Canucks Takeaways: Key prospects shine once again despite loss

Minus their top five forwards and best defenceman, the Vancouver Canucks could not beat Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid Sunday night. The rest of the Edmonton Oilers, the Canucks handled just fine.

Draisaitl and McDavid combined for seven points and their line generated all the Oilers goals in a 4-3 pre-season win against the Canucks in Alberta. But other than the Canucks†inability to stop two of the three best players in the world, Vancouverâ€s performance was actually pretty good — especially with their lack of firepower up front.

The Canucks got third-period goals from three key prospects, Aatu Raty, Braeden Cootes and Jonathan Lekkerimaki and pressed for a tying goal until the end after falling behind 3-0 with 23 minutes to go.

They outshot the Oilers 22-10 over the final two periods. But Draisaitl and McDavid were unstoppable.

Against the run of play, the best one-two punch in the National Hockey League needed only three seconds on the power-play to generate a goal for Draisaitl that made it 3-0 at 16:57 of the second period. And after Raty and Cootes, on another ricochet, scored 43 seconds apart early in the third, McDavid dissected Canuck defenceman Filip Hronek on a two-on-one for a Draisaitl tap-in at 9:27.

With his best day since training camp opened on Sept. 18, Lekkerimaki finished lethally from Filip Chytilâ€s cross-ice pass to make it 4-3 with 3:08 remaining and the Canucks skating six against five. 

But Vancouver couldnâ€t get another puck past Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner. In his second pre-season start, Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko was beaten four times on 24 shots, but also made the save-of-the-game with a diving, paddle stop on Josh Samanskiâ€s rebound attempt early in the third.

The Canucks left top forwards Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, Evander Kane and Conor Garland at home, along with superstar defenceman Quinn Hughes.

Garland is nursing an injury, but most of the top Canucks are expected to play Wednesdayâ€s game in Calgary.

Now 2-2 through four exhibition contests, Vancouverâ€s pre-season ends Friday at home against the Oilers.

Still operating essentially with two squads, the Canucks are expected to greatly reduce their pre-season roster on Monday. The organization feels a lack of lineup continuity a year ago, when the team had to staff five pre-season games in one week, contributed to the Canucks†uneven start. Getting most of their NHL lineup together for the final two pre-season games is a priority.

“Well, the players are making it difficult for us, which is great,†general manager Patrik Allvin said in an intermission interview with Sportsnetâ€s Dan Murphy in Edmonton. “Weâ€ve got good depth, so there is conversations every day here. We’ll shortly here trim down a little bit more, but there’s going to be some tough (decisions) for Adam (Foote) and his staff and for the hockey-ops.â€

Among the prospects trying to push up from the American Hockey League championship team, Raty and Linus Karlsson seemed to open camp with a head start due to their waiver-eligibility and the Canucks†need for centres (Raty) and net-front scoring (Karlsson). Neither has been outstanding, but neither have they seemed to play themselves off the team.

Lekkerimaki, the 21-year-old first-rounder who had 19 goals in 36 games for the AHL Canucks last season in his first year in North America, had a fairly quiet September until Sunday. He and Chytil were the most dangerous Canucks and Lekkerimaki, with his Draisaitl-like finish on a cross-ice pass, demonstrated why he is such a tantalizing offensive prospect. The Swede had three shots on target and six attempts. Only winger Kiefer Sherwood (four and seven) had more for Vancouver.

Lekkerimaki has obvious flaws. He isnâ€t yet as fast nor as strong as he needs to be for the NHL. But perfect hockey players are as rare as perfect humans, and the Canucks will live with Lekkerimakiâ€s deficiencies if he can be as dangerous in the offensive zone as he was Sunday.

As for the first 18-year-old in 35 years trying to make the Canucks out of camp, Cootes seems to just keep “earning another day†as Foote and Allvin have put it. His bank-shot goal off Edmonton defenceman Mattias Ekholm was Cootes†second goal and third point in three pre-season games.

Itâ€s also worth noting the teenager logged more ice time Sunday than Raty (16:58 to 15:51), again held his own in the faceoff circle (6-5) and was one of the forwards heavily leaned on in the final four minutes (2:32 of ice time) when the Canucks were pressing.

Cootes also showed his toughness by not missing a shift after an elbow from Ekholm in the second period and a blow to the face when knocked over by Atro Leppanen late in the third.

Itâ€s easy to see why the Seattle Thunderbird centre was the youngest captain in the Western Hockey League last season, and also wore the ‘C†for Canadaâ€s gold-medal-winning Under-18 team.

The Canucks†big three blue-line prospects, Victor Mancini, Elias Pettersson (Junior) and Tom Willander, have all shown well in camp and the pre-season. Pettersson was the only one who played in Edmonton, and looked solid again with three hits and 18:24 of ice time.

That all three defencemen are waiver-exempt is a huge advantage for the organization, and Allvin said Sunday there could be a “rotation†of them cycling between the NHL and AHL this season if no one player cements a roster spot with the Canucks.

Certainly, it does not appear that 26-year-old depth defenceman Pierre-Olivier Joseph, signed as a free agent this summer after 194 NHL games in Pittsburgh and St. Louis, has done anything to play himself out of Vancouver and allow room for more than one prospect on defence.

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Garland missed a second straight pre-season game due to an undisclosed injury. The play-driving winger has been practising, but his absence is starting to feel similar to J.T. Millerâ€s mystery injury from a year ago when the former Canuck played only the final pre-season tuneup and clearly was not fully healthy when the season began.

Although Demkoâ€s save percentage Sunday wasnâ€t what heâ€d like, he couldnâ€t be faulted on any of the goals. And playing the whole game was a good sign for the starting goalie who needs reps after three separate injuries, including a torn popliteus muscle in his knee, restricted him to just 23 games last season. 

The Abbotsford Canucks†No. 1 line of Karlsson alongside Max Sasson and Arshdeep Bains was reunited against the Oilers. Their chemistry and familiarity with one another were evident in the offensive zone. Unfortunately, they were exposed a couple of times by the McDavid-Draisaitl-Trent Frederic line. The Canuck prospects didnâ€t face anyone like that in the AHL.

Foote to reporters in Edmonton: “We had a couple of probably young mistakes early with the wrong line on the ice. But I love the effort. I mean, we didn’t quit. Beautiful six-on-five (and) we outscored them 3-1 in the third. So, I really like this group. They didn’t quit, and they applied a lot of what we’ve been working on.â€

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