Under Bruce Boudreau, the Vancouver Canucks have a new-look first line and it isn’t one that anyone would have predicted.
Sure, two-thirds of it make perfect sense: J.T. Miller, the team’s leading scorer, and Brock Boeser, the team’s best sniper. It’s the third member of the line that is so unexpected: Tanner Pearson.
Pretty much ever since he got here, Pearson has been joined at the hip with Bo Horvat on a match-up line. It seemed unthinkable that they would ever be split apart. If they were split, surely it would be to move Pearson down the lineup, as he’s always seemed like a third-line forward miscast in a top-six role.
Instead, Pearson has been bumped up the lineup to play with Miller and Boeser on the Canucks’ top line. In the six games under Boudreau, including Thursday’s game against the San Jose Sharks, Pearson is third in ice time at 5-on-5 among Canucks forwards, right behind Boeser and Miller.
So far, it’s working beautifully.
Pearson still can’t find the back of the net — he has just 4 goals on the season and has now gone seven games without a goal — but he keeps doing the yeoman’s work that helps Miller and Boeser produce. That means winning puck battles along the boards, making smart passes to his linemates, and getting to the front of the net to set screens.
Boeser will garner a large portion of the spotlight from Thursday’s win over the Sharks, which is fair. His two goals came on simply outstanding shots, the type of elite snipery that Boeser displayed in his rookie season. But neither goal happens without Pearson.
On the first goal, Pearson took the initial shot, then chased down his man along the boards to win the puck back, lifting Jasper “Principal” Weatherby’s stick, then protecting the puck with his body before finding Boeser with a superb cross-seam pass.
It was Pearson’s work along the boards again that led to Boeser’s second goal. He smartly read the pass of Adin Hill’s stick and intercepted it, then won the battle with Mario Ferraro, freeing up the puck for Miller to set up Boeser.
When Boeser was asked about the work Pearson and Miller did to set up his goals, he deadpanned, “It was pretty average,” before laughing and giving a more fulsome answer.
“No, it was pretty good,” he said. “I think we forecheck pretty well and read off each other really good. I know to find open space when they get the puck and they made a couple of nice plays through their defenders to me and luckily I scored for them.”
Of all the unlikely things that have contributed to this six-game winning streak, Pearson as a first-line forward has been one of the most pleasant surprises.
I was pleasantly surprised when I watched this game.
- Another pleasant surprise: the play of Tyler Myers. Boudreau’s aggressive system plays to the strengths of Myers’ game, which is good because Boudreau has heavily relied on him with several defencemen out of the lineup. Myers has averaged 25:21 per game in ice time the last six games, second only to Quinn Hughes. If they played him anymore, they’d have to pay him overtime.
- Myers played 24:54 against the Sharks, was on the ice for three Canucks goals and none against, and carried a 61.9% corsi at 5-on–5, with the Canucks out-shooting the Sharks 15-to-9 when he was on the ice despite matching up against the Sharks’ top line all night. That’s an outstanding night’s work.
- At times, it seemed like the Sharks had the Canucks’ number, forechecking as aggressively as the Canucks do and repeatedly stymieing the Canucks’ breakout attempts. There was a 13-minute stretch in the second period where the Canucks didn’t get a single shot on goal. Fortunately, Thatcher Demko put on his usual Thatcher DemShow, making more saves than a gamer playing Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge.
- Boeser opened the scoring after a series of sharp Demko stops. It was a gorgeous shot, ripped right over Hill’s glove into the top corner of the net. Hill got a piece of it but the only way to stop that bullet was to get all of it.
- A few minutes later, Bo Horvat gave the Canucks a 2-0 lead from about the same spot on the ice, this time on the power play. It really seemed like the Canucks were over-passing the puck — they were zipping it around the Sharks’ penalty kill just fine but weren’t getting anything on net. Just when every Canucks fan watching was screaming “SHOOT!” at their televisions, Miller sent a perfect cross-seam feed to Horvat and he went under the bar like he’d had far more shots than the Canucks’ power play.
- The Sharks got one back, as Tomas Hertl gained the zone by blowing past Guillaume Brisebois in his first game of the season. Then he and Timo Meier moved the puck to Erik Karlsson at the point for a shot that Vasily Podkolzin painfully blocked. Demko, trying to see past Brisebois battling with Hertl, didn’t see the puck deflect to Meier in the right faceoff circle until it was too late and Meier found the open short side to make it 2-1.
- Unfortunately, Brisebois didn’t make it all the way through his first game of the season. He left the game after just one shift in the second period. He seemed fine in that shift, even leading a rush up the ice, but he didn’t return for the rest of the game. Considering he didn’t take any contact on that shift, that’s really concerning.
- Pearson seriously cannot buy a goal right now. He was gifted an open net on a brilliant pass by Boeser but the puck went off Pearson’s skate and he couldn’t get his stick on it to tuck it in. To rub it in, he got whacked in the face by an uncalled high stick. It probably looked to the ref like Pearson just couldn’t believe he didn’t score.
- Kyle Burroughs may just be a depth defenceman but I do appreciate the physicality that he always brings when he takes the ice. This stiff check on Timo Meier managed to take out two players with a domino effect, which is a nice bonus.
- Nothing came of it, but this was a really nice keep-in at the blue line by Elias Pettersson on the power play. That’s not an easy play to make and I admire it. That is all.
- Another neat thing from Pettersson: he went 11-for-16 in the faceoff circle, a very nice 69% winning percentage. He actually took the most faceoffs of any Canucks centre. Yes, more than both Miller and Horvat.
- The Sharks were all over the Canucks in the second period but Boeser got the only goal and it was a beauty. As Pearson won the puck to Miller down low, Boeser gave a slight tap of his stick to let Miller know he wanted it. Boeser’s shot was perfection, going in and out so fast that it looked like it must have hit the crossbar.
- “On my first goal I just kind of tried to shoot glove side and then on the second one, I tried to pick that spot and it seemed to work out pretty well,” said Boeser modestly. “I think it's a confidence thing too. When you have that confidence, you feel good about getting those chances and the puck on your stick and it does make a little difference.”
- There were a few reminders in this game that the Canucks had AHL defencemen on their blue line. Noah Juulsen got burned on the Sharks’ second goal, as Andrew Cogliano blew right by him after a loft pass, then fired a surprise shot through Demko’s five-hole.
- That was as close as the Sharks would come, as the Canucks got a bigger boat the rest of the way. The Sharks nearly tied the game on what looked like Demko’s best save of the night, an absurd toe save in the splits, but it turned out to not be a Demko save at all. Instead, it was a block by Oliver Ekman-Larsson. But let’s just pretend that Demko would have stopped it anyway.
- Moments later, Miller put the game out of reach. He picked off an Erik Karlsson pass in the neutral zone, looked off Pearson driving down the right wing, and whipped a wrist shot over Hill and far away, into the back of the net.
- Jason Dickinson got chance after chance in this game but could not score. It had been two months since he had scored a goal, 23 games. So, when Pettersson had a chance to score on the empty net, he instead fed the puck to Dickinson in the middle so he could get the monkey off his back. Good guy, that Petey.
