For once, the first period wasn’t the problem for the Vancouver Canucks.
On Thursday night in Las Vegas, the Canucks were clearly the better team in the opening 20 minutes, outshooting the Vegas Golden Knights 11-to-6 and creating some fantastic scoring chances. They were unlucky to only be up 1-0 heading into the intermission.
Then the rest of the game happened.
The Canucks were entirely unable to extend their one-goal lead. It wasn’t that they couldn’t find the back of the net; they couldn’t find the net, period. They had just two shots on goal in the second period and seven in the third period — nine shots on goal in the final 40 minutes.
It’s worse than that, actually. The Canucks last shot on goal in the first period came with 7:14 remaining in the period. That means the Canucks had just nine shots on goal in 47:14.
Even worse, the Canucks’ seven shots in the third period didn’t come until after the Golden Knights had taken a 2-1 lead, as the Canucks suddenly woke up and realized that there was life outside of their own blue line.
That is, to be blunt, absolutely brutal. There’s parking the bus and then there’s putting the bus up on blocks and dismantling it for parts.
Of course, the Golden Knights deserve some credit for the Canucks’ lack of shots. They defended well and were relentless in pouring pressure on in the Canucks’ zone, with the Canucks doing well themselves to block shots and prevent scoring chances while under siege.
“They defend the middle of the ice really well,” said Teddy Blueger. “It was a struggle to get possession consistently against them tonight, which, I think, is the strength of our game. On the other hand, I felt we defended really well too. It was kind of just that type of game.
But lots of teams defend well. The Canucks are going to face teams like the Golden Knights in the playoffs — perhaps even the Golden Knights themselves — and need to be able to find a way to create offence against them. They can’t expect to nurse a one-goal lead to the end of regulation.
That’s when you need your stars — the guys who are supposed to be game-breakers and difference-makers — to step up and make something happen. But the stars, like in Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall,” couldn’t be seen.
Brock Boeser and Jake DeBrusk had one shot on goal each. Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller had none. Meanwhile, the team’s lone goal was scored by the fourth line.
It’s tough to know exactly where to place the blame: on the star forwards, whose ability to take over games has seemingly disappeared? On the coaching staff, who haven’t delivered on the promise to play faster, riskier hockey that creates more offence? On management, who failed to put together a defence corps that can move the puck well enough to play that faster system?
Whoever is to blame, head coach Rick Tocchet’s postgame comments didn’t seem to reflect what fans had just seen.
“I thought we played well,” said Tocchet. “We didn’t give them much, they didn’t give us much. They capitalized.”
No, the Golden Knights didn’t give the Canucks much but the Canucks didn’t exactly take anything either. The best teams in the NHL don’t hope to win games by defending a one-goal lead. They demand to win games. They impose their game and force their opponents to adapt.
The Canucks don’t do that. 32 games into the season, the Canucks are mediocre by pretty much every metric: 13th in points percentage, 15th in goal differential, 18th in corsi, 17th in expected goals — the Canucks are essentially an average team with an elite defenceman propping them up.
They have potential to be more than that. We’ve seen flashes of it this season and fans are well aware of what the likes of Pettersson, Miller, and Boeser are capable of when things are clicking. But they better start clicking soon because this inconsistent hockey isn’t going to get them very far.
I didn’t like what I saw when I watched this game.
- Teddy Blueger was all around the net early in the game and it led to the Canucks’ lone goal. After a Tyler Myers’ slap shot, the puck came around to Quinn Hughes. He sent the puck back down low to Danton Heinen, who tipped the puck in front to the net-crashing Blueger. His initial shot was blocked, but Kiefer Sherwood shoveled the puck back on goal and Blueger swept in the rebound.
- Blueger celebrated like it was his first goal in 13 games, probably because it was. It also always feels good to score against a former team, even if Blueger only played 24 games for Vegas across the regular season and playoffs. His name’s on the Stanley Cup because of those 24 games, so no complaints from him, I’m sure.
- Pius Suter should have made it 2-0 less than a minute later but Adin Hill said no in dramatic fashion, like Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Conor Garland won the puck on the forecheck and swung it to Dakota Joshua, who chipped the puck to Suter at the backdoor. What looked like a wide-open net was suddenly taken away by Hill, who got the cheater of his glove on the puck to rob Suter.
- The Canucks’ power play drama continued on Thursday night. Two games ago, J.T. Miller was off the first unit, then last game he was back on the first unit and Elias Pettersson was on the second unit. Against Vegas, they took turns: Pettersson on the first unit on one power play, Miller on the first unit on the next. It was weird and didn’t work, with the power play going 0-for-2 with just two shots on goal.
- In most situations in hockey, players go to great efforts to get to the puck as quickly as possible. The one exception is on a potential icing call, where defencemen go to great efforts to look as if they are going to great efforts to get to the puck. Vincent Desharnais put on a show on one first-period icing, pumping his arms wildly to prove that his glacial pace was truly his top speed and there was no possible way he could get to the puck before it crossed the goal line.
- Kiefer Sherwood’s confidence is higher than the pinnacle of the “Queen of the Night” aria from The Magic Flute. He put Tanner Pearson in the spin cycle with some unexpected dangles in the defensive zone late in the first period. Sherwood keeps showing new sides to his game. At this point, he’s at least a dodecagon.
- Sherwood even set up the Canucks’ only quality chance of the second period. Quinn Hughes joined a rush and caught Vegas off-guard by continuing all the way to the net, where Sherwood found him with a nice pass. Hill made the stop on Hughes’ deflection, which was the Canucks first shot of the period ten minutes in.
- There was a scary moment where Hughes got turned around on a shot block and took an Alex Pietrangelo shot to the back of his knee. It was a stark reminder that if Hughes goes down to an injury, the Canucks are completely screwed.
- Another Pietrangelo shot tied the game late in the second period. Kevin Lankinen was having a great game with some quality saves but Pietrangelo’s point shot beat him cleanly with no traffic in front. Don’t get me wrong, Pietrangelo got plenty of mustard on it but Lankinen usually eats those up like they were hot dogs.
- “Slow forwards, I don’t know what’s going on,” joked Pietrangelo after the game about taking a shot before any of his teammates could set a screen in front.
- Like Hill, Lankinen came up with a highlight reel save before the night was done. Carson Soucy turned the puck over with a reverse pass to an unsuspecting Noah Juulsen. Pavel Dorofeyev jumped on the loose puck and centred for Mark Stone, who seemed to have Lankinen at his mercy until Lankinen reached back with his stick and got his paddle on the puck. I haven’t seen someone rob a Stone like that since I last watched Snatch.
- The miraculous save was all for nought. Shortly after, William Karlsson outmuscled Pius Suter on the boards and drove to the net. Lankinen stopped his first shot but Karlsson cleaned up his own rebound for the game-winning goal.
- Sherwood kept being the Canucks best player down the stretch with an excellent PK shift. He picked off a pass at his own blue line much like he did against the Avalanche and sped away for one chance, then set up Danton Heinen for a point blank chance that Hill turned aside, and finally Sherwood broke up one more play in the defensive zone and got the puck to Tyler Myers for a clear. It was a 48-second PK shift that was spent almost entirely outside of the Canucks’ zone.
- Some of the coaching decisions in the final minutes didn’t make a lot of sense to me. With about three minutes left, the Golden Knights iced the puck. The Pettersson line had just been on, so Miller’s line came out for the offensive zone faceoff, which made sense, but Derek Forbort and Vincent Desharnais were sent out as the defence pairing. Miller won the faceoff and Desharnais set up Forbort for a one-timer that was easily stopped by Hill.
- Hughes and Myers had been on the ice recently but not so recently that they couldn’t get back out there and you have to think that Hughes might have been able to do something more with that opportunity against a tired Golden Knights group — both defencemen had been on the ice for a minute-and-a-half, while Dorofeyev had been on the ice for over two minutes.
- The two offensive zone faceoffs — one after the icing, one after Forbort’s shot — with around three minutes left felt like an opportunity to pull Lankinen for the extra attacker. That sixth skater might have been able to swarm the puck off the faceoff and keep it in the offensive zone. Instead, the Canucks didn’t get Lankinen out of the net until there was a minute left.
- By the time Lankinen was pulled, Hughes was back on the bench, which meant it was up to Juulsen and Soucy to move the puck up ice, a task they are not good at performing. Miller was slashing up ice but Soucy didn’t make the pass. He waited way too long to move the puck and finally sent a pass that was behind Pettersson, forcing him to stop up and attempt a dump-in instead of a zone entry with possession. It was picked off by Noah Hanifin and he set up Brett Howden for the empty-net goal.
- Those coaching decisions didn’t cost the Canucks the game — the performance of the players through the majority of 60 minutes of ice time had a lot more to do with it — but they made it a lot harder for the Canucks to pull off a last-minute miracle to tie the game and send it to overtime.
