Canucks Army Postgame: Without a Whisper
By J.D. Burke
8 years agoReturning from a brief, albeit successful two-game road trip, the Canucks looked to right the ship at home in their 90’s Flying Skate jerseys.
Before puck drop, the stars of the Canucks 1994 Stanley Cup Final team were honoured with a ceremonial puck drop et al. Trevor Linden, Greg Adams, Cliff Ronning, Gino Odjick and Kirk McLean were the esteemed guests and their appearances marked the highest point in tonight’s contest.
The Canucks quickly jumped ahead of the Maple Leafs 1-0 on a Daniel Sedin wrister, glove side past James Reimer. From that point forward the Maple Leafs were in control of this hockey game. Vancouver hemorrhaged shots to the Leafs AHL roster, before surrendering three consecutive goals and the game itself.
Vancouver eventually answered in the dying minutes with a Sven Baertschi goal, but it was far too little, far too late. With a pair of empty net goals, the Maple Leafs won this game by a score of 5-2.
Stats
Quick Hits
- Getting doubled on the shot clock by a team with Colin Greening on their second line is never a good thing. Only one of these teams is actively tanking and they took it to the one that wasn’t. Connect those dots.
- Is Willie Desjardins a terrible, or even bad coach? I lean towards no. Is the roster he to work with terrible, or even bad? A very definitive yes. For some reason, though, much of the criticism today was levied on Desjardins. From personnel, to systems and back again. Can’t argue he’s not trying, though. By the third period, Desjardins had made two substantial adjustments to today’s game: playing Radim Vrbata with the twins and changing their breakout on the power play.
- Big-time congratulations to Henrik Sedin for appearing in his 1141st game as a member of the Vancouver Canucks. That number is good for first place on the franchise leaderboard.
- If you want to dive into some of Henrik’s best moments as a member of the Vancouver Canucks, check into Jeremy Davis’ article from earlier today where he highlights them all in kind.
- It was revealed in the second intermission that Alex Burrows would be willing to waive his NTC if the Canucks approached him.
- The score might not suggest as much, but I thought Ryan Miller had an excellent game. Miller was only in net for three of the Leafs five goals tonight and you could hardly blame him for most, if not all of them. To Miller’s credit, he’s been great for most of the season and just can’t get any run support for the life of him.
- Was definitely happy to see Yannick Weber back in the lineup. He brings so much more than many of the options the Canucks usually have ahead of him. Tonight wasn’t his night though. The Canucks attempted just the one shot with Weber on the ice surrendered 12 attempts – good for a Corsi For of 7%.
- At the crux of the Desjardins criticism was his player deployment. More specifically, the overuse of Linden Vey. Hard to argue with why, when you see that Vey’s line controlled 60% of shot attempts on the night and looked like the Canucks most consistently threatening threesome at even strength for much of the game.
- According to SportsClubStats.com, the Canucks had a 33% chance of making the playoffs going into tonight’s game. That number is now at 32%.
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