first home win in more than a month against the Nashville Predators.

Here are your highlights:



One great way to limit penalty-killing issues is not to go shorthanded—a lesson that Travis Green emphasized when he sent Michael Del Zotto to the press box on Thursday after the defenseman took two ill-advised penalties against the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday.

The only Vancouver penalty of the night against Nashville was a slashing call on Alex Edler midway through the first period. That came not long after Edler opened the scoring with the Canucks' first power-play goal in five games, so he won't get dinged too hard for that.

Travis Green initially eased Edler back into the lineup when he returned from his knee injury a couple of weeks ago. He has been back on a top pairing with Chris Tanev for the past two games, but Ben Hutton was still Vancouver's high-minute man on Thursday, with 23:32 of ice and a plus-two to go along with his three blocks, two shot attempts and one giveaway.

Back in for the first time in six games, Derrick Pouliot was limited to just 13:28, all at even strength, and finished with a minus-two. He and Troy Stecher were on the ice for both of Nashville's third-period goals as the Preds tried to mount their late comeback.

Edler's early goal was just what the doctor ordered, in terms of pumping some optimism into the arena. It came on Vancouver's first power play of the night and, taking a page from the Minnesota playbook that we saw on Tuesday, it took the Canucks just 19 seconds to convert after Austin Watson was sent to the box for a hook on Stecher.

Travis Green had made a tweak to his top unit, too. He got instant results from inserting Nikolay Goldobin—who got the primary assist on the goal with his dish to Edler.

The Canucks went on to make it 2-0 before the end of the first, when a strong play by Bo Horvat in the defensive zone led to a breakout opportunity for his linemates Roussel and Virtanen.




The shooting accuracy champ from last weekend's SuperSkills, Horvat showed his stuff from a tight angle for his 13th of the year. After scoring 10 of his first 11 on the road this season, Horvat has picked up two in his last three games at Rogers Arena. I felt like this particular goal was a great reward for Horvat for all the defensive heavy lifting that he has done while Jay Beagle and Brandon Sutter have been injured.

With Beagle back, Horvat played less than 20 minutes for the first time in six games. He still took nearly half of the 54 draws in the fast-paced game, going 14-for-25, while Beagle was 4-for-11 with a team low 10:57 of ice time.

Of course, the other tremendous highlight set came from Elias Pettersson, who scored his 14th NHL goal on his first career penalty shot after some nasty Swede-on-Swede violence courtesy of a slash by Mattias Ekholm.




Following that groin-buster, the league's best goalie Pekka Rinne got the hook after giving up four goals on 25 shots through 40 minutes, echoing the Canucks' head-shakingly good game against Jaroslav Halak in Boston when he was leading the league's goalie stats last month. It's so strange how that happens: Thursday's game was the first time all year that Rinne has given up four goals, though Halak has had a couple of other rough outings since getting torched by the Canucks. He gave up six goals in Colorado on November 14 and five to the Panthers in Florida earlier this week.

Juuse Saros stepped in for the third. The Preds pushed for the comeback right through to the end, outshooting Vancouver 13-5 and outscoring the Canucks 2-1 in the final frame. Loui Eriksson's fifth of the year proved to be an important insurance goal as a confident Nashville team pushed back in the dying minutes.




In the end, the Canucks hung on to outshoot the Preds 30-29 and outscore them by two, with Pettersson's masterpiece standing up as his third game winner in his first 25 NHL games. On a team that has just 12 wins so far this season, that's a pretty significant number.

Patrick Johnston of The Province tried to dig a little deeper into what makes Petey tick in this story:




On a night that lifted a collective weight off the shoulders of the Canucks fans and players, and started the hype for the upcoming World Junior tournament, it was cool to see that each of the game's three stars, who handed out #Represent T-shirts to members of the crowd, was a homegrown Vancouver draft pick and former World Juniors player:

Third star: Bo Horvat - 3 points in 7 games in 2014, Canada finished fourth
Second star: Jake Virtanen - 4 points in 7 games and gold medal in 2015, 1 point when Canada finished sixth in 2016
First star: Elias Pettersson - 1 point in 2017 when Sweden finished fourth, 7 points in 7 games when Sweden won silver in 2017

What a great way to build excitement for the Vancouver prospects Michael DiPietro, Quinn Hughes, Tyler Madden and Toni Utunen in this year's tournament!

Up next: the Canucks are in the air to start their last road trip before Christmas with a noon game on Sunday in St. Louis:




From there, they'll stop in Columbus and play a rematch against the Predators before returning to Rogers Arena for five more home games before the holiday break.
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