Canucks vs. Oilers: How the Canucks took the Oilers’ space away Game 5

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Scoring a power-play goal night in and night out generally will give you a leg up on the opposition.

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It’s a big reason why the Edmonton Oilers have got as far into the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs as they have — but it’s also no coincidence they’re now on the ropes after they didn’t score a power-play goal for the first time this post-season.

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The Vancouver Canucks did a masterful job of bending, not breaking, in Thursday’s 3-2 win over the Oilers at Rogers Arena, both on the penalty kill but also at even strength.

And it’s an improvement in a subtle little detail that’s made all the difference: they’ve changed the way they’ve offered space to the Oilers to play in.

As noted by TNT’s Paul Bissonnette during Thursday’s telecast, the Canucks made a concerted effort to cut off the backside of the where the Oilers are attacking.

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That meant it became a lot harder for the Oilers to find low-to-high passes, or to move the pack back into the space they’d vacated. So often Connor McDavid will cut across the slot, looking to drag several penalty killers with him, creating an open passing lane behind him to feed Leon Draisaitl parked in a shooting position down low.

But if the penalty killers don’t bite and maintain their discipline in their positioning, those passing lanes become a lot more clogged.

For example, Bisonnette highlighted a second-period power play where Edmonton did gain the zone with speed, as they like to do, but the Canucks did two smart things defending it. First, Tyler Myers was pretty aggressive defending the lane, taking away an aggressive attack down the wing — but just as crucially, Dakota Joshua came up on the hind quarter of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, taking away a potential cutback lane.

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The Oilers were happy to work the puck back around the wall, but the Canucks stayed smartly positioned in more of a defensive box, rather than the usual “wedge plus one” set up, where three defenders group themselves on top of the crease.

It’s a gamble for the defenders to take, because it does give away the centre of the zone, but the Canucks have made a choice to aggressively contest the outer spaces, at least in the initial stages of the zone entry.

Making sure they’re covering off the spaces behind the puck-carrier was also very evident at five on five on Thursday. In the early stages of the game the Oilers had some success with what Rick Tocchet would term the “bump-back” — basically where a player looks to stretch the attack, but then sets themself as a pivot point, drawing a defender to them, then laying the puck back into the open space behind them. That’s an area that can be difficult space to defend.

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It’s all about the backchecker at that point.

“The weak side forward has to protect that. He’s got to be a little more aware of that, when you see that bump back, because you can’t have two guys go to the same guy. And they bump it back and that’s why McDavid and those guys are so good. So it’s really important our fourth guy takes the route they can to cut that off,” Tocchet said after Game 5.

The other key is how the Canucks forecheck. They are very aggressive with their two lead forwards, which means there’s a lot of pressure on the third forward, whose job it is to stay high and help delay any potential breakout by the Oilers, giving that fourth forward time to get into position to take away the bump.

Tocchet said Friday that for the most part the high forward did an excellent job of maintaining discipline, though he did say the energy of the crowd led to some slippage.

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Conor Garland said there were a couple moments early in the second period where they needed to drill down — and they did, he said.

“Being disciplined is a really good word for it,” he said.

Maintaining that hole will be essential in Game 6, Tocchet pressed down.

“(If) he gets excited and he starts to dive in because he sees something and then what happens? We can’t have that in Edmonton because they are one of the best rush teams in the league.”

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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