Canucks Army Postgame: You’re Having a Better Day than John Tortorella

I hope you enjoyed your Friday night so much so that you slept right through the morning and into the early afternoon. You’d probably be a happier person in that case. "Why on earth are the Canucks and Rangers playing a game at 11 AM PST on a Saturday" was a recurring question in my head throughout the contest, and I don’t really have an answer. It doesn’t get better, at all, as the Canucks play again at an even earlier time tomorrow morning for some ungodly reason.

Speaking of answers, I wish I had some answers for John Tortorella and his Canucks, who got their butts handed to ’em by a team that played yesterday, and I suspect isn’t actually even all that good. I guess you could say this was a prime example of two steps forward, three steps back following Thursday’s encouraging showing in Ottawa.

Read on past the jump for a look at what went wrong.

-David Booth, who has now put together three very good games since being inserted into the lineup. Knowing him and his luck he’ll probably get injured tomorrow, but for now we’ve just got to enjoy his strong play while we can. Daniel Sedin scored a garbage time power play goal late in the 3rd, but other than that Booth’s sweet tally in the 2nd was the lone bright spot for the Canucks:

-Kevin Bieksa’s rampage after the final buzzer, as he let out some of his pent-up frustration on Brian Boyle (who has listed at 6’7”, but can’t fight worth a lick). In classic Bieksa fashion, he went on to take Boyle’s helmet and punt it.. which I thought was particularly savvy, given the fact that the Canucks were down by 3 at the time. Go for the field goal to tie it!

-Alex Edler, for providing us with another GIF of John Tortorella losing his mind. This of course happened after Edler failed to clear the puck out of the zone, resulting in the opening goal of the game for the Rangers. Speaking of Edler, he was reunited with Kevin Bieksa to start (leaving Garrison to be paired up with Ryan Stanton). There was a ton of mixing and matching on the back-end as the game went along, though.

.. everything?

 

-The Canucks came out of the gate really strong, with the Sedin line generating a few quality scoring chances. Cam Talbot was really good, and held the Canucks to another minimal offensive output by stopping 35 of 37 shots. I’d say "oh well, it happens" but this is becoming far too common an occurence at this point to simply brush it off.

 

-Luongo got pulled for the 2nd time this year just 17 seconds into the 2nd period after the 3rd goal. I can’t remember whether it was Shorthouse or Garrett who said this, but one of them called it a "mercy pulling", which I agree with. All 3 of the goals came off of nice tips by Kreider and Nash directly in front of the net, so it’s difficult to blame Luongo too much for any of the ones that got past him. He has been starting a lot of games lately, and the Canucks play again tomorrow morning, so the move made plenty of sense to me.

 

-While I didn’t particularly enjoy the early start time, I think it’s a weak excuse for the way the game unfolded. As I mentioned above the Canucks started the game strong, dispelling the "they’re asleep" theory. It was just a bad game.

 

-Zack Kassian took a terrible delay of game penalty that led to the goal that made it 2-0 NYR, and at this point it’s looking like he’s edging closer and closer to becoming a healthy scratch. He stayed out way too long on that particular shift, and then panicked in his own zone and cleared the puck up and over the glass. These sorts of boneheaded players are becoming all too common with him.

 

-I’d say that 2 of John Tortorella’s biggest whipping boys last season were Chris Kreider and Michael Del Zotto, who combined for 4 goals (including a Kreider hat trick). Just that kind of day for Tortorella and Co..

That’s going to be it for today. Sorry for the shorter than usual game recap, but I’m feeling very under the weather. We’ll be back at it tomorrow, with hopefully more positive things to say.