5-2 down with eight minutes left, Vancouver won 6-5

For 52 minutes in Anaheim on Tuesday night, this was the game Vancouver's season said it would be. The Canucks trailed 4-1 after two periods and 5-2 with less than eight minutes left, on a ten game losing streak, winless since October 3. Then the game flipped in a rush that no one in the building had reason to expect. Brock Boeser had already pulled one back, A.J. Greer restored Anaheim's three goal cushion with his second of the night, and Jamie Oleksiak answered 31 seconds later to make it 5-3 and keep the night technically alive.

What followed is the part that will be replayed. With Vancouver trailing 5-3, Jonathan Lekkerimaki beat Lukas Dostal from inside the left circle at 17:14 of the third period, then tied the game through traffic from beyond the left circle with just under two minutes remaining. Two goals in the final three minutes, from a team that had forgotten how to win, sent a lost game to overtime. In the extra period, on a two man advantage, Filip Hronek scored with 10.4 seconds left, a one timer from the slot, and the streak was over: Canucks 6, Ducks 5.

The supporting numbers show how complete the collapse and the comeback both were. Boeser and Elias Pettersson each had two assists for Vancouver, Leevi Merilainen made 18 saves, and the Canucks scored four straight goals to close the game. For Anaheim, Greer scored twice, Jackson LaCombe had three assists, Leo Carlsson and Jeff Malott each had a goal and an assist, and Dostal stopped 27 shots. The Ducks have now lost six of their past seven, and lost at home to Vancouver for the eighth time in nine meetings since December 2021.

Why one wild night matters for a 3-10 team is not the standings, which one win barely touches. It is the shape of the alternative. A loss from 4-1 and 5-2 down would have been the eleventh straight defeat and a tidy symbol for a season sliding away in October. Instead the youngest scorer on the roster produced the two biggest goals of the year, the winner came from a defenceman in the last seconds of overtime, and a dressing room that had not celebrated since October 3 gets to remember what that feels like before the trip to San Jose on Thursday.

Our call is that this comeback saves Vancouver's season only if it changes the next two weeks, not the next two days. Comebacks like this are usually remembered in one of two ways: as the night a team turned, or as the one bright game inside a bad run that fooled everyone for a week. The difference is boring hockey after the emotional one, points taken in ordinary games against ordinary opponents, starting in San Jose. Anaheim, meanwhile, have the harder film session. Losing a three goal lead in eight minutes at home, with a two man disadvantage deciding it at the end, is a discipline problem as much as a hockey one, and six losses in seven says it is not a one night problem either.