A funny thing happened to Kiefer Sherwood on his way here.
After failing through his first five professional seasons to stick in the National Hockey League, the minor-league scoring star transformed his game. Sherwood learned to check and hit. He channelled his speed and hockey IQ into making himself a miserable opponent.
But Sherwood never neglected his offensive skills. He never forgot how to score.
On Monday, as the league’s runaway leader in hits, the undrafted winger from Columbus, Ohio scored his first NHL hat trick at age 29 — producing all the goals in the Vancouver Canucks’ 3-1 win against the Colorado Avalanche.
It was a breathtaking reversal in form for the Canucks from a 5-1 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday, when Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet questioned the emotional engagement of “four or five” guys, to their most impressive performance of the season.
Maybe it will be a launch point for the Canucks upwards from their month-long spell of inconsistent and, at times, infuriating hockey. But it sure felt like an arrival for Sherwood, who has already set a career-high (in the NHL) with 11 goals in 30 games and absorbed on Monday the sound of a sellout crowd bellowing his name.
“I was just trying to take it all in, having the whole arena (chanting). . . It’s something you dream of as a kid,” he said. “Those are the kind of moments that you work for and just kind of manifest and visualize. So I’m really thankful and grateful.”
It was what he hoped could happen when Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin, impressed by how rambunctiously and effectively Sherwood played against Vancouver in the first round of the playoffs last spring, targeted the Nashville Predators’ free agent.
In an autumn marked by inconsistency and the market’s usual turmoil and extremism, Sherwood has been one of the steadiest and most dependable players.
He looks, so far, like a spectacular bargain after betting on himself and Vancouver on a two-year contract worth $1.5 million per season.
“From the conversations I had with my agent, they had a vision for me,” Sherwood said after his main press scrum had dissipated. “Whichever team had a vision, that’s where I wanted to go. I was just looking for opportunity. That’s what sold me.
“For me, I just focused on the opportunity — trying to get an opportunity. I mean, that’s all you can ask for when you’re in the minors. There’s a ton of great players in the (American Hockey League), but if you don’t get the opportunity, sometimes you can’t show it. I just tried to work to get that opportunity, and then from there I think you can use whatever skill set or tools you have.”
The player who leads the league with 184 hits, the same player who scored 68 goals in 109 AHL games over parts of his final three seasons in the minors, showed all sides of his game against the Avalanche.
Sherwood opened the scoring at 16:14 of the first period to cap one of those all-in, puck-winning, board-battling shifts that Tocchet has been demanding.
Sherwood protected the puck along the boards from two Avalanche players, then relayed it to Pius Suter, who made an excellent pass to Danton Heinen at the front of the net. Heinen was stopped in tight by Colorado goalie Mackenzie Blackwood, but Sherwood followed up and got two whacks at the puck to score on the rebound.
That goal was all strength and hard work. His next one was pure skill.
With the Avalanche on the power play in a 1-0 game late in the second period, Sherwood anticipated Nathan MacKinnon’s entry pass at the Canucks blue line. With Colorado defenceman Cale Makar caught slightly flat-footed by the turnover, Sherwood pushed the puck ahead and outskated one of the fastest players in the NHL before firing a wrist shot into the top corner behind Blackwood for a breakaway goal at 15:04.
He completed his hat trick by shooting post-and-in into an empty net from his own blue line with 2:35 remaining.
And “Kie-fer Sher-wood! Kie-fer Sher-wood!” rang from the Rogers Arena pews like a Christmas carol.
“You win games with guys like that, so it was a great add for us,” Conor Garland said. “He’s fought his way (through the minors), he’s gone through a lot. So it’s cool. Like a lot of guys in here who went through the minors or were undrafted or passed over, they enjoy each day and they respect this league. They’re always fun to be around.”
What would have been an almost-perfect bounceback game for the Canucks was blunted only slightly by Avalanche Valeri Nichuskin’s six-on-five goal with 46 seconds remaining. It deprived Thatcher Demko of a shutout in the goalie’s third game back from a serious knee injury.
Demko finished with 30 saves. The line of Garland, J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser nullified the MacKinnon line for the Avalanche, and Canucks centre Elias Pettersson was fully engaged, throwing a couple of hits, winning puck battles and faceoffs, and getting four shots on target.
Canucks penalty-killers blanked the Avalanche power play over eight minutes. MacKinnon, the NHL’s leading scorer, did not get a point.
“I think everybody in here is pretty even keel,” Garland said. “Maybe the market overreacts, but I don’t think we really overreact in here. We had a bad effort (Saturday), and we weren’t happy with it. But we got to work the next day and just moved on.”
The Canucks have four more games before the Christmas break, including back-to-back contests in Utah and Las Vegas starting Wednesday.
“Every win is a step, though,” defenceman Carson Soucy said. “We’ll try to just harness what we had tonight — just a little fire. It sucks that it had to come after a loss, but that does fuel you sometimes. Hopefully, we can just kind of stick with what worked tonight.”