Canucks Army Postgame: Misery

The Vancouver Canucks came into their Monday night game ready to face a team that had gone 1-7-2 in their last 10 games, just fired their head coach, and couldn’t seem to score a goal to save their lives. 

So, the Canucks did what they do best – they ended that losing streak for the Minnesota Wild with a nice, heady 5-2 loss to the Central Division club. 

The Minnesota Wild have looked absolutely miserable lately… but so have the Canucks, so coming into this game it was likely that at least one team was going to be giving much of the same. 

To Vancouver’s credit, they didn’t get trounced as badly as some of the other Canadian teams did tonight. The Toronto Marlies* were embarrassed by the Chicago Blackhawks, while the Montreal Canadiens were trounced 6-2 by the Arizona Coyotes – who haven’t scored six games combined in their last like three games. It was something else, and at least the Canucks kept the scoring against under six. 

That doesn’t change the fact that the team still got outpossessed and outplayed over three periods, though. 

I honestly don’t even know how to describe this. 

I’ll start by giving credit to Chris Tanev. He remains a player who I think deserves more attention than he’s given around the NHL for being a solid example of this generation’s defensive defenseman; he’s not flying up the ice to create a scoring chance while neglecting his own zone, but he’s a good skater and strong passer who helps generate offense from a more conservative position. They say the stay-at-home defenseman is dying, but players like Tanev are a suggesting that maybe they’re just evolving into something better and more useful. 

During the last post-game I did, I mentioned that the Canucks seemed to have finally shaken off their awful third period possession play, and that’s remained the case. Where the Canucks spent the early parts of the season dominating the first couple of frames and then drastically tapering off at the end – often to the tune of a last-minute loss or forced overtime by the opponent – they’ve started to improve their possession and shooting late in the game over the past handful of weeks. 

That brings us here, though…

Being a good third period team is hugely important, that’s no question. 

Still, it’s very, very hard to come back in a game where a team only takes 7 SOG over the first 30 minutes of play, and that’s the truth. 

The Canucks fell victim to Wild starter Devan Dubnyk falling into a rhythm later in the game, despite the fact that they were taking more shots and capitalizing on more opportunities to drive play in their offensive zone. This wouldn’t have been as much of a problem if the team didn’t fall into the same atrocious hole they’ve fallen into at the start of their last handful of games, though, and that’s huge. 

The young players, we assume, will get better about this in time. Playing a full 60 minutes at NHL speed takes some adjusting to, especially for players like Jared McCann and Ben Hutton – who are both being given considerable responsibility this year. For now, though, the veterans who should be masking their problems are doing an extremely poor job of that. 

We’ve heard murmurs that the Canucks are dealing with internal turmoil higher up, which is creating ambiguity about whether this is actually a rebuilding year or not. Looking at this roster, though – and the way that they’ve been playing, which is ranging from concerning to embarrassing on any given night – it’s hard to think of this team as anything *but* a rebuild lineup in its earliest stages. 

The good news is that the Sedins continue to be some of the most dangerous players in the NHL from both an offensive standpoint and a playmaking perspective, while Ryan Miller is having a somewhat better season than last year and the young guys are showing promise. That’s not going to get the team into the playoffs, though, and tonight’s game was further proof that this isn’t a team we need to see pushing for a post-season appearance at the deadline. 

Anyways, we play the Anaheim Ducks next. Everything is fine.