Lack stars in his first NHL start as Canucks prove nothing is going to come easy

John Tortorella went on something of a fact-finding mission on Sunday and, while it's hard to know what exactly the Vancouver Canucks' head coach learned amid all the craziness at The Saddledome, it likely dawned on him that the early part of this season isn't going to be smooth or predictable.

“Really, we should have been spanked,” Tortorella said shortly after the Canucks fashioned an wildly improbable 5-4 overtime win against the Calgary Flames. “It's a good test for our team to win a game like that. Those are some games you're going to have win during a year. You're not always going to be perfect and we found a way tonight.”

But they had to look really hard for this one.

In the Flames' home opener, the Canucks pulled a complete no-show for two periods, fashioned a frenzied third-period comeback when Tortorella took a meat cleaver to his lineup, took the lead on fourth-liner Dale Weise's goal with 3 and a half minutes left, piddled it away when Vancouver kid David Jones scored the tying goal for the Flames off a wild scramble with 19 seconds left, then won it on Mike Santorelli's second goal of the game in overtime.

Read that and it sounds simple enough but it doesn't begin to capture the wild swings in momentum, the moments of inspiration and ineptitude and thegeneral chaos within the affair.

“It just felt awesome when Santorelli scored,” said rookie goalie Eddie Lack, who starred in his first NHL game.

And maybe that was the only important takeaway for the Canucks. But it was a mighty struggle to get there.

Through two periods, the Orcans were outshot 26-14 by a Calgary club that is chest-deep in a rebuilding project. The only reason they were still in the game was Lack. The rookie 'keeper, who missed the last five months of last season with a hip injury, stopped 12 of 13 in the first period and 11 of 12 in the second while his mates went through the motions in front of him.

“It could have got embarrassing,” said Henrik Sedin.

“It was good to see the team play for (Lack) in the third period because he gave us the opportunity to win,” said Tortorella.

But the coach's fine hand could also be found in this victory. With the Canucks in a daze, Tortorella split up the Sedin twins in the third period after he had split up his top defensive pairing of Dan Hamhuis and Kevin Bieksa in the second frame. This has happened only a handful of times in the twins' years in Vancouver and rarely has it been successful. But Daniel immediately set up Jannik Hansen with the first goal of the comeback before Henrik teed one up for Santorelli to tie the game. Weise and Jones then traded goals late in the third before the twins, reunited, almost won it on the first shift in overtime.

It was left to Bieksa, whose evening mirrored his team, to set up Santorelli for the game-winner.

“It wasn't just to split (the Sedins) up,” said Tortorella. “I mean, we had six body checks and four scoring chances in two periods. We were dead in the water. It's an easy decision to change things up.”

“It wasn't a big deal for us,” said Henrik. “We came out as a new team. We got some new lines rolling and got some energy from that.”

As for the deeper meaning of the game, Henrik said: “It was a big win for us. To go home 2-1 and feeling good about our game is huge. Now we can move on.”

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