There once was a time when every visit to Minnesota to face the Wild was a guaranteed snoozefest, as fans petitioned to officially change the name of the city of Saint Paul to Dullsville. That time was Tuesday night.
Okay, so the Bruce Boudreau-coached Wild are not quite the joy-sucking and entertainment-draining Jacques Lemaire-coached teams of the past, but without Zach Parise, Charlie Coyle, and Nino Niederreiter in the lineup, they’re not far off. Combine that with a low-event Canucks team that was wrapping up a road trip and content to play boring, stifling hockey, and this game was about as dull as a bowling pin.
Minnesota Wild beat reporter Michael Russo, who covered the Lemaire-coached Wild, said that this game “could be the worst hockey game in history.” That’s a bold statement, but if true, then I witnessed hockey history when I watched this game.
- Jacob Markstrom has yet to post a shutout in his entire NHL career; Anders Nilsson has two already this season in just three starts. Something about that just doesn’t seem quite fair.
- Nilsson was as good as he had to be in this game, making his 29-save shutout look easy with his size, positioning, and quick blocker. He was so good with his blocker in this game that it lets me use my favourite bizarre hockey verb: waffleboard. As in, Nilsson waffleboarded away every puck fired at his right side. It makes me imagine a charcuterie board, except instead of different varieties of meat, it's different types of waffles and that sounds amazing.
- At one point, the puck finally figured out that it wasn’t going to get into Nilsson’s net, so switched sports and tried to get to second base instead, sneaking down Nilsson’s shirt off a shot by Jason Zucker. But, like every other shot in this game, it didn’t get very far.
- The Wild may have been missing Parise, Coyle, and Niederreiter due to injury, but they did get Mikael Granlund back to play against his younger brother Markus for the sixth time in his NHL career. Mikael’s line was tasked with scoring; Markus’s was tasked with preventing that. Therefore, Markus won the day. It’s clearly a Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller situation, but sometimes the less-talented sibling gets a win.
- It was a tough night for Michael Del Zotto, who struggled to move the puck up ice and found himself stuck in the defensive zone for long stretches. His oddest moment, however, came when he slipped to the ice and ended up sitting on the puck. Somehow he managed to move it to his defence partner while still on his keister, which was quite the trick. Meanwhile, the Wild forecheckers literally just stood there, completely unsure of how to deal with a seated defenceman. They’d get destroyed at sledge hockey.
- Sam Gagner was more noticeable in this game than he’s been in a while. He and Henrik Sedin are the lone uninjured Canucks forwards without a goal this season, but it looks like one is brewing for Gagner. He fired a team-high four shots on goal, including a slap shot off a 2-on-1 that forced a big glove save by Devan Dubnyk.
- It took over 50 minutes of game time, but there was finally a goal thanks to Jake “Big Tuna” Virtanen. Henrik Sedin got away with a bit of a hook on Jared Spurgeon as the Wild broke out of their zone, causing Spurgeon to give the puck up to Virtanen. The Abbotsfordian one tried a bit of deception, looking at Daniel Sedin the whole way as if he was going to pass before firing a shot. The trickery was all for naught, however, as his shot was blocked, but he stuck with the puck like Bob Tenor stuck to Walt Tenor and whipped the rebound past Dubnyk.
- This was a weird game for penalties. There were some blatantly missed calls both ways, but then Alex Biega got called for a phantom penalty in the third period: his stick was slashed by Luke Kunin, but because Kunin's stick broke, Biega got called for a penalty. It was a bad slash call, like writing a fanfic pairing up Dean and Sam from Supernatural. They’re brothers, guys. That’s just wrong.
- The weirdest blown call came at the very end of the game. On the penalty kill thanks to a last-minute penalty by Derek Dorsett, the Canucks cleared the puck the length of the ice, seemingly killing off the rest of the clock and ending the game. Instead, the linesman blew the whistle for icing. Even though he messed up, the Wild still got a faceoff at centre ice instead of having to start from behind their own goal line. They went forward off the draw and managed to get one more shot on goal with 4 seconds left. If that had gone in, I’m pretty sure Travis Green’s head would have exploded like the guy from Scanners.
- As it is, Green was pretty apoplectic. The camera clearly showed Green cussing up astorm behind the Canucks bench: "Are you f***ing kidding me?” he asked rhetorically before responding to something the linesman said. “Yeah, I know it's your f***ing fault!"
lol @passittobulis pic.twitter.com/z3eESUdKwE
— steph (@myregularface) October 25, 2017
- The highlight of the game came when it was over. No, the game mercifully ending wasn’t the highlight, thought it came a close second; instead, the highlight was someone yelling “Attaboy Big Tuna!” as the Canucks made their way to the locker room, leading to the revelation that Virtanen’s nickname is Big Tuna. It apparently has been for over a year, but no one other than Grainne Downey noticed. I love it, because it hearkens back to happier times when everyone on the Canucks had animal nicknames.
