The Vancouver Canucks were facing a depleted, struggling Pittsburgh Penguins club. The Penguins were without the services of Marc Andre Fleury, who suffered a broken finger and regular backup goalie Brent Johnson. Star forward Evgeni Malkin was going through a 11 game goalless drought which can serve as a microcosm of the Penguins general offensive woes: 29th rated powerplay in the league.
So with the third string backup goalie in net and Malkin scoring the game’s first goal you sort of had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be the Canucks night.

Thank goodness for Trois Kronor, is all I can say. The Sedins and Burrows responded back in a big way after Malkin’s goal, Henrik getting a nice bank goal off of goalie John Curry’s back/shoulder and Burrows scoring an absolutely beautiful shorthanded goal.

From there, things got ugly as the Canucks scored 3 more goals in the second period and chased Curry from the crease, leaving Russian netminder Alex Perchusky to come out in relief. Perchusky, who doesn’t speak a word of English and had been recalled from the WHL last night after signing an emergency tryout contract, looked alright in his NHL debut and only allowed a single goal.

Although the Canucks could have pressed things further and lit up Perchusky like a Christmas tree, they opted to slightly ease their foot off the gas. While Ron MacLean would insist that the Canucks were getting ‘cocky’ I didn’t see that, as the first unit PP was still out there.

The other big story was returning forward Pavol Demitra, who played his first game of the season tonight. I didn’t really notice Demitra all that much during the game and thought that his timing was a little off. He’s certainly got some rink rust that’ll go away with time. As for the shoulder? He fired off a blistering slapshot in the third period, so it looks like he’s having no problems there. Great to see and hopefully he’ll work out the kinks.

Beyond that, Mikael Samuelsson continues to look impressive, notching another goal tonight. I said awhile ago that he’d been working hard and would start getting rewarded. I’m not entirely sure that the Olympic snub is what jump started him (how long do ride being snubbed?) but either way, I’m glad to see him putting up points.

Also, Roberto Luongo. I keep saying it, but please stop trying to handle the puck. Marty Turco is on his way out the door and not even his magical puck handling skills could save his job. You had some decent moments here and there, but I also caught several times where you fed the puck straight to a Penguin. These lead to goals against, dude.

Idle question: what do you do with Jannik Hansen? No, seriously. His play as of late means he should be playing higher than the fourth line, but where do you fit him in? This becomes especially problematic when Bernier and Johnson come back. Yeah, I guess I’m complaining about the Canucks having forward depth now. What a strange situation to be in…

Lukowich’s age and lack of mobility is showing, but he is working hard out there and is generally making smart decisions with the puck. I feel we’ll be needing him more in the playoffs than we would Rome or Schneider so it’s good to see him fitting in well. Also like that he’s paired with Edler.