Photo Credit: Bob Frid/USA TODAY Sports

The second meeting of the season between the Vancouver Canucks and the New Jersey Devils on Sunday night lacked the drama, the controversial hits, and the accusations of inappropriate trash talk that punctuated the first contest. If you were expecting hostilities to carry over from the first game, you were sorely disappointed. The closest this team got to any heat or shenanigans was when Bobby Farnham dove and drew a silly penalty on Derek Dorsett early in the game. 

Ultimately the Devils were the more rested team and the better side for 40 minutes, Cory Schneider out-duelled Jacob Markstrom and the Canucks squandered too many glorious opportunities in a 3-2 loss. 

The early Farnham-Dorsett brouhaha set the tone for this dry cough of a hockey game. Farnham, who you’ll remember drew the ire of Brandon Prust when he jumped Jake Virtanen and then celebrated like he’d knocked out John Scott, and Dorsett were trash talking before the while and engaged on a couple of occasions in the shift. 

Farnham ultimately cross-checked Bartkowski and then skated at Dorsett who was looking for him, and I’d wager, hoping for a fight. Farnham initiated contact and fell backwards, as the referees gave the Devils a power-play opportunity. 

The first period was sleepy. The Canucks didn’t really have their legs early, and none of the lines particularly stood out. I remember a good fourth-line shift at some point in the second frame, and a solid shift from the Jared McCann line that involved little skill and a lot of grinding – something that line isn’t well suited too – but not much else stands out to me in a positive sense about the Canucks’ play in the first two periods.

The big negative moment from the first 40 minutes was the shift in which Kyle Palmieri made minced meat of Alex Edler. After Chris Tanev blocked a Palmieri shot attempt, Edler was still chasing and Henrik Sedin lost his man and the Devils opened the scoring on a Mike Cammalleri goal. 

Cammalleri, by the way, is a former Mike Gillis client and had three points on the night. It’s probably a stretch to suggest that Cammalleri earned himself a nice bottle of Pinot with his performance tonight, right?

Vancouver’s in-zone play in their own end continues to be the club’s Achilles heel, and it was evident on that play. Though we might mention that it was only the second 5-on-5 goal the club has allowed with both Henrik Sedin and Chris Tanev on the ice this season, so perhaps it’s not the right play to pick out as symptomatic of the club’s wider issues.

Quite seriously though I thought this was one of Edler’s worst games of the season, and I do wonder if the club is playing with fire a bit by deploying him as a 1A defenseman. For the most part Edler has played fantastic hockey since the end of the John Tortorella era, but he seemed out of sorts in this one and hasn’t been as good early on this season as he was throughout the 2014-15 campaign. I certainly wonder if fatigue played a factor in the second of back-to-back contests.

In the third period things got a bit interesting, as the Devils went up early on a long, un-tipped Andy Greene shot that weaselled through Markstrom. Then Radim Vrbata drew a penalty shot when John Moore covered the puck in the crease, but he was turned away by Cory Schneider.

I get that Willie Desjardins will be second guessed for that decision, but it was the right one. Vrbata has taken 90 career shootout attempts – he’s the third most frequent shootout taker who is currently active in hockey – and has scored on better than 43 percent of those attempts. With a sample that large, we’re beginning to approximate his ‘true talent’ level. And Vrbata made a very nice move, but was turned aside by an even better Schneider save.

The only other realistic option is Burrows, who is a 41 percent shooter but has taken about half of the career attempts that Vrbata has. They’re probably close in finishing quality in terms of their true talent level, but we can be more certain that Vrbata is insanely good in the skills competition. He was Vancouver’s best option, even if he’s been cold as ice this season. And anyway, Schneider knows all about Burrows’ backhand deke.

The Canucks did, ultimately, make it a one-goal game when Henrik Sedin cashed in his seventh goal of the season, shorthanded, from his brother Daniel and former teammate Schneider. Life moves fast, and while Schneider’s puck-handling ability is much improved from his time in Vancouver, but it was a sequence that Canucks fans probably found familiar.

The Devils then regained their two-goal lead on an Adam Henrique goal that was more than a bit fortunate. Edler didn’t have his best game, but that was a solid block on Henrique’s initial shot. That the puck bounced right back onto the Devils’ second-line centreman’s stick, and that Edler screened Markstrom on Henrique’s second try, was just a spot of bad luck.

So was Burrows’ miss on a gorgeous end-to-end Bo Horvat setup in the third period:

Vancouver applied withering pressure with their net open late, and Burrows was cross-checked in the mouth by John Moore – it’s a play I’d suspect will be escalated by the Department of Player Safety – allowing the team to press the issue at 6-on-4. Vrbata scored late to add another ‘loss in a one-goal game’ to the Canucks’ file, but it was a moot point (nice for Vrbata to get off the Schneid a bit though). 

Overall I thought the Canucks were decent tonight, considering that this was a likely schedule loss. The power-play was suspect, but the penalty killing was good, and the Devils’ loan power-play goal was one Markstrom should’ve had. The club pressed in the third frame, and probably gets points out of this game with an additional favourable bounce or two. 

You don’t often get an additional favourable bounce or two when you’re facing a goaltender as good as Schneider is though…