Canucks Army Postgame: Mad House Online

Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki/USA TODAY Sports

Corey Crawford and the Chicago Blackhawks shutout the Vancouver Canucks in a 4-0 victory on Sunday night.

The Canucks surrendered too many quality scoring chances, but actually played decently well overall and were particularly good in the second frame. They had an opportunity to eke out a point in this game.

Ultimately the Canucks failed to convert on special teams and, if we’re being real, simply don’t have the required depth to matchup with a team like the Blackhawks when they’re on the road. 

– The Canucks’ penalty kill hasn’t been particularly good for much of this season, but it fared pretty well overall on Sunday night – permitting only two Chicago shots against in 3:15 of 4-on-5 ice time. Unfortunately one of those shots was a Duncan Keith goal, which stood up as the game winner:

(Courtesy: NHL.com)

The Blackhawks are rolling with a cool power-play formation this season, one that prominently features Duncan Keith in the high slot, a spot usually reserved for a forward. Obviously Keith has the passing ability and offensive instincts to pull it off, and I applaud the Blackhawks – a team that’s generally been pretty pedestrian on the power play despite an impressive arsenal of offensive skill – for thinking outside the box. More teams need to add wrinkles like this, beyond the old ‘stick a big defenseman in the slot’ trick (which, admittedly, worked really well with Zdeno Chara in Boston). 

– It was fitting that the Andrew Shaw, Bryan Bickell, Dennis Rasmussen line scored the goal to ice the game in the third period, since they gave the Canucks fits all evening. The top end of the Canucks roster is still, even after all these years and miles, able to hit Chicago’s fast ball. The Sedin twins handily controlled the run of play on Sunday, even though Chicago hard matched Jonathan Toews and his Niklas Hjalmarsson, Brent Seabrook pairing against them. Jared McCann’s line fared pretty well against Chicago’s middle-six lines and though Bo Horvat’s group was chasing often, they weren’t outshot too too badly in a primary matchup against the Anismiov/Kane/Panarin axis of doom. 

It was really the Bickell, Shaw, Rasmussen line that caused the Canucks trouble, and they were completely dominant against Vancouver’s secondary defensive pair of Yannick Weber and Matt Bartkowski. Vancouver had their teeth kicked in with Bartkowski and Weber on the ice on Sunday, and Bartkowski taking away neither the pass nor the shot on a decisive third period two-on-one served as appropriate icing on the cake… 

– Canucks coach Willie Desjardins is beginning to take some heat in the Vancouver market, some of it is fair and some of it isn’t. One increasingly common complaint is that Desjardins doesn’t zone match with quite the same level of discipline that both of his predecessors (John Tortorella and Alain Vigneault) are famous for. Every time the fourth line takes an offensive zone draw these days, my timeline fills up with complaints. 

On Sunday night though the Sedin line took seven offensive zone draws at even-strength, while the other lines all took four. Maybe the Sedins could’ve had an extra offensive zone start in there, but considering their role in winning most of them, it’s not really worth complaining about I don’t think.

– Only five Canucks skaters finished in the red by shot attempt differential: the brothers Sedin, Jannik Hansen, Chris Tanev, Alex Edler. Second verse, same as the first!

– Ryan Miller faced 14 high-danger scoring chances on Sunday night and stopped 12 of them. Save percentage very probably underrates how valuable he’s been to this team, especially when he’s rested. 

– The officials were right to disallow Henrik Sedin’s third-period power-play goal.

– Patrick Kane’s secondary assist extended his 26-game point streak, and ironically, broke the Canucks’ streak-breaking streak.