VANCOUVER — The good times at Rogers Arena have been few and far between this season.
But as they stared down a two-goal deficit with less than five minutes remaining in regulation time, the Vancouver Canucks staged an unlikely rally to beat the Nashville Predators 4-3 in a shootout.
After Brock Boeser opened the scoring for the Canucks in a strong first period, Marco Rossi and Filip Hronek scored the comeback goals late in the third. Jake DeBrusk was the only player to connect in the shootout.
The victory marked just the fifth time in franchise history that the Canucks had erased a multi-goal deficit to win, and only the second since 2000. Late last season, they overcame a 5-2 deficit against the Dallas Stars by scoring three goals in the final minute.
Even after Thursday’s victory, the Canucks remained last in the NHL standings. Their record of 20-37-8 gives them 48 points, 11 fewer than the next-worst team, the Calgary Flames (26-32-7).
With no risk of damaging their odds for April’s draft lottery, the rebuilding team has plenty to play for.
“We have a lot of young guys,” said Hronek, who has seen his leadership role grow as the Canucks have moved on from many of their veterans. “It’s important for them to get the wins.
“Get that feeling and know what we have to play like, every game.”
There was no better example Thursday of those ‘young guys’ than Marco Rossi. In his 16th game with the Canucks, the 24-year-old centre who joined the team as part of the return from December’s Quinn Hughes trade, earned first-star honours with his first three-point night in Vancouver.
During a dominant first period for the Canucks, Rossi got his stick on a Hronek point shot that was also deflected by Boeser to open the scoring. Then, he ignited the comeback with his seventh of the season with 4:05 left to play in the third period before picking up an assist on Hronek’s game-tying goal.
“I felt really good,” Rossi said. “The bounces were maybe more on our side today.
“My linemates Brock and Liam (Ohgren) made it easy for me.”
As Vancouver’s lines have begun to stabilize following their trade-deadline deals that sent out Conor Garland and David Kampf, the trio of Rossi, Boeser and Ohgren is starting to gel. In the last five games, Rossi now has two goals and four assists, Boeser has four goals and one assist and Ohgren has a goal and an assist.
“The chemistry is coming,” Rossi said. “It’s important that everyone is bringing something different to the line, and I think that’s the key.”
“We talked about just getting more offensive-zone time,” Boeser said. “We thought we didn’t have much, and I thought that was better tonight.
“Just cycling the puck, moving it around and then getting the puck to the net.”
Even though the home side trailed 3-1 after two periods, Vancouver coach Adam Foote felt the fans in the building knew that their team probably deserved a better fate.
“I think they’re smart hockey fans up here and I think the players felt it,” he said. “It gave him a little bit of a push.
“When we made it 3-2, the energy, I thought, put us over the line. Once they tied it, it was pretty loud in there, and our players were pretty excited.”
In the opposite dressing room, with his team locked into a tight race to snag a wild-card playoff spot in the Western Conference, Nashville coach Andrew Brunette expressed some disappointment two nights after his squad had to erase an early 2-0 deficit to earn a 4-2 road win over the Seattle Kraken.
“Grateful to get a point — probably didn’t deserve one,” Brunette said. “Obviously, it hurts blowing a two-goal lead late in the game, but we didn’t really deserve to be in the game.
“We had a lot of passengers. Young guys brought energy, and rest of the guys were passengers.”
With the shootout loss, the Predators’ 67 points leaves them tied with the Seattle Kraken and the Los Angeles Kings. The San Jose Sharks currently hold the second wild-card spot in the West at 68 points and have played fewer games than the three teams chasing them.
The Canucks will host the Kraken on Saturday. Nashville will resume its west-coast swing Sunday in Edmonton.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 13, 2026.
Carol Schram, The Canadian Press
