CALGARY — Andrei Kuzmenko has become so adept at English that he now knows when not to understand it.
The Russian rookie who rarely disappoints scored on his first National Hockey League shootout attempt as the Vancouver Canucks beat the Calgary Flames 4-3 Wednesday in a game the visiting team impressively settled and won after losing another two-goal lead.
Kuzmenko scored the only goal of the tie-breaker, with a stutter-step move that changed the angle of his shot as he wristed past the catching glove of former Canuck goalie Jacob Markstrom.
Asked if the stop-and-go was his regular shootout choice, the 26-year-old smiled and said in perfect English: “Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”
He has the element of surprise. So do the Canucks, who surprised us Wednesday by steadying themselves after turning a 2-0 lead into a 3-2 deficit and actually playing a solid road game over the final 41 minutes.
Sure, stand-on starting goalie Spencer Martin had to make some strong saves — and he was perfect in the shootout — but high-danger scoring chances were 12-11 for the Canucks, who yielded much less directly in front of their net than they have in many games this season.
“Finally, a win I can feel good about,” veteran J.T. Miller said referring to some of the wide-open games the Canucks have survived by scoring five or six or seven goals. “We played a hard-fought road game today. We had a letdown at the end of the first, turning pucks over. But for the most part, we just played so direct, cycled the crap out of the puck. When we play like that on the road, we can play with anybody.
“Just bear down on your one-on-ones and take care of the puck. The message is the same every game. But today we just played a pretty complete one.”
Martin faced 38 shots, but 15 of them were in the final 15 minutes of the first period when the Canucks lost another multi-goal lead after Bo Horvat scored on a deflection just 1:14 after the opening faceoff and Conor Garland skated out of the corner and hit his spot over Markstrom’s near-post shoulder at 1:48 to make it 2-0.
Sheldon Dries, a healthy-scratch in Saturday’s 3-0 loss against the Minnesota Wild, tied the game 3-3 with another clean shot past Markstrom at 5:31 of the second period. He was beautifully set up by Nils Hoglander, who was supposed to be a healthy scratch on Wednesday but snuck back into the lineup when winger Brock Boeser was unable to play due to what the team announced was a non-Covid illness.
Hoglander also assisted on Garland’s goal and had one of his best games of the season. Coach Bruce Boudreau rewarded him with a rare shift in overtime when the Canucks outshot the Flames 5-2 and generated seven scoring chances.
Hoglander, Miller, Garland and Ilya Mikheyev, on a breakaway, all had excellent chances to win it overtime for Vancouver. But it wasn’t until Kuzmenko batted leadoff in the shootout that the Canucks got another puck past Markstrom.
“Yes, I like it,” Kuzmenko said when asked about his reaction to being chosen for the shootout, just the second this season for the Canucks.
Was he nervous?
“No, it’s OK,” he said. “I was happy. It was good game. Twenty thousand people at the game. I was not afraid. Why not? Let’s go.”
At the other end, Martin was aggressively above his crease on all three Calgary shooters and displayed a lot of poise in outwaiting and foiling Jonathan Huberdeau, Dillon Dube and Mikael Backlund on their deke attempts.
“I’m just trying to time it depth-wise,” the goalie explained. “Basically meet them at their decision point and let them make a move and hold my edges.”
Martin was easily the best Canuck in the shutout loss to the Wild, and coupled with Wednesday has delivered his most impressive two-game sample yet. A minor-leaguer the last seven seasons, he has played only 24 games in the NHL.
But he is now 9-3-1 this season. In the last month, the Canucks are 9-4-0 and they’ve won their last five games that have gone beyond 60 minutes after losing the first three that went to extra time.
The most consistent part of the Canucks’ season has been captain Bo Horvat, who despite a contract impasse that if unsolved will see him traded this winter, scored his 21st goal for Vancouver on Wednesday.
His eight tip-in goals are twice as many as anyone else in the league, except Kuzmenko. But most of Kuzmenko’s nine “tip-ins” have actually been goalmouth redirections on shot-passes.
“At the end of pretty much every morning skate, there’s three or four of us that go down to D-end when they’re shooting pucks, and get tips,” Horvat said of his hand-eye practise. “I think that’s been helping me a lot. In the summertime, I work on it a little bit, too. I mean, you see guys like Joe Pavelski and these guys make a living off that. To add that to your game, obviously it has helped me.”
The team, too.
The Canucks play six of their next nine games at Rogers Arena, starting Saturday against the Winnipeg Jets.
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