Let us hold a moment of appreciation for those who refuse to accept the inevitable: players and teams who rage against a drama-free final couple weeks of the regular season. The Vancouver Canucks will not make the playoffs. You know this, I know this, they know this, but they don't have to act like they do. As my own team folds like origami, the Canucks are committed to playing every last one of their 60 allotted minutes until mathematical elimination. Eat shit, mathematics!
The postseason field is more or less set. The Dallas Stars are locked into a first-round matchup with Colorado. The Canucks, entering their game on Tuesday, would have been officially eliminated with a regulation loss. That sure looked like the result they'd receive after 59 minutes of play in Dallas, as they trailed 5-2 on the back of five goals by five different Stars whose first names start with M. (Mikko, Mason, Matt, Mavrik, and Mikael; I noticed this just now when looking at the box score and I'm making it everyone's problem.)
Because a loss meant April golf, the Canucks did not put their goalie back in even after surrendering an empty-netter. They were rewarded with a miracle: three 6-on-5 goals in the final minute of the game to tie it up.
Aatu Raty scored the first at 19:00, and Pius Suter's brace completed the comeback with seven seconds left. "I’ve won and lost a lot of games in this league, and I don’t think I’ve ever lost one in that fashion before," Stars head coach Pete DeBoer said. No one has, Pete: ESPN Research confirms that the Canucks are the first team in history to overcome a three-goal hole in the final minute of play.
"It’s crazy, the resilience," said Kiefer Sherwood, who won the game for the Canucks 3:44 into overtime. "I’ve never been a part of a team that just has so many crazy comebacks and so many rollercoaster come-from-behind games." I highlight Sherwood's quote not to necessarily endorse his inspirational spin but to agree with him that things have been preternaturally difficult for the Canucks this season, thanks to chance and the Canucks themselves. Almost anything that could go wrong has gone wrong in Vancouver. Everyone's gotten hurt. Their two best forwards hated each other's guts, so they traded one. They played joyless, juiceless hockey that predictably regressed from last year's overachievement but didn't regress quite enough to make this season's failures painless. Brock Boeser's a pending free agency. Pius Suter, too. There's a chance Filip Chytil is never healthy again. Who the hell knows what's up with Elias Pettersson. Despite Tuesday's comeback, they will shortly and certainly be eliminated, perhaps as soon as the Wild's game tonight. But it was possible to forget that for a moment. All of us, even the most humble fifth-place Pacific finishers, have it in us to make history, if only for a minute.
