Wake With Elias- Sept 24/19- EP40 puts on a show in Abbotsford

While the defence still has some kinks to work out, and it maybe wasn’t Jacob Markstrom’s best night, the Canucks are starting to show signs that things are starting to come together, and you probably couldn’t get a better example of that than looking at their goal scoring right now. They’ve scored 11 goals in the past 2 games, which is one more than they scored in 7 contests last September. 27 goals total for the exhibition season, and there’s still two more games to come. When you think about how this team struggled to put the puck in the net the last couple seasons, this is certainly encouraging.

The Canucks came out firing last night, yet it was Ottawa who scored on their first shot, as Bobby Ryan blasted one past Markstrom to open the scoring. It didn’t take long for the Sens penalty trouble to bite them though, as their 3rd penalty of the night was a 5 minute boarding penalty to Jordan Szwarz for this dirty hit on Oscar Fantenberg:

Fantenberg would not return, and the Canucks would make the Sens pay on that 5 minute PP, first one from JT Miller:

And then Elias Pettersson with his first of the night (and not Edler as the tweet says):

Before the period was done, Edler would get his though, for a 3-1 score after 20 minutes.

An Artem Anisimov goal made it 3-2 in the 2nd, but it was Petey on the PP again, and tell me this isn’t mid-season form:

Holy smokes! He got all of that one. The Sens refused to die though, and former Kamloops Blazer Rudolfs Balcers made it 4-3. Jordie Benn took a holding call late in the 2nd, and it was starting to look like the Sens might get back in this one, but just as the penalty expired, Tyler Myers spotted Benn as he exited the penalty box, leading to this breakaway beauty:

Onto the third and another dirty hit from Ottawa, this one from Chris Tierney on Brock Boeser:

This time it was Bo Horvat with the PPG and a 6-3 lead. In a cruel twist, Tierney would score on his next shift after a Jacob Markstrom clearing attempt landed right on Tierney’s stick. That was it for the scoring and like I said, there’s things that need to be worked on, but you can see things are starting to come together. 4 points for EP, a 4 point night for Alexander Edler, 3 assists from Brock Boeser, and they went 4 for 7 on the PP. Giving up 45 shots to the Ottawa Senators is not a good look though, especially with the number of AHL’ers they iced last night. These two teams will meet again Wednesday, this time at Rogers Arena before the Canucks close out the exhibition schedule with a visit from the Arizona Coyotes. There will likely be more cuts coming either today or tomorrow, and with guys like Jake Virtanen, Loui Eriksson and Tim Schaller not really lighting things on fire last night, the Canucks have some difficult choices ahead in terms of who gets sent down to Utica.

POST GAME CHATTER:

Camp is underway in Utica, and we’ll have more details on that soon: