In 17 shootout attempts against him this season, Kevin Lankinen has allowed zero goals.
Let that sink in for a minute. Seventeen premeditated breakaways by the most skilled players in the National Hockey League, and Lankinen has a save percentage of 100 in the Vancouver Canucks’ net. It’s stupid. It shouldn’t be possible in the best league in the world.
The Canucks goalie unflinchingly stared down three more shootout dreamers from the Seattle Kraken on Monday before Liam Ohgren’s goal gave Vancouver a 3-2 road win in the Pacific Northwest’s I-5-valry series.
Lankinen is unbeatable, and Ohgren is unstoppable.
The 21-year-old rookie, the fourth piece sent to the Canucks by the Minnesota Wild in the Quinn Hughes blockbuster 2 ½ weeks ago, made it two-for-two in career NHL shootout attempts when he powered a shot between Kraken goalie Joey Daccord’s skates to win another game for Vancouver.
Ohgren scored on a beautiful, delayed deke in the seventh round of a shootout win in Boston nine days ago. Canucks coach Adam Foote was impressed enough to move the power forward up to Round 3 on Monday, when he was the only shooter to score.
Daccord had stopped Conor Garland and Elias Pettersson, while the ever-patient Lankinen foiled Freddy Gaudreau and Jordan Eberle, and watched as Eeli Tolvanen shot high for Seattle.
Lankinen was also in goal in Boston and is now 4-0 this season in the tiebreaker, generating two-thirds of his wins in the shootout.
The goalie’s shootout success rate is mind-blowing, but to say Lankinen’s game Monday was all about the shootout would grossly understate his impact throughout what was probably the best game in what has been a challenging season for the 30-year-old Finn.
Lankinen stopped 37 of 39 shots by the Kraken, which had won its last four games. He went 25-for-25 after the first period, and dragged his team to overtime in the third period when the Canucks were outshot 16-3.
As Seattle had played the night before, beating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-1, the Canucks should have been the fresher team. They were not. They were sluggish in the opening 10 minutes and underwater in the third – not a great place to be against the Kraken.
But Lankinen made a pile of big saves, including point-blank stops in the third period against Tolvanen and Jared McCann, a sprawling stop on Kaapo Kakko, a breakaway save late in regulation time against Ryan Winterton, and saves in overtime on Tolvanen and Vince Dunn during the last of six Seattle power plays.
It was a masterful performance, Lankinen’s second in a row as he tries to lift his .880 save rate for the season and improve his 6-10-3 record.
The Canucks tied the game 2-2 at 5:23 of the second period, easily Vancouver’s best period, on Elias Pettersson’s vintage finish from the slot from Evander Kane’s centring pass.
Canuck Linus Karlsson’s fourth goal in four games, on a pass from Ohgren at 15:20 of the first period, offset McCann’s early power-play one-timer for the Kraken. But a suspect line change that included Canucks defenceman Elias Pettersson (Junior) bumping into Tyler Myers enabled a two-on-nothing break for the Kraken that ended with Winterton scoring with 20 seconds remaining in the frame.
The Canucks face Rick Tocchet’s Flyers on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the game will be in Vancouver, where the road-warrior-like Canucks have lost eight of their last nine home games.
In the wake of Saturday’s disappointing 6-3 home loss against the San Jose Sharks, coach Adam Foote healthy-scratched $38.5-million winger Jake DeBrusk, who led the Canucks with 28 goals last season but has just one in his last 16 games. Checking centre David Kampf, who has one goal in 17 games, was also scratched.
Foote needed to get centre Aatu Raty and winger Nils Hoglander back in the lineup, but the timing of DeBrusk’s first scratch since signing in Vancouver two summers ago was a little surprising because the 29-year-old looked more engaged against the Sharks, registering a couple of shots and four hits over 18:01 of ice time – his most in nine games.
Clearly unhappy with his team on Saturday, Foote needed to get his players’ attention in Seattle. He certainly has DeBrusk’s attention.
“Yeah, it sucks,” he said after practising as an extra on Sunday. “I mean, anytime you miss a game, yeah, it’s embarrassing. I’d be wrong if I wasn’t saying I’d be pissed off, but I understand and I need a jolt. Obviously, I haven’t been good enough.
“Eventually, you’ve just got to do the right things, got to do the right details. Get back to your ABCs … and eventually they’ll go in. Usually, I have a hot streak. But it seems like this year, there probably isn’t going to be one. So (I have) just got to be more consistent day in, day out. You’ve got to be mature in this spot. You’ve got to be a pro.”
After sitting out four of the previous six games, Raty did not have a shot during 11:05 of ice time. But he went 12-5 on faceoffs and had a key win late in overtime as the Canucks killed off a four-on-three disadvantage after Kane took a tripping penalty at 3:20.
Beyond wins and losses, virtually every coach in Vancouver eventually gets criticized for his team’s playing style. (See Tocchet, Travis Green, Willie Desjardins, John Tortorella, Alain Vigneault…). So it’s not surprising there have been howls of protest from some about Foote’s conservative overtime strategy, when the Canucks prioritize possession as a means to prevent the opposition from scoring. But the idea, born out of a deep think in the summer by Foote and his staff about three-on-three, is to get games to a shootout because with Lankinen and Thatcher Demko in goal, the chance of the Canucks winning a shootout is a lot better than their odds of an overtime victory.
It’s an idea. And given that the team is now 4-0 in shootouts (thanks to Lankinen), but only 2-3 in games decided in OT, it’s impossible to argue that Foote’s strategy isn’t working.
-
32 Thoughts: The Podcast
Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.
Latest episode
If you speculated which Canucks were most likely to want out of Vancouver after a Quinn Hughes trade, Conor Garland and Filip Hronek would have topped a lot of lists. Garland, after all, was Hughes’ best friend on the team (Hughes is godfather to Garland’s son, Quint). And Hronek was Hughes’ blue-line partner – a guy who signed an eight-year, $58-million extension to play for Tocchet and with Hughes in Vancouver.
But both stated fairly emphatically after Hughes was traded that they remain committed to the Canucks and are willing to be part of whatever comes next.
Against Seattle, five-foot-nine Garland, who has been managing an undisclosed injury while keeping himself in the lineup, roused his team by fighting McCann at 15:17 of the first period when the ex-Canuck challenged him for a sneaky reverse hit. Garland ended the fight with an uppercut and a take-down of McCann.
And all Hronek did was lead by example with another heavy, intense performance that saw him block four shots, including Jordan Eberle’s potential game-winner in OT, while logging a season-high 29:26 of ice time.
They are examples of why, even amid the “hybrid” rebuild or retool management says the Canucks are undertaking, the organization wants character mid-career veterans setting the standard for younger players.
“Garly, a helluva job on the fight there,” Ohgren told Canucks TV in Seattle. “It got us going.”
