Canucks bullied, beaten, blown out in Orange County

Photo Credit: Jake Roth/USA TODAY Sports

If you want to find some positive takeaways from Monday night’s 4-0 Vancouver Canucks loss to the Anaheim Ducks, well, I hope you have a jumbo-sized magnifying glass.

The Canucks were flat, they were pushed around and didn’t push back, a variety of their best players were hurt or injured, their special teams were a non-factor and the goaltending was bad. It was easily the club’s worst performance of the season.

Some assorted thoughts from an ugly game:

– The Canucks are faster this year and they’re better at moving the puck. Its shown in the early going this season. 

The sense that you often got watching the Canucks play faster teams last season was that, at any moment, they were liable to get blown away. That hasn’t really been the case this year, and they were particularly good last week against the Minnesota Wild and the Dallas Stars; two of the faster teams in hockey at the moment.

For the first time this season, the Canucks looked overmatched against the Ducks on Monday night. And they looked overmatched right from the get go. The Ducks carried the puck into the middle, created havoc in front of Miller with regularity and just thoroughly kicked the Canucks’ teeth in.

– Shawn Horcoff’s game-opening goal was scored less than 80 seconds into the contest and sort of sums up the entire game:

(Courtesy: NHL.com)

Amazingly, it was all downhill from there.

– Henrik Sedin was winded by Hampus Lindholm. Jake Virtanen was injured on a cheap Ryan Getzlaf cross-check. Nick Ritchie nearly put Chris Higgin’s head through the glass. Corey Perry caught Alex Edler with an elbow to the chin. Ryan Kesler took a piece out of Jared McCann late in the game, as did Ryan Getzlaf. Ryan Miller was run repeatedly. Where was the push back? Where were the big hit in return? Jannik Hansen knocked Josh Manson over in the neutral zone at one point, but that was about it. 

I realize this was the club’s 10th road game in their last 12 contests. It’s been a brutal run, but Vancouver didn’t look like they were able to, or interested in, matching up physically with the Ducks on Tuesday night. 

– Ryan Miller didn’t have a bad game necessarily, despite the four goals against on 29 shots faced. He stopped some high-quality chances and was extraordinarily busy in a game in which the Ducks out-chanced the Canucks nearly two-to-one. This one wasn’t on him. 

The last goal in the first period though, in which Miller was swimming a mile out of his crease, and the early third-period goal to Jacob Silfverberg, well those were ugly moments for the Canucks starter.

Miller has played an obscene amount in the early going this season, and I’d expected Jacob Markstrom to start half of the games on this road trip. That didn’t come to pass, and Miller didn’t have his best game on Monday night (though again, he wasn’t nearly as bad as the save percentage would indicate). At some point this club needs to commit to getting the 35-year-old some rest. 

– Special teams continued to sabotage the Canucks, as they failed to convert on three power-play chances and permitted a key shorthanded goal against as time expired in the first frame. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me that the Canucks’ penalty kill would miss Brandon Sutter this much, but here we are. 

– Even score effects couldn’t save the Canucks on this night. Despite being down by two, Vancouver was outshot in the second frame and were getting outshot in the third until they got a four minute power-play opportunity. 

– As ugly as Monday night’s game was, this was the first game in six contests against a Pacific Division opponent this season in which the Canucks failed to gain at least a point. It was a bad time to drop one, letting a reeling Anaheim Ducks team that is better than their record would indicate off the mat, but on the whole, that’s the sort of thing a middling team needs to do to qualify for the postseason in a weak division. 

The Canucks will have an opportunity to get back on track in short order, as they face the Los Angeles Kings at the Staples Center on Tuesday night. At least it can’t get worse than Monday night’s game, right?