Vancouver, British Columbia – The Canucks and Avalanche might get sick of each other over the next six weeks, perhaps almost as sick as they apparently became of hearing questions about Steve Moore and Todd Bertuzzi in the past week.
But in Saturday night’s long-anticipated first meeting between the Northwest Division rivals since Bertuzzi’s infamous March 8, 2004, attack on Moore in Vancouver, the focus was on quick-paced hockey – New-NHL style – and not on enmity or even bounties.
As most expected, emotions didn’t come close to boiling over in GM Place. By the time it was over, the Canucks had gotten two goals from Daniel Sedin and survived a furious Avalanche comeback to pull out a 6-4 victory over the Avalanche, improving to 7-1-1 on the season and opening up an eight-point lead on Colorado in the division.
With the Canucks leading 5-1, Colorado got goals from ex-Canuck Brad May, Pat Brisebois and Alex Tanguay in a 99-second span to pull within 5-4 with 1:20 left in the game before Trevor Linden’s empty-netter with eight seconds left clinched it for Vancouver.
“They have a great hockey team over there,” said Avalanche captain Joe Sakic, again downplaying the side issues tied to Bertuzzi’s attack on Moore. “We were just trying to get two points, just trying to win a game. There was no sense getting carried away with anything. We just wanted to win a game, and that’s the most important thing.”
Said Vancouver captain Markus Naslund: “It was just another hockey game. It was an important one because we play them eight times (this season), but hopefully, we can move forward now.”
Going in, the consensus was that any chippiness would be a spontaneous result of natural competitiveness in a divisional matchup, and not due to any lingering effects of the Bertuzzi attack on Moore in the third period of a 9-2 Colorado victory in GM Place.
In fact, with Dan Hinote (back injury) out and Bob Boughner a healthy scratch for the fifth time this season, the Avalanche dressed only eight players who were on the roster for the game 19 months ago in Vancouver. And one of the eight was goalie David Aebischer, who watched Budaj from the bench after stopping 21 of 22 shots in the 7-1 win Friday night at Edmonton.
Still, Colin Campbell, briefly a Colorado Rockies’ defenseman and now the NHL’s executive vice president for on-ice issues, attended the game to further serve notice the league was monitoring the matchup.
At least Campbell saw an exciting game, another example of how, if the new rules and obstruction crackdown continue to have their desired effects, big third-period leads no longer all but guarantee a win.
May’s first goal for Colorado was a nifty one after he carried in the puck, cutting across the slot and around Ed Jovanovski to beat Vancouver goalie Dan Cloutier. That started the comeback at 17:01 of the third period. After Brisebois scored at 17:18 Tanguay’s 6-on-4 goal at 18:40, with goalie Peter Budaj off for an extra attacker and the Canucks skating shorthanded, made things very interesting.
Following NHL tradition, May had offered a reward to his new teammates for a victory over his old team. “Against former teammates, you come in and want to put money up on the board for the boys,” May said. “You want to open up your pocketbook and donate to your teammates … I just wish it was a different outcome, but they played well.”
The teams meet again in back-to-back games on Thursday and Saturday in Denver.
