Canucks Army Preseason Postgame: All Goldobin Everything

The Vancouver Canucks got a chance to show off some of the province’s most beautiful scenery this weekend, when they hosted the Arizona Coyotes and a whole slew of enthusiastic fans out in Kelowna.

It was a gorgeous backdrop for the team to host one of their fiercer division rivals, if only by virtue of the pair living together at the bottom of the standings for the last few years.

While the Coyotes brought a fairly injured forward corps to B.C., though, what’s been a largely forgettable preseason ended on a fairly flat note anyways – the Coyotes flexed some of their new, shiny toys, and the Canucks’ brightest young stars just couldn’t do it all.

The game could have gotten started with a bang. The Coyotes opted to put Darcy Kuemper in net for their final preseason tilt, and he’s had a nasty habit of getting burned early in games through the preseason.

The Canucks got off to a sluggish start, though, failing to get any kind of sustained offense going in Arizona’s zone and allowing their first goal just over four minutes into the game.

The Coyotes have been struggling to ice a complete offensive roster since losing both Christian Dvorak and Alex Galchenyuk to injury.

Despite a severely depleted center depth chart, though, their ability to slate Clayton Keller in as a pivot in their top six gave them a chance to audition youngster Christian Fischer in a higher role on the wing – and after a neutral zone turnover led to Derek Stepan’s arrival in the slot, a quick cross-ice passing sequence with Richard Panik gave Fischer a chance to bury the final centering pass on Jacob Markstrom’s front door.

From there, Vancouver would manage to hold Arizona off for a little over 10 minutes of game play, but dropped to a two-goal deficit in the sixteenth minute when a power-play shot by Derek Stepan from the point deflected off of Erik Gudbranson and right past Markstrom into the net.

Arizona would score a third unanswered goal in the second period when Brad Richardson redirected a bomb from Niklas Hjalmarsson, which pretty much sums up how the game went through those first 40 minutes. And while Brock Boeser and company managed to actually challenge the Coyotes and give them at least a few quality looks in the second frame, not a single veteran in that forward corps looked like they had any life left in their bodies.

Elias Pettersson and the newly-dubbed ‘kid line’ actually managed to get things rolling in the third period, combining with Boeser and Nikolay Goldobin to finally – FINALLY – get on the board with 10 minutes to go in the final frame.

There’s an argument to be made that Pettersson clips Kuemper’s left pad, or his skate, or whatever. That’s fine. But there’s still somehow no one manning Goldobin there, which is a bit of an egregious error on Arizona’s part. And for a massive guy, Kuemper sure did feel like playing that one out of his crease; I’m not convinced that, even if Pettersson hadn’t have clipped him, he would have stopped Goldy:

In any case, the goal breathed a bit of life into Vancouver, but not enough to prevent a fourth goal by Arizona when Michael Grabner managed to find the back of the net to really seal the deal. Vancouver skated away after being downed 4-1, outshot 27-20, and without much to really gloat about.

There’s not really a ton to say about Vancouver’s preseason, including this game.

Gudbranson struggled to keep the Coyotes contained to the perimeter, and the team allowed too many bad turnovers for there to have been any realistic chance to things going their way. While Arizona was guilty of as many dump-ins as Vancouver, their ability to trip the Canucks defence up in the neutral zone and hem them in close to Markstrom provided too many screens for the starter and gave them too many quality chances.

The bright spot was the Nikolay Goldobin goal, of course, but that was almost a necessity at this point. He certainly wasn’t the only player who needed to have a good game to get into some good graces (and the others didn’t exactly wow), but it was high time he got things rolling.

Brock Boeser didn’t manage to find the back of the net, but credit where due; he managed to provide some of the only sustained pressure Darcy Kuemper saw all night, and things are bound to start going his way once the regular season gets rolling. There’s only so long he can take to get the offense really rolling again.

I would say more about Elias Pettersson, but we already know exactly what’s going on there. The future is bright, he looks like he actually gives a damn, and he’s a ton of fun to watch whether you cheer for the Canucks or against them. In a division where Max Pacioretty, Erik Karlsson, Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Galchenyuk, and James Neal all arrived with new teams this summer, the ass kickings that Vancouver may inevitably suffer will at least have some bright spots, a la Connor McDavid in Edmonton and Clayton Keller in Arizona during that streak last year where they lost 18 of their first 20 games.

I don’t even really know what to say about Alex Edler anymore. He was a fairly respected defenceman in the NHL not so long ago. He may even still be good for spurts. But tonight was *not* his night, and it’s not a huge stretch to say that it hasn’t been his preseason, period.

He was bad. Tanev looked stressed. Gudbranson started the night off with a nice, whopping hit, then promptly had himself another mediocre, when-will-he-get-his-sea-legs outing that inevitably some will defend but none will admit was ‘lead the defence out of this mess’ worthy. Loui Eriksson recorded one paltry shot on goal, and Jacob Markstrom certainly isn’t looking like he’s going to be the Carey Price who drags his team to a surprise Wild Card appearance any time soon.

As Jason Botchford put it after the game, in response to Travis Green’s comments about how EP is bound to struggle a little bit: if only the rest of the Canucks struggled like EP.

This is about where I remind you that both the 1990 Bills and 2000 Giants went 0-4 in their preseasons before going on to appear in their respective years’ Super Bowls. Preseason really is about shaking off rust. Unless you legitimately think that Boeser has lost his scoring touch a la Ryan Getzlaf from two years ago, this team isn’t going to be quite as much of a train wreck as they were in the preseason here.

Still: the rebuild is here. They aren’t fun, we all know it, and that’s about all there is to say.