Canucks Army Postgame: The tank bounces back

When people openly cheer for a tank, it can get a little uncomfortable – especially if they start to berate players for giving high levels of effort in a lost season.

That being said, I think we’re all in agreement: losing another game, well… it’s not exactly a travesty at this point, no?

FINAL SCORE: ST. LOUIS BLUES 4, VANCOUVER CANUCKS 1

THE RUNDOWN

What a way to start!

The Canucks kicked off their Friday evening game in peak Canucks form, allowing a goal a whopping: 40 seconds in before finally getting it together over the remainder of the period.

The goal itself, though, made it seem as if the Vancouver players – Anders Nilsson included – still hadn’t even realized that the game was underway yet. Both Vancouver defenders let Alex Pietrangelo toss the puck neatly to Patrik Berglund directly between them, then Nilsson all but freezes on his knees at the goal line while Berglund neatly fires a top-shelf backhand shot at the corner of the net.

It’s a fantastic shot, but definitely not how the team wanted to kick off the period – and although they would outshoot St. Louis 12-4 in that opening frame (despite taking two penalties and drawing none of their own), the game would head into the first intermission with Vancouver down 1-0.

The second period was where things really started to fall off the rails, despite Vancouver getting a tally of their own halfway through the frame.

The Canucks season, in a nutshell, was put on display a little over four minutes into the period, when a botched pass along the point by Derrick Pouliot got broken up by Kyle Brodziak, who heads back up the ice.

Somehow, Vancouver not only manages to let this happen, but Pouliot inexplicably manages to completely miss that Patrik Berglund – yes, he’s back – had snuck right back into his scoring position from the first minute of the game, receiving an easy pass from Brodziak to easily slip the puck under Nilsson’s pads for his second of the game.

Adding insult to injury was that the play happened on a Canucks power-play, but who’s surprised at this point?

Sam Gagner would put the Canucks on the board 10 minutes later, capitalizing on a quick centring pass by Henrik Sedin to earn the captain his 826th NHL assist (good for 26th all-time).

The plus side is that this was Sam Gagner’s 150th career goal, which is a nice milestone, and it was a pretty goal at that. Even if fans are all in on the #TankSZN, even Rasmus Dahlin isn’t worth the absolutely brutal effort that some teams somehow put into their tanks. Fun goals are still fun when the team loses in the end.

That being said, the Canucks would finish off the game with just eight COMBINED shots in the final two periods, allowing two more goals – a tricky shot by Vladimir Tarasenko and an all-in effort by Dmitrij Jaskin right in front of the net – when all was said and done.

The lack of Brock Boeser still hurts. The lack of Erik Gudbranson is what it is. This team is sometimes pretty miserable to watch. Sorry. Dem’s the breaks.

Normally I share the shot attempts chart here to evaluate whether or not the game was truly lopsided, but I thought this one was a bit more telling.

Courtesy of HockeyStats, this is a look at the shot attempts locations for St. Louis (shot attempts in black) and Vancouver (shot attempts in blue) over the course of the game.

Vancouver was held a little bit to the perimeter, sure, but just take a look at how close all of St. Louis’ shots are. Nilsson really did himself no favors, but man. That’s not a good look.