Logan Couture powered the Sharks to victory in Game 1 of their first round series against the Canucks.
(Photo by Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)

On Wednesday night the Vancouver Canucks opened the 2013 playoffs with a three to one loss at home against the San Jose Sharks. For the most part the game unfolded as we expected as game one was tightly contested, evenly matched, and extremely physical. There isn’t a lot of daylight separating the Sharks from the Canucks in terms of overall team quality, and on a night where a sixty minute effort was required from the hockey club in order to stack the deck in their favour, the Canucks only really gave twenty.

It was the team’s fifth straight home loss in the postseason dating back to game seven of the 2011 Stanley Cup Final, a fact that might provide us with a partial answer to the question, "why aren’t Canucks playoff tickets selling like hot cakes this spring?"

Read past the jump for more analysis and scoring chance data.

Let’s begin with the scoring chance data, which for those of you who are new here are the core numbers we use to analyze the game (you can find the raw data and our criteria at the bottom of this post). In addition to outscoring the Canucks on Wednesday, the San Jose Sharks also controlled the chance battle with eleven quality looks to just eight for the Canucks. At even-strength the Sharks generated seven scoring chances while the Canucks only managed five on Antii Niemi. The Canucks actually recorded all eight of their scoring chances in a "score tied" game state, and seemed to have no real answer when the Sharks took a one goal lead mid-way through the third period…

The Sharks had an opportunistic game overall in that all eleven of their scoring chances were also shots on goal. Roberto Luongo stopped eight of those eleven "difficult shots," in addition to blocking all seventeen non-scoring chance shots he faced on Wednesday. Logan Couture’s game-tying goal late in the second came through multiple screens, and Luongo was tied up with Frank Corrado and Tommy Wingels on Dan Boyle’s game-winner and didn’t really have much hope of stopping either puck. In all Luongo was spectacular in the first period, and singlehandedly kept the game tied, solid in the second period, and had a tough third period in which the Sharks scored on both of their scoring chances.

Antii Niemi put in some solid work in the Sharks net, but the Canucks made life way too easy on the unconventional Finn. Vancouver directed only five difficult shots at Niemi in Wednesday night’s contest, and he was up to the task on all of them. The only goal that beat him was put in by a teammate on a goal mouth scramble and that wasn’t recorded as a scoring chance. 

On the other hand, I suppose Niemi was beaten by a couple of pucks (one shot by Derek Roy in the first period and the other a shot by Daniel in the second) that ricocheted safely off the post. The Canucks have had success against Antii Niemi in the past, but they’ll find it difficult to recreate that success if they don’t figure out a way of generating more five alarm scoring opportunities going forward in the series.

Going into this series we expected an even matchup. Wednesday night’s series opener delivered, but not quite in the way that we thought it might. Vancouver’s depth lines, for example, held up surprisingly well against the Sharks. While Ryan Kesler was clearly hobbled, he had a pretty dominant game at even-strength. With a slight defensive orientation to his deployment, and matched up primarily against Joe Thornton’s Ryan Kesler came out even by the scoring chance data and way ahead by the shot record. In all Vancouver outshot the Sharks nine to two with Kesler on the ice on Wednesday. That’s a really good sign for the team going forward, especially if Kesler’s fitness level improves over the course of this series.

It was a similar story with Vancouver’s third-line. I was pretty concerned about the size of a Derek Roy, Jannik Hansen and Mason Raymond line heading into this series, but that group played at least three minutes against all of San Jose’s top three lines and came out ahead by attempted shot differential and only just in the red by the chance data. Of Vancouver’s five even-strength scoring chances, the third-line created three of them.

Even the fourth line, which honestly looked like it might be something of a complete liability heading into the postseason, played pretty well on Wednesday. Dale Weise took a dumb penalty early in the first period, but otherwise he had the sort of game that would make him a fan favorite if he played like that consistently. The fourth-line came out even by the chance and possession data, and that’s enough to qualify as a "pleasant surprise for me." I thought Desjardins, Burish and Gomez/Sherpherd would give Vancouver’s fourth group significant issues in this series, and they may yet, but that didn’t show up in game one.

The Vancouver line that didn’t surpass our expectations was the Sedin line. In our extended series preview I went on (and on, and on, and on) about how critical the matchup between Marc-Edouard Vlasic and the Sedin twins would be to deciding the outcome of this first round series. Well if Wednesday night’s game was any indication, then the Canucks may be in for a second straight extended summer. Vlasic was phenomenal on Wednesday, even as he took an awful lot of abuse (one thing the Canucks did really well all night was make a point of laying the body on Vlasic in particular when he went back to retrieve the puck). He completely swallowed up the twins, who were Vancouver’s only forward line that was outshot at even-strength. He did a hell of a job leaping into the counter-intuitive passing lanes the Sedins love to exploit, and I’m not sure he blew a single zone-exit all game long. If Vlasic can reprise his performance on Wednesday three more times over the next week or two, the Canucks are in trouble.

On the other hand, the twins just have to be better. They generated only one scoring chance at even-strength, and it was Alex Edler’s near goal in the second period – the puck that fluttered in the air and just missed dropping into the San Jose goal – which came just as a Sharks power-play expired. It came a fair bit after the Sharks power-play expired, i.e. it wasn’t like the fifth Sharks skater hadn’t re-entered the play, but the first unit’s personnel (so four forwards) were still on the ice. The twins need to step up in this series and do more to generate looks and test Niemi. The twins are fantastic players and proud guys, but game one qualifies as a "no show" for them, I think.

Along the blue-line I thought, and the data agrees with me, that Alex Edler was Vancouver’s best player. Though he benefitted somewhat from soft deployments he spent ten minutes against the Couture line and led all Vancouver defenceman in even-strength ice-time (something we don’t often see from him). He was second among all Canucks skaters in unblocked shot differential and a team leading +4 in scoring chance differential.

Even in Edler’s strongest game in what feels like a season or two, he still had a couple of frustrating Edlerian brain farts. Like when he went behind the Canucks net in the third and Luongo told him to expect weakside pressure, and Edler still stopped to survey the ice before somehow being surprised by the Sharks forechecker he was warned about, getting flushed out, bobbling the puck and ultimately being bailed out by San Jose going off-side…

Jason Garrison and Dan Hamhuis weren’t used enough, in my opinion. Hamhuis played fewer than sixteen minutes at even-strength which is only four minutes more than Frank Corrado played and five minutes more than Alberts played. Not quite sure what Vigneault was doing there but considering that Dan Hamhuis is Vancouver’s best defenceman he should probably be playing more minutes in the postseason. Ya think?

Frank Corrado ultimately did get burned on San Jose’s game winning goal, as Wingels outmuscled him to get the puck over to Dan Boyle for the gimme. Corrado spent a good deal of ice-time playing against the Joe Pavelski line, and he’s been really impressive in his cup of coffee so fa, but the Canucks were outshot and outchanced with Corrado on the ice in relatively soft minutes…

I would say this wasn’t Vigneault’s finest performance. A coach can only do so much to impact the game but Henrik Sedin, in a game at home, was matched up with Marc-Edouard Vlasic for thirteen of his sixteen even-strength minutes.  McLellan had first change and even still I think it’s fair to say that he outfoxed Vigneault in getting the matchups he was looking for…

The Sharks power-play is, yeah, scary. They generated ten shots, four scoring chances and a goal against the Canucks penalty-killers in under seven minutes of work. A couple of calls that went against Vancouver were weak, the phantom Dan Hamhuis slash in particular, but the Canucks are also going to need to be more disciplined going forward in this series. The onus in particular is going to fall on young guys like Weise and Kassian to keep their cool, both took untimely penalties in this contest. Frankly If I’m a Sharks veteran I’m trolling those two any chance I get, just trying to goad them into doing something stupid. I think we sort of saw Scott Hannan try that when he stood up and then face-washed Weise. Expect more of that so long as San Jose’s power-play looks as dominant as it did on Wednesday…

One final point. In a tied playoff game at home the Canucks managed zero quality looks in the third period. That’s embarrassing and also why I won’t defend the team too much for their performance on Wednesday. The fact is, the Canucks controlled this contest for the most part at even-strength, and ultimately lost thanks to a couple of odd bounces and San Jose’s absurdly good power-play. Usually after such a game I might say that the club got unlucky, except on Wednesday their penalty-killing was extremely permissive, the club barely tested Niemi, and they couldn’t generate a single scoring chance down a goal in the third period at home in a playoff game. That’s just nowhere near good enough.