Canucks’ recent success helped by Hughes, Lankinen

If you had predicted a month ago that the Vancouver Canucks would start this truth-serum season at 3-1-2 through their first six games, four of those games on the road, eight points out of 12 would have seemed reasonable.

Maybe slightly optimistic given there are eight new players to the roster, but certainly doable for an organization that badly wants to prove last season’s 109-point campaign wasn’t an outlier, wasn’t a one-off.

But as the Canucks were beating the Chicago Blackhawks 6-3 on Tuesday for their third straight win after opening their schedule with three losses, the two biggest factors driving the team’s second-week success would have been outrageous propositions before training camp opened in September.

One is that their starting goalie, posting some of the best numbers in the National Hockey League, would be Kevin Lankinen, who wasn’t pilfered from the free-agent bargain bin until after training camp began, and in four seasons with the Blackhawks and Nashville Predators had never been more than a respected, reliable backup.

The other factor is nearly as stunning: that Quinn Hughes could come off a Norris Trophy-winning season when he was the best defenceman on the planet, and be even more dominant and influential.

On a Tuesday night when Danton Heinen scored twice for the Canucks, and J.T. Miller had a goal and two assists while playing through whatever injury he is nursing, and Elias Pettersson had the best game of his disappointing start, and Kiefer Sherwood had another dozen hits to go with a pair of assists, no one on the ice was close to Hughes.

The 25-year-old captain collected only a couple of assists from the Canucks’ six goals. But he was on the ice for the first five Vancouver markers — and for none of Chicago’s. Five-on-five shots were 14-4 for the Canucks with Hughes playing, 22-11 for the Blackhawks when he wasn’t. With Hughes, scoring chances were 9-1 and high-danger chances 5-1.

Hughes told us in early September that he thought he would be even better than he was during his 92-point season last year. We should have believed him.

“I think my mentality is at another level,” he said Tuesday night. “I don’t know if I’ll get to the numbers that I got to last year, but I think that my overall game is better. I’m spreading the puck around a lot, and getting shots. They haven’t really gone in too much, but we’ve played pretty good. For me, it’s always the process. If the process is good, I’m happy with that.”

“I think Huggy’s the type of kid. . . where he’s chasing perfection, right?” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said. “I don’t think he ever sits back. He’s thinking, like, ‘Teams are going to game plan (for me), so what do I do if they do this?’ Like, that’s how he thinks. We actually talk about that. Like, if a team is going to be high on him (to take away space), what’s the next play? And that’s why he’s chasing perfection.”

Tocchet said this relentless pursuit is “one hundred per cent” a common trait among the greatest players in hockey, and cited Sidney Crosby as Exhibit A.

“He’s always trying to. . . he changes his workout, he changes his patterns, he changes what he does in practice,” Tocchet said of Crosby, whom he coached as part of Mike Sullivan’s staff with the Pittsburgh Penguins. “He’s chasing perfection, and Hughes is the same type of guy. They have that mindset.”Interestingly, Hughes said one of the main reasons he has started so well is how differently and how much better he prepares his body for the NHL season than when he was starting out as a pro. And remember, the dynamo from Michigan started so well that he was the runner-up to Cale Makar for the Calder Trophy in 2020.

“When I was younger, I was coming out of camp with groin injuries,” he said. “Like, 20, 21, 22, I was injured. I missed two games one year, four games the next, and it’s hard to feel confident when you don’t trust your body. I’ve been really detailed in my body (preparation), and then my overall game has gotten way better.”

Which brings us to Lankinen.

Before he started and won the last three games of this road trip, after Artus Silovs lost his first two games in the Canucks crease, the 29-year-old from Finland hadn’t started consecutive NHL games since the end of the 2021-22 season.

Stuck behind Juuse Saros in Nashville, Lankinen played in 24 games last season, only 19 the year before.

Despite missing training camp and getting in only two pre-season games with Vancouver, Lankinen is 3-0-1 in his first four starts while posting a .941 save rate. He has already saved 4.3 goals above league average, according to Natural Stat Trick.“I try to enjoy this as much I can,” Lankinen told Sportsnet late Tuesday. “But at the same time, I’m trying to stay present. I’ve done so much work, not just this summer but the last few years, to prepare for an opportunity to play more games and prove to myself and everybody else that I can be an elite goalie in this league. I think it’s just all that preparation and hard work — and mental work — that’s helping me with this opportunity I’ve had here the last couple of weeks. So, I’m just trying to keep the foot on the gas and help the team win.

“Obviously, the NHL is the best league in the world and it’s never easy to win a game, so you’ve got to enjoy those moments because those are the ones that fuel your passion, fuel your motivation. But at the same time, you’re never satisfied because there’s always more.”

It’s remarkable in hindsight that none of the other 31 NHL teams signed Lankinen before the Canucks did on Sept. 21, 83 days into free agency and for only $875,000 on a one-year contract.

Tocchet has noted how “huge” the move was by general manager Patrik Allvin to land Lankinen, given the indefinite absence of injured Canucks goalkeeper Thatcher Demko.

“I kind of knew that I was in a good spot,” Lankinen said. “I had some great talks (with teams) throughout the whole process. If I wanted to stay in Nashville, I could have stayed. But I chose to take a leap of faith and look for a better opportunity to play more games. Leading into July and even after, I had so many talks with different teams. I was kind of keeping the cards to myself a little bit too, trying to find the best opportunity of the options that I had. I felt like I did a good choice.”

No kidding.

Whenever Demko returns, Lankinen won’t be going anywhere.

In the short-term, the Canucks go back to Vancouver for a challenging three-game homestand that starts Saturday against Crosby’s Penguins.

Conor Garland, Brock Boeser and Pius Suter had the other Canucks goals on Tuesday.

“Overall, I’m happy with the game,” Tocchet said. “But I still think. . . the guts of the ice is something where we’re not as good as last year. We’ve got to really start to figure that out. I think we’re giving up too many opportunities in the middle of the ice. But overall, I mean, scoring six goals, I’m happy.”

“We’re not there yet,” Miller said after logging a season-low 16:20 of ice time and taking zero faceoffs. “We’re scoring on our looks and special teams have been good, but to be honest, with the standard we have in here, we’re just not playing near good enough.”

Except for a few guys, two in particular.