If Flannery O’Connor was alive today and a sports journalist covering the Vancouver Canucks, she might say that a good 60 minutes is hard to find.
The Canucks did not want to have a repeat of their ugly first period against the Columbus Blue Jackets, where they were outshot 17-to-2 and went into the intermission trailing 2-0. Accordingly, they came out with something to prove against the Tampa Bay Lightning and came out of the first with a one-goal lead.
No, their first period wasn’t a repeat of their previous first period; they saved that for the second period.
The Lightning took over the game in the second, outshooting the Canucks 18-to-5 and scoring twice to take the lead going into the third period. It didn’t help that the Canucks took three minor penalties in the second period to put the Lightning on the power play.
“We got into penalty trouble,” said Tyler Myers. “That created some momentum for them. We’ve gotta try to stay out of the box a bit more.”
The Canucks were much better in the third period and arguably deserved a better result than a 3-2 regulation loss but the penalties and breakdowns in the second period cost them dearly. And yet, despite those issues in the second period, there were glimmers of the Canucks finally starting to put it all together after a rollercoaster start to the season.
“Our goal is obviously 60-minute efforts,” said Kiefer Sherwood. “There’s gonna be ebbs and flows in every game and momentum shifts but I thought our five-on-five play was a lot better tonight and our defensive detail was a lot better.”
His head coach seemed to agree with that assessment, praising the team’s performance at even-strength.
“I liked our five-on-five play. Special teams won the game for them,” said Tocchet, adding, “Their best players won the game for them and that’s it. We’ve just got to learn from that.”
The unspoken corollary to “their best players won the game for them” is “our best players did not win the game for us.” While Quinn Hughes was his usual excellent self despite a first-period injury, the top line of Jake DeBrusk, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser was kept quiet by the Lightning.
The trouble for the Canucks is that they don’t present the match-up problem they once did. When they had the one-two punch of Pettersson and J.T. Miller up the middle, opposing teams had to pick their poison and focus their shutdown efforts on one of the two. Without Miller, teams can hone in on the Pettersson line.
In many games, Pettersson and his linemates have been able to overcome those shutdown efforts or the Canucks have gotten secondary contributions from the likes of Pius Suter. They just couldn’t do it against the Lightning.
The Canucks finally looked like they were missing a star player when I watched this game.
- Quinn Hughes’ first period was rudely interrupted less than a minute in as he got some impromptu dental work from Brandon Hagel. The stick to his face caused a bloody mess on the ice and gave the Canucks a four-minute power play but it also meant Hughes wasn’t available to play on that power play, which only managed one shot on goal. If only the Canucks could have delayed the power play until the end of the first period.
- Hughes didn’t return until there were six-and-a-half minutes remaining in the period and he was wearing a full face shield to protect his clobbered face. The Lightning didn’t know what they had unleashed. Forget the legend of Bubble Demko, it was time for the legend of Bubble Hughes.
- Hughes, bubble and all, opened the scoring with four minutes remaining in the first. Hughes darted down the right side off an offensive zone faceoff, then cut back and skated around the linesman to give himself a larger gap from Nikita Kucherov before throwing a backhand toward the net. He was looking for a tip but instead, like Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz, found the net.
- It’s kind of wild how much of a difference Hughes makes. Shots on goal were 6-3 for the Lightning up until Hughes returned. After that, the Canucks outshot the Lightning 5-to-0, with all five shots coming with Hughes on the ice.
- Max Sasson is still looking for his first career goal and had his best chance to get it early in the second period. Hughes picked off a pass to break up a Lightning 2-on-1, then hit Sasson with a stretch pass for a breakaway. Unfortunately, that breakaway came against Andrei Vasilevskiy and his shot got kicked out like DJ Jazzy Jeff.
- The Canucks mostly had things locked down defensively at 5-on-5 but one defensive zone scramble cost them. The puck popped out of a scrum to Ryan McDonagh, who convinced the entire arena and half of BC Place that he was going to shoot the puck only to find Nikita Kucherov with a cross-seam pass for a wide-open net.
- That’s when the penalty troubles began. Vincent Desharnais took a trip to the box after tripping Hagel and the Lightning capitalized with some beautiful puck movement. The quick passing drew both Danton Heinen and Kiefer Sherwood up to the point, leaving the passing lane to the other Point — Brayden Point — open. Point put a point on the board by finishing off Kucherov’s cross-seam pass into the open net.
- “They got twisted around,” said Tocchet. “Sherwood, he pressed when he should have stayed back and then we would have got back in our diamond. If you look when they scored, we were in a box situation.”
- “Point is usually in that bumper spot, so we were trying to sort it out,” said Sherwood. “When he wasn’t in the bumper, I got sucked in…It’s just a communication thing and we cleaned it up afterwards. It’s a good lesson, I guess, at this time of the year.”
- The Canucks played with fire with a couple more penalties in the second period but Kevin Lankinen came up with some huge saves to keep the Canucks within one. The Lightning had six shots in the final four minutes of the second period but Lankinen’s lanky limbs turned them all aside.
- While the Canucks were shorthanded more often than the Lightning, the Lightning were literally shorthanded as two of their players were knocked out of the game by heavy hits by the Canucks. Anthony Cirelli played just one more shift after Noah Juulsen crunched his back into the boards in the first period, then Aatu Räty ended Erik Cernak’s night with a heavy hit on the forecheck early in the third period. Cernak limped to the bench and was doubled over in pain before heading down the tunnel. Both players would be major losses for the Lightning.
- Tyler Myers had an outstanding third period, kicked off by a superb assist on Sherwood’s tying goal. Myers activated up the right side in the offensive zone and looked for all the world like he was going to loop behind the net before sending a no-look pass to Sherwood in the slot. Myers, like other enormous bodies, has immense gravitational pull and drew three Lightning skaters below the goal line to leave Sherwood open.
- “Just tried to get some speed down the wall and coming around towards the net, I saw that Woody was open, and luckily, he was able to put it away,” said Myers, who assured me that despite the no-look nature of his pass, “Yeah, I saw him. Don’t want to throw hope plays out.”
- Myers wasn’t just clicking offensively; he was making great defensive plays too. He broke up one rush with his long reach, then used his loping legs to chase down a breakaway pass to Kucherov to Myers-sized cheers from the Rogers Arena crowd.
- Unfortunately, one defensive play by Myers led to a too many men on the ice penalty for the Canucks. Carson Soucy came on the ice before the Canucks could get the puck in deep, giving the Canucks six skaters on the ice when Myers turned back to break up the Lightning counter-attack.
- “I mean, personally, I thought it was a hook on Huggy before that too many men,” said Myers. “But, you know, they see it differently. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”
- “Can’t have that too many men,” said Tocchet. “And then that’s it: it’s the Kucherov show.”
- The Lightning struck on the penalty for too many men. Point found a seam to send a pass cross-ice to Kucherov and he threw it in front to Jake Guentzel at the backdoor. The pass deflected and went off Guentzel’s hand, then Juulsen batted the puck out of midair only to send it off Guentzel’s chest and into the net. The goal was initially waved off but it was called a good goal after a quick video review.
- “That last goal there, I know it was a fluke, but you’ve got to take that back ice,” said Tocchet. “You can’t let that puck get to Kucherov.”
- The Canucks had their chances to tie the game up but Vasilevskiy wasn’t going to get beaten again, which I felt was very rude of him. You’re in someone else’s house, Andrei, have some manners. Pius Suter got robbed point blank off a lovely pass from Conor Garland, then Jake DeBrusk tipped an Elias Pettersson shot that nearly slipped through the five-hole.
- I appreciate Garland’s gung-ho effort, but I’m not sure diving face first to try to block a shot like Doug Glatt is the smartest thing to do.
- Despite Garland’s best efforts, the Lightning added one more into the empty net to make it 4-2. So it goes.
