Well, that was dreadful.
The Vancouver Canucks had a significant opportunity to create some separation in the standings between themselves and the teams chasing them for the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference. Instead, they came out flatter than the band at an elementary school Christmas concert.
In one of the biggest games of the season, the Canucks managed just four shots on goal in the first period against the Utah Hockey Club. They improved leaps and bounds in the second period, he said sarcastically, with a whopping six shots on goal.
The Canucks also only had ten shots through two periods on Saturday against the Chicago Blackhawks, but they also had a 3-1 lead, so it certainly felt different. Without the goal scoring to go with it, ten shots felt egregiously low.
And yet, the Canucks were tied 1-1 going into the third period. Despite the flat start, they still had a chance to win the game and widen the gap between themselves and Utah.
They got an opportunity on the power play a minute into the third, having already scored their one goal of the game on an earlier man advantage. Faced with a chance to take the lead, they mustered up a single shot on goal in the entire two minutes.
In fact, calling it a shot was extraordinarily generous on the part of the scorekeepers. It was actually a pass by Conor Garland from his own side of centre that missed Elias Pettersson by ten feet and just happened to bank off the boards towards Karel Vejmelka in the Utahn net.
It seemed like even the scorekeepers felt sorry for the Canucks’ lack of shots at that point.
It got worse. After Utah took the lead, the Canucks got a golden opportunity to tie the game and potentially pull ahead when Brock Boeser drew a double minor on Clayton Keller. With four minutes to work with and the game on the line, the Canucks failed to generate anything truly dangerous — just four shots from distance with no traffic in front of the net.
At least those were actual shots and not bank passes of the boards.
“We have six minutes on the power play and we don’t get it done,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “That’s the game. Bottom line.”
What made it worse is that it came right after a dominant performance on Saturday. Sure, their opponent in that game was the Chicago Blackhawks, who are bad at hockey and various other things, but it still felt like the Canucks could take the good vibes and confidence from that game and carry it forward.
Ultimately, Saturday's 6-2 win might have been the Canucks' biggest mistake. Giving fans hope with that kind of performance just makes their return to boring mediocrity that much more painful.
Fatigue certainly could have been a factor. It was the second night of back-to-backs, after all, and their sixth game in ten days. But one of the supposed benefits of was that they could spread the ice time around to avoid wearing out their players.
In any case, they better hope that fatigue isn’t an issue because there’s no rest for the wicked. They’ll get just one day off before playing the best team in the NHL, the Winnipeg Jets, on Tuesday.
They’ll need to be a lot better against the Jets than they were when I watched this game.
- Tocchet was insistent that the failed power plays in the third period were the key to the entire game. In his press conference, he flat-out said, “We had six minutes of power play, didn’t get it done, we lost the game — that’s the story.” Personally, I think there’s more to the story, such as how the Canucks utterly failed to generate chances at even-strength and that they’ve now only scored four goals against Utah in three games. It’s concerning that a team behind — barely behind — the Canucks in the standings so thoroughly has their number.
- It was a chippy game early, as the two teams seemed to bring a playoff-like intensity to the start of the game, but it turned out that intensity was reserved solely for after-whistle scrums and not driving to the middle of the ice to create scoring chances. Those two types of intensity so often get confused.
- The Canucks were so out-of-sync that Quinn Hughes ran right into Nils Åman while flying up the ice for a zone entry. Åman stopped up, assuming Hughes wanted to drive up the left wing, but Hughes instead cut to the middle and bowled right into him. Hughes seemed to be feeling some discomfort after the collision, but Åman checked in with him before they went to the locker room at the intermission and he seemed to be okay.
- Åman is a clean player, that’s a shoulder to the chest, perfectly clean hit. Quinn’s got to keep his head up out there.
- That’s the type of thing that was going wrong for the Canucks in the first, which might explain why Hughes got so uncharacteristically frustrated late in the period. Victor Mancini got the puck at the point and, instead of whipping it cross-ice to Hughes, he attempted a low-percentage shot. Hughes was not having it, loudly beaver-tailing his stick on the ice in exasperation. , Hughes was an angry beaver.
- It looked for a moment like Utah had opened the scoring early in the second period when Dylan Guenther poked a loose puck past Kevin Lankinen. Referee Chris Schlenker, however, immediately waved it off, saying that Michael Carcone interfered with Lankinen, mostly because that’s what Carcone did.
- Instead, the Canucks got the game’s first goal a minute later. A nice stretch pass by Elias Pettersson to Jake Debrusk got the Canucks a clean zone entry and they got set up after DeBrusk’s shot was blocked. Pettersson patiently controlled the puck, fed Hughes at the point, and he shot with both DeBrusk and Brock Boeser creating traffic in front. In the chaos, the puck deflected off Mikhail Sergachev’s hand and slipped through Vejmelka’s legs .
- The Hockey Club pushed back hard after Hughes’ goal but the Canucks started throwing down blocks . The mostly-unheralded Derek Forbort came up with two of the biggest blocks of the game, both on Sean Durzi, robbing him of two golden opportunities to tie the game.
- Conor Garland also had a couple of big blocks, including one off the right ankle that clearly hobbled him. He gamely stayed in the play and earned a massive cheer when, already on just one foot, he controlled a pass from Dakota Joshua with one hand on his stick and got the clear to get a line change after a long shift. It was a heroic effort.
- Unfortunately, all of those shot blocks were undone shortly after. Utah’s fourth line was up against the Canucks’ first line and top pairing and won the battle. They spread out the Canucks defensively, with Hughes chasing Carcone all the way up to the blue line. Then Nick Bjugstad got a step on Filip Hronek and looped behind the net and, with no one covering the net front, Elias Pettersson collapsed to the crease, only to leave Kevin Stenlund open behind him. Bjugstad’s pass went between Pettersson’s legs to set up Stenlund for the open net.
- Two minutes after the Canucks’ first fruitless power play in the third period, Utah pulled ahead 2-1. It was the kind of bounce that often seems to happen when you get badly outshot: Nick Schmaltz’s point shot was deflected by Sean Durzi and hit Teddy Blueger’s skate in front of the net, ricocheting right to Logan Cooley for an open net. Lankinen dropped his stick and lunged but couldn’t come up with the miraculous save.
- That’s all that Utah needed. The Canucks pushed back a little but any momentum they were able to build up was erased by their woeful power play. Utah’s aggressive penalty kill created opportunities for the Canucks to find openings elsewhere on the ice but their passes were about as crisp as Jell-O.
- “The coaches are a little frustrated. There are a lot of plays there to be made and we just didn’t make them,” said Tocchet, adding, “We’re a little frustrated as a coaching staff because when they go hard up high, the puck has to go low. You’ve got to make a play. It’s there. So, we’re a little bummed out about that.”
- The Canucks weren’t getting the puck down low on the power play, so their only remaining option was shots from the point. That can work, as the Canucks demonstrated in the second period, but only when there’s traffic and the Canucks had less traffic than .
- “I’ve got to do a better job of getting there — that’s my job,” said Jake DeBrusk. “I was definitely misreading it, obviously. It pisses me off when I’m not there when [the puck] arrives — that’s where I’m good. In saying that, the looks that we were looking for, I think we just overthought things. I think, with that much time, you’ve just got to keep it simple. You’ve got to pepper shots, get recoveries, and go from there.”
- The Canucks pushed for the tying goal in the final minute with Lankinen pulled for the extra attacker, but Hronek telegraphed a pass to the point like he was saying, “” Schmaltz easily picked off the pass and fed Clayton Keller for the empty-net goal from the neutral zone.
- This was an unbearably awful game and I am done thinking about it.
