VANCOUVER — In an unlikely season, this may have been the Vancouver Canucks’ unlikeliest performance. And perhaps their most incredible.
It was the sort of night that fans have been waiting a decade for. The sort of night that reminds you just how magical this game can be when it’s played at the highest level and weighted down by almost unthinkably high stakes.
And talk about the drama of a highly improbable game script. On Thursday night, Vancouver shut down the nuclear Edmonton Oilers power play.
The Canucks got not one, but two key goals from their fourth line.
Their most dominant performer was Phil Di Giuseppe, fresh off of a brief paternity leave.
And the Canucks controlled this game, mostly from nose to tail, aside from an opening 10 minutes in the first period dictated by an Oilers side that has mostly owned the puck in this series.
And then in the key moment as time wound down in the third and overtime approached, Tyler Myers curled a perfect entry pass into the Vancouver end. Elias Lindholm skated onto the pass and sent a cross-crease feed that deflected off Elias Pettersson’s skate and off the post where J.T. Miller was waiting.
Miller made no mistake, and the Canucks took a 3-2 series lead as a raucous Rogers Arena crowd chanted Miller’s name.
With the 3-2 win, the Canucks will have an opportunity to advance to the Western Conference Final on Saturday night at Rogers Place in Edmonton.
Game 5 was decided late, but everything flipped for Vancouver in the second period. They protected the puck and stopped giving up rush chances to the Oilers the way they did in the first. Their forecheck became a scoring chance fuelling weapon, leading directly to the game-tying goal by Phil Di Giuseppe and disrupting the Oilers’ ability to establish possession throughout the evening.
Given the way this Canucks team was challenged by head coach Rick Tocchet after Game 4, given the nauseatingly high stakes of the contest, the response, the focus, the buy-in, the penalty killing, the attention to detail that Vancouver showed on Thursday night was incredible.
This is the sort of stuff that wins a team a playoff series deep into May.
Now make no mistake, there’s still work for the Canucks to do. The Oilers will bring it in Game 6. For much of the series, Edmonton has performed like the better team.
But Vancouver dominated on Thursday night, and they pushed the Oilers to the brink of elimination.
Here are five take aways from a historic night at Rogers Arena.
Dad strength
In the lead-up to Game 5, most of the attention in Vancouver was on the lineup tweaks to the second and third lines.
It was, somewhat surprisingly, the fourth line, however, that turned this game in Vancouver’s favour.
Led by Phil Di Giuseppe, who took a brief personal leave from the team while his wife, Maggie, gave birth to a son named Sam, the Canucks’ fourth line brought wave after wave of pure chaos to the game on the forecheck.
It was the fourth line that forced an ugly Corey Perry turnover in the first period to get the Canucks on the board. And it was the fourth line that was on the ice for Vancouver’s crucial second goal too, with Nils Åman forcing a turnover behind the net, before Di Giuseppe tapped into his new dad strength to score on a spinning backhand shot.
By the end of the second period, Vancouver’s fourth line had outshot Edmonton five to one at even strength, while capitalizing on two of those shots to turn this game on its head. They keyed Vancouver’s most impressive period of the postseason, in the highest leverage moment yet.
what a period from the canucks pic.twitter.com/I0uMEvmmED
— dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) May 17, 2024
Given how little damage Vancouver had done against the soft underbelly of the Oilers lineup going into Game 5, the goal scoring, forechecking heroics of Di Giuseppe and the new-look fourth line helped the Canucks pull this game out of the fire.
The charging thing
Elias Pettersson is the master of the reverse hit. It’s a weapon he deploys ruthlessly to protect the puck, win battles and force opposing checkers to give him some additional space and respect along the wall.
On the power play late in the second, Pettersson uncorked a big reverse hit from a standing position on Oilers forward Warren Foegele. And was assessed a two minute minor penalty for charging.
It was one of the strangest calls we’ve seen all season. Certainly one of the weirder calls of the postseason.
Elias Pettersson gets two minutes for charging against Warren Foegele. pic.twitter.com/J3x1ZIK3Y8
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 17, 2024
Now, while charging does cover off contact in which a player “jumps into” an opponent “in any manner,” the rule book also clarifies that “charging shall mean the actions of a player who, as a result of distance traveled, shall violently check an opponent in any manner.” Obviously in this instance Pettersson travelled exactly zero distance.
In a night chalk full of bizarre penalty calls, mostly in Edmonton’s favour, the Pettersson charging call was by far the weirdest and most controversial.
Certainly that’s what the Rogers Arena faithful thought. The call on the ice was roundly booed, and fans briefly chucked garbage and other detritus onto the surface of the ice, prompting Canucks public address announcer Al Murdoch to note that fans throwing garbage onto the ice surface would face eviction from the game and possible arrest.
It was an ugly scene, and a completely bizarre penalty.
The near misses
The Canucks deserved this win.
They have been finishing at a preposterous rate throughout this series, but some of their touch in tight abandoned them in Game 5. And then it didn’t. That’s the magic of this game.
First Quinn Hughes dented the cross bar with a trademark down hill wrist shot that rose slowly and beat Calvin Pickard and just missed the going bar down by a quarter centimetre.
Quinn Hughes hits the crossbar! 😮 pic.twitter.com/lcdfQwRuu4
— SasquatchNHL (@SasquatchNHL) May 17, 2024
Then on a scramble play, Pettersson deflected the puck at Pickard and it trickled past Pickard and slowly toward the goal line. The goal was only prevented by a Johnny-on-the-spot stick from Oilers defender Vincent Desharnais who managed to pull the puck off of the line just as it was sneaking across it…
DESHARNAIS TOOK A GOAL AWAY FROM PETTERSSON! 😱 pic.twitter.com/hb3E1Wvfru
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 17, 2024
And then most agonizingly, Nils Höglander missed on a glorious third-period scoring chance at the side of the net with Pickard well off of his post. It was the sort of miss Höglander and Canucks fans will be seeing in their nightmares…
Nils Hoglander hits the post on a glorious scoring opportunity #Canucks | #LetsGoOilers📽️: Sportsnet | NHL pic.twitter.com/nbewfLCzIe
— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) May 17, 2024
We won’t remember the near misses thanks to Miller’s clutch finish. It’s a reminder though that the line between outplaying the Oilers and still losing Game 5 on Thursday, and the remarkable win that Vancouver managed, was absurdly fine.
A bounce here or there. An extra save. A won battle. A clean breakout.
For the first time in this series really, Vancouver accumulated more of those moments in Game 5. They overcame their bad luck, largely because they were the superior team.
A powerless Oilers power play
The Oilers power play was lights out in the playoffs entering Game 5, capitalizing on 14 of 30 chances for a mind-blowing 46.7 percent success rate. It’s been unbelievable.
It was anything but on Thursday.
Not only did the power play fail to score for the first time in 10 postseason games, but it was also listless while doing so. Instead of being a difference-maker, it completely zapped any momentum the Oilers had generated beforehand.
Sure, two of the power plays were truncated, but the Oilers managed just three shots on goal in 7:40 with an extra skater on the ice.
The only good thing about all those power plays was that it bought the Oilers some time, particularly in the second period. They were outshot 17-4 in the middle frame but were outscored just 1-0. More than three minutes of time on the man advantage helped keep the puck in the offensive zone – or least mostly out of harm’s way when it wasn’t.
Oilers depth guys show up
The top guns played so much during Games 2 and 3 that you might have to double check a game sheet to see which depth forwards even played. They made their presence felt in Game 5.
The obvious highlight came when Connor Brown set up Mattias Janmark on a two-on-one for his first of the playoffs at 17:50 of the first period. That goal that put the Oilers back in front 23 second after Canucks defenceman Carson Soucy tied it.
But there was more than just that.
Brown and linemate Derek Ryan both had slot chances in the game. Ryan McLeod and Warren Foegele, a duo coach Kris Knoblauch said he wanted to more from at five-on-five, didn’t score but drove play before Foegele was elevated late in the third in place of Evander Kane.
The Oilers also denied the Canucks on four power plays and those guys are all regulars on the penalty kill.
It sure doesn’t happen often for the Oilers given their star power, but the third and fourth lines were clearly their best.
If the bottom six can play like this in more games, the Oilers would be nearly unstoppable given how good their top end normally is.
(Photo of J.T. Miller celebrating his game-winning goal in Game 5 on Thursday: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)