PHILADELPHIA — The Vancouver Canucks jumped out to an early lead and thoroughly pulverized a Philadelphia Flyers side that has been a tough matchup for them over the past few years. The final score was 3-0 Vancouver, but in truth, this game was even more lopsided than that.
In a game that may cement Kevin Lankinen as Vancouver’s first-choice netminder, given his shutout performance, the Canucks out-played, out-worked and far out-executed a Flyers team that looked tired after an extended West Coast trip. Vancouver’s depth contributors, almost to a man, put in their best performances of the season. It was far and away Vancouver’s most convincing effort of the season, and helped the club secure their second victory in a row.
Here are three key takeaways from Vancouver’s big win in the city of brotherly love on Saturday night, with notes on Tyler Myers’ big milestone night, some welcome performances from depth players, and an apparent J.T. Miller injury that the Canucks star centre was able to play through on Saturday, but which modified his usage.
Tyler Myers’ sizzle reel and 1000th game
Last week, Tyler Myers was laying on the ice after an awkward collision along the boards.
He’d gone into the boards awkwardly and was slow to get up. As his teammates helped him off of the ice, he put no weight on his leg. It looked to all watching as if the veteran Canucks defender had sustained a severe knee injury on the precipice of hitting 1000 career games played.
On Saturday, with no delay, Myers skated in his 1000th career game with his parents in attendance at the Wells Fargo Centre. More of his family will be in Vancouver next weekend when the club formally honours Myers for his 1000th appearance in an NHL game.
The incident, one in which Myers was fortunate to avoid a more serious injury, served as something of an exclamation mark on the sentence that is Myers’ 1000 NHL games played to this point. A signpost and reminder of just how much it takes — skill, persistence, health, an incredible work ethic and, yes, some luck too — to do something that fewer than 400 NHL players have ever accomplished in the history of this league: appear in 1000 games at this level.
“You go through a lot to play this game, even the guys that play 100 games,” Myers said on Saturday. “There’s a lot of ups and downs. Last week when I was laying on the ice, I didn’t think it was good …
“There’s a lot of different curve balls thrown your way in this game, and you just have to keep plugging away, so yeah, I feel very fortunate to be here,” Myers continued.
On Saturday, the veteran defender was able to put further emphasis on a milestone evening for him and his family on Saturday night in Philadelphia. It wasn’t just a comfortable, dominant win for his club, but he actively contributed to the win with a highlight reel between-the-legs backhand setup to Brock Boeser that padded Vancouver’s lead in the second period.
Tyler Myers proving once again 1000 games in that he should be a forward with that back pass to Boeser for the #Canucks 2-0 lead. pic.twitter.com/wdyg7zvzeN
— Lachlan Irvine (@LachInTheCrease) October 20, 2024
It was a remarkable capstone on a memorable night for Myers, who admitted to being a bit emotional and reflective as the day of his 1000th game approached.
J.T. Miller’s brief departure and the effects in the circle
J.T. Miller appeared to sustain an upper-body injury right off of the opening draw on Saturday night, briefly leaving the playing surface after icing the puck and remaining in the Canucks locker room for several minutes before returning.
Miller has been exceedingly durable despite his playing style, which isn’t something that’s possible in this league if you don’t have a superhuman pain tolerance. For a player like Miller to head directly to the locker room is always concerning. You hope it was just a sign that he was seriously hurting, and required some sort of attention before continuing.
On his return, however, there was a difference in Miller’s game. The star Canucks centre took just one more faceoff the rest of the game, ceding his spot as the faceoff winner on his line to Jake DeBrusk and Boeser.
Boeser had a hot start in the circle in replacement of Miller, winning his first three draws. He then promptly came somewhat back to Earth losing his next four and finishing the night with three wins and seven losses. DeBrusk stepped in to take a pair of draws and lost both.
Miller’s health has been something of a background concern for Canucks fans this season, who have wondered if the club’s top centreman has been at 100 percent after he didn’t appear in the preseason — including for games in which the club had marketed his expected presence to ticket buyers. His brief departure and slightly modified role on Sunday will amplify that chatter, and be something to monitor going forward.
This was Vancouver’s most complete team effort of the campaign.
Quinn Hughes was still dominant, but the team didn’t need to lean on him to generate offence and zone time and play all night the way they had in their previous four contests. On Saturday, for the first time in a game all season, the Canucks were legitimately able to generate and control play with the other defence pairs on the ice.
While the Carson Soucy-Myers pair had their best game of the season on Saturday, the inclusion of Erik Brännström, making his second consecutive start for the club, into Vancouver’s blue line was a big part of the story as well. Brännström’s ability to skate through the neutral zone, key the rush sharply and generate on occasion at the offensive blue line — in a signature moment, Brännström set up an excellent one-time look for Elias Pettersson with a lovely cross-seam feed at the tail end of a heavy shift — was a welcome addition to Vancouver’s blue line. And it seemed to help the club get the most out of Vincent Desharnais as well, who put in his best game of this young season himself.
Up front, meanwhile, the new-look Pettersson line with Conor Garland and Nils Höglander was Vancouver’s best on Saturday night, but the club also may be onto something with a new-look third line featuring Danton Heinen, Teddy Blueger and Kiefer Sherwood. That new line, playing their first game together, was rock solid defensively and drove play throughout the game in a way that the Canucks haven’t often had from any bottom-six forward lines that didn’t include Garland this season.
That Sherwood scored his first of the year, capitalizing off of a Blueger faceoff win and icing Saturday’s contest, was icing on the cake for a line that performed exceptionally in their first game together.
Truthfully the Flyers weren’t up to a high enough standard on Saturday to serve as a measuring stick for some of Vancouver’s new lineup tweaks, but the Canucks may be onto something with Brännström on their third pair and this new iteration of their third line.
For a team that’s looked very top-heavy in the early going this season, these solid depth performances are notable. After a fitful start to this campaign the club has needed to find a few answers lower down their lineup, and now have some irons in the fire with a chance to develop into something meaningful.
(Photo: Len Redkoles / NHLI via Getty Images)
