Canucks Army Postgame: Changing Ways

The Vancouver Canucks started off this game not getting it…

For once, though, they showed up for the final ten minutes of the game, and took home a nice win. 

That’s… good news. 

First off, congratulations to Daniel Sedin – who passed up Markus Naslund as the Vancouver Canucks franchise leader in goals scored. The scoring Sedin now has a whopping 21 goals on the season (a full 9 more than the next highest-scoring Canuck) and 924 career NHL points. He’s the Sedin that’s farther from the 1,000 point club, but he’s the one who’s been healthier this year – and it’s helping him out when it comes to creeping closer to the much-needed mark. 

The rest of the team looked awful in the first, lackluster in the second, and pretty good in the third – which was good enough for a win. Sven Baerstchi and Radim Vrbata were good for creeping into Boston’s offensive zone, and the rest of the team eventually followed suit. 

The biggest complaint with the team’s game tonight could probably come in terms of offensive containment; the Canucks had trouble containing Boston’s best scoring players for most of the game, and it almost hurt them badly. Luckily it didn’t, but they’ll have to improve when facing duos like Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand in the future. 

An aside: I didn’t really know much about Michael Zalewski until this game, but I didn’t hate him. 

Vancouver brought it closer than they could have… but let’s pretend that first period never happened. 

The good news in this game is that the Canucks got better throughout the game, rather than worse – a poor habit they’ve developed in the last handful of games, and which had been somewhat prevalent throughout the season as a whole anyway. 

The first period was absolutely painful, but the second started to get a little better – at least offensively – and by the third period, the Canucks looked like a contending team. The Bruins defense left a lot to be desired, but their offense has quite a lot to be worried about, and the Canucks managed to contain them to the perimeter for a nice chunk of the game. When a team can’t take home wins in regulation – and has to rely on goaltending more often than not – the first step to improvement is limiting quality scoring chances. That happened tonight, and it paid off. 

That first period. That… that just can’t happen. 

We’ve seen that kind of period from the Canucks in the third before, and it’s frustrating – because usually, they’re using it to blow a lead they gained early on. 

This time, they luckily stormed back to ultimately take control of the game and win 4-2… but that wasn’t the kind of start to a game that the Canucks need to have. One of these days, they’ll give a full 60 minutes of effort – the first period ensured this game wasn’t going to be one of those games. 

See ya next time!