Two things are true about Vancouver's 6-5 overtime win in Edmonton on opening night, and Canucks fans only want to talk about the second one. The officiating in the final two minutes was indefensible. Vancouver won this game on the merits anyway.
Start with the part everyone's furious about, because they're right to be. With the Canucks up a goal and on a power play late in the third, Linus Karlsson got taken down by Mattias Ekholm, whose stick snapped on the play. Karlsson climbed to his feet and gave a light tap at the already-broken stick. The officials called him for slashing at 18:08 of the third. A tackled man went to the box for touching a stick that was in pieces before he reached it. That's a terrible call at the worst possible moment, and it did exactly what a bad call does: it wiped out Vancouver's power play and handed Edmonton one with the clock bleeding. Vasily Podkolzin buried the tying goal off it, and the game went to overtime.
If you want to argue the refs tried to drag Edmonton back into a game it was losing, the sequence backs you up. Arguing they stole it is a stretch. They gave Edmonton a lottery ticket, and Vancouver tore it up in overtime.
Vancouver had a three-goal lead in the third period and blew it all by itself, long before the Karlsson call mattered. Manny Malhotra, in his first game running an NHL bench, said it plainly afterward: "To be honest with you, we're fortunate to get a point. Great comeback, but in the end we still gave up three chances in overtime in a minute and a half." That's the coach of the winning team refusing to spike the football. He knows his own group put that game in doubt.
And then they won it clean. Paul Cotter, a one-year, $2.15 million signing making his Canucks debut, scored 1:59 into overtime off a give-and-go with Max Sasson. A forecheck and a passing play. No whistle, no controversy. He bookended his debut with goals and walked out of Rogers Place a folk hero. You can't credit the refs for the tying goal and then call the winner shady. It came clean, off Cotter's stick.
Evan Bouchard put up a hat trick and a five-point night, and it still wasn't enough. That's on Edmonton's goaltending and its third period.
The officials earned every bit of the roasting coming their way. The Karlsson call was a disgrace and they should own it. But Vancouver earned the scoreboard. They were the better team over sixty-five minutes and finished the job when it counted. They can complete the home-and-home in Vancouver on Thursday still holding both: a legitimate win, and a legitimate grievance.
