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.
TORONTO – The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced cookie brand Oreo as the team’s helmet sponsor for the upcoming NHL season.
The new helmet will debut Sunday when Toronto opens its 2024-25 pre-season against the Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Arena.
The Oreo logo replaces Canadian restaurant chain Pizza Pizza, which was the Leafs’ helmet sponsor last season.
Previously, social media platform TikTok sponsored Toronto starting in the 2021-22 regular season when the league began allowing teams to sell advertising space on helmets.
The Oreo cookie consists of two chocolate biscuits around a white icing filling and is often dipped in milk.
Fittingly, the Leafs wear the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s “Milk” logo on their jerseys.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
MacKenzie Weegar wasn’t bitter or upset as he watched friends live out their dreams.
The Calgary Flames defenceman just hopes to experience the same feeling one day. He also knows the road leading to that moment, if it does arrive, will likely be long and winding — much like his own path.
A seventh-round pick by the Florida Panthers at the 2013 NHL draft, Weegar climbed the ranks to become an important piece of a roster that captured the Presidents’ Trophy as the league’s top regular-season club in 2021-22.
Two months later following a second-round playoff exit, he was traded to the Flames along with Jonathan Huberdeau for Matthew Tkachuk. And less than two years after that, the Panthers were hoisting the Stanley Cup.
“Happy for the city and for the team,” Weegar said of Florida’s June victory over the Edmonton Oilers. “There was no bad taste in my mouth.”
His sole focus, he insists, is squarely on eventually getting the Flames to the same spot. The landscape, however, has changed drastically since Weegar committed to Calgary on an eight-year, US$50-million contract extension in October 2022.
Weegar has watched a list that includes goaltender Jacob Markstrom, defencemen Chris Tanev, Noah Hanifin and Nikita Zadorov and forwards Elias Lindholm and Andrew Mangiapane shipped out of town since the start of last season — largely for picks, prospects and young players as part of a rebuild.
Despite that exodus, he remains committed to the Calgary project steered by general manager Craig Conroy.
“It’s easy to get out of all whack when you see guys trying to leave or wanting new contracts,” the 30-year-old from Ottawa said at last week’s NHL/NHLPA player media tour in Las Vegas. “I just focus on where I am and where I want to be, and that’s Calgary.
“I believe in this team. The city has taken me in right away. I feel like I owe it to them to stick around and grind through these years and get a Stanley Cup.”
The hard-nosed blueliner certainly knows what it is to grind.
After winning the Memorial Cup alongside Nathan MacKinnon with the Halifax Mooseheads in 2013, Weegar toiled in the ECHL and American Hockey League for three seasons before making his NHL debut late in the 2016-17 campaign with the Panthers.
He would spend the next five years in South Florida as one of the players tasked with shifting an organizational culture that had experienced little success over the previous two decades.
“There’s always going to be a piece of my heart and loyalty to that team,” Weegar said. “But now I’m in a different situation … I compete against all 32 teams, not just Florida. There’s always a chip on my shoulder every single year.”
Weegar set career highs with 20 goals — eight was the most he had ever previously registered — and 52 points in 2023-24 as part of a breakout offensive performance.
“I think my buddies cared a lot more than I did,” he said with a smile. “All I hear is, ‘fantasy, fantasy, fantasy.'”
Weegar was actually more proud of his 200 blocked shots and 194 hits as he looks to help set a new Flames’ standard alongside Huberdeau, captain Mikael Backlund, Nazem Kadri, Blake Coleman and Rasmus Andersson for a franchise expected to have its new arena in time for the 2027-28 season.
“You have to build that culture and that belief in the locker room,” said Weegar, who pointed to 22-year-old centre Connor Zary as a player set to pop. “Those young guys are going to have to come into their own and be consistent every night … they’re the next generation.”
Weegar, however, isn’t punting on 2024-25. He pointed to the NHL’s parity and the fact a couple of teams surprise every season.
It’s the same approach that took him from the ECHL a decade ago to hockey’s premier pre-season event inside a swanky hotel on Sin City’s famed strip, where he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the game’s best.
“From the outside — media and even friends and family — the expectations are probably a bit lower,” Weegar said of Calgary’s outlook. “But there’s no reason to think that we can’t make playoffs and we can’t be a good team (with) that underdog mentality.
“You never know.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept 17, 2024.
Jose Maria Celestino da Costa was named vice-president and head of soccer operations while Marianne Brooks was appointed vice-president of partnerships, Kelly Shouldice as vice-president of brand and content and Joyce Sou as vice-president of finance and business operations.
The new six-team women’s pro league is set to kick off in April.
“Their unique expertise and leadership are crucial as we lay the foundation for not just a successful league in Canada, but one that stands among the top sports leagues in the world,” NSL president Christina Litz said in a statement. “By investing in top-tier talent and infrastructure, the Northern Super League is committed to creating a league that will elevate the game and set new standards for women’s professional soccer globally.”
Da Costa will oversee all on-field matters, including officiating. His resume includes stints with Estoril Praia, a men’s first-division team in Portugal, and the Portuguese Soccer Federation, where he helped develop the Portuguese women’s league.
Brooks spent a decade with Canucks Sports & Entertainment, working in “partnership sales and retention efforts” for the Vancouver Canucks, Vancouver Warriors, and Rogers Arena. Most recently, she served as senior director of account management at StellarAlgo, a software company that helps pro sports teams connect with their fans
Shouldice has worked for Corus Entertainment, the Canadian Football League, and most recently as vice-president of Content and Communications at True North Sports & Entertainment, where she managed original content as well as business and hockey communications.
Sou, who was involved in the league’s initial launch, will oversee financial planning, analysis and the league’s expansion strategy in her new role.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
