Stick-taps and glove-drops is a recurring feature after every Canucks game giving some quick kudos and criticism before the longer I Watched This Game feature. Feel free to leave your own stick-taps and glove-drops in the comments.
Brendan Gaunce gets the first stick-tap of the game for finally breaking his 95-game goal drought. It was just like his first goal: a deflection off his body as he went to the front of the net. Gaunce has yet to score a goal with an actual shot off his stick, but now finally has two career goals.
A tap of the stick to Erik Gudbranson, who banked the puck in off Gaunce to open the scoring. Jake Virtanen drove wide and swung the puck in front, where Gudbranson had jumped up into the play. Gudbranson was active in this game and was on the ice for five of the game’s nine goals. Unfortunately, two of them came while he was killing penalties.
Brock Boeser’s stick gets a stick-tap, which is pretty meta. Jake Virtanen decided to give up his CCM Super Tacks 2.0 stick for one of Boeser’s CCM Jetspeed sticks and ended up with a two-point night. It’s all in the stick, apparently.
A stick-tap to Jake Virtanen, because he deserves to share a bit of the credit with Boeser’s stick. He used his speed effectively all game, but particularly on his goal, when he skated the length of the ice, drove to the net and poked the puck past Aaron Dell when the goaltender anticipated that he would cut across the net.
Jake Virtanen beats Heed wide, takes the puck to the net, and pokes it past Dell#Canucks now down 3-2 pic.twitter.com/tPxJ39a0Lz
— Ryan Biech (@ryanbiech) December 22, 2017
A tap of the stick to Michael Del Zotto for saving a puck off the goal line when it snuck through Jacob Markstrom. Del Zotto spent too much time in the defensive zone in this game and the Sharks got a lot of chances with him on the ice, but they never scored.
I’ll drop the gloves with Alex Burmistrov, who had a brutal shift leading up to the 2-1 goal by Timo Meier. Burmistrov was out of position for pretty much the entire shift, chasing the play around. After the goal, Travis Green benched him for the rest of the game.
Have to drop the gloves with the Canucks’ penalty kill. One of the three goals they gave up was on a two-man advantage, but the other two came 12 seconds and 22 seconds into their respective opportunities. Joe Thornton made it 3-2 with the Sharks’ second power play goal.
Tap of the stick to Brock Boeser, who didn’t have his best game but still managed to score another goal. He weaved into the zone and two Sharks went down on the ice to block shots that never came. Instead, he fed Alex Biega, then roofed Biega’s rebound on the backhand.
Boeser dangles Dillon, then passes to Biega who is unable to put it in.... so Boeser does it himself for his 19th of the season#canucks tie the game at 3 pic.twitter.com/JphcUORT0u
— Ryan Biech (@ryanbiech) December 22, 2017
Stick-tap to Daniel Sedin, who tied the game at 4-4 with a one-timer on the rush. Loui Eriksson gets a stick-tap too for his neat drop pass to Henrik, who fed across to Daniel, whose shot went off the post, off Dell, and in.
Henrik Sedin gets the gloves dropped, however, for giving the puck away in overtime when Alex Edler desperately needed a line change. Instead of reversing the puck along the boards to Edler behind the net, he tried to force a pass and Tomas Hertl knocked it down and fed Kurtis Labanc in front. The Labanc shot beat Markstrom blocked side.
