Canucks down 2-0 in WCQF – Recap and chances

There isn’t much here. We know the score, we know the team is on the brink, we know that there’s clearly something missing from this group. The team is playing a scoring chance behind every shift and leaving shots on the ice.

Toughness? Grit? Tiredness? I forget the story at this point. Vancouver had a tepid, predictable powerplay. Few positives to take from it, and they also allowed a pair of shorthanded goals (although I guess one ~technically~ wasn’t).

I won’t take too much of your time. It’s Friday, we know the score, we know the stakes. I’ll have a few thoughts on Roberto Luongo vs. Cory Schneider debate that’s sure to pop up in the coming day, along with the usual stuff: chances, the Statistical Three Stars, and the Statistical Three Goats.

-Luongo’s one-game high is better than Schneider’s. In the interest of keeping his fatigue and pressure down, I was on board with bringing Schneider in every three games or so to give the opposition a different look. I can look into this more, but, really, the Canucks need a win in Game Three, and Luongo, while he may not give the Canucks the best chance to win, he’s the guy with more talent, the guy who can really steal the game you need.

-And it’s important. Our friend Bart Byl reminded us that there’s a negligible disadvantage to being down 1-2 as opposed to 0-1. It’s still not a favourable situation, but a win in Game Three does change everything.

-Something needs to happen with the powerplay.

-Ryan Kesler had a real good shift at the end of the second period, getting a pair of good shots away and making two hustle plays to keep the puck alive in the offensive zone. I didn’t see Game One, but I liked that after all the stuff people were saying about him.

-At some point, I’m going to write a post about Damien Cox. Not too loudly, though, because having stood next to the guy, he looks like he can shoulder press about 200 pounds.

-That’s a lot of weight.

-I plugged in the Statistical Three Goats. Who the hell is Colin Fraser? Not sure who said it, but I saw a tweet saying that Dustin Brown plays like David Booth should play like. Booth fell down a few times cutting in this game. It was pretty poor from him.

-Manny Malhotra this series is 8 chances for, 1 against, which is un-friggin-real. I don’t know what’s gotten into him, but his offensive game seems to be rounding into form, maybe a year or so too late.

-UPDATE: Turns out the original Statistical Three Stars and Goats were wrong. When you’re dealing with sensitive scripts whilst slightly intoxicated, this tends to happen. Malhotra had a pretty poor effort, as it turns out, which makes sense, because I do not think I saw him in the offensive zone.

-Two anecdotes to share about teams in tough in series’. The first comes from last season: Boston dropped two to Montreal in the first round last season, and we all know what happened there.

BUT

-I also think back to ten years ago, when the Vancouver Canucks went into the playoffs as a red-hot club against the President’s Trophy winner Detroit Red Wings. Vancouver took an OT win in Game 1 and a dominant win in Game 2 back to Vancouver, up 2-0 in the series, but against a determined, re-focused, and more talented group. The one Dan Cloutier goal aside, that wasn’t totally the difference in that playoff series.

-Maybe those two are bad examples, but you can still come back to win from this point. The problems aren’t fully luck-based or goaltending-related. They’re fixable.

-I have no idea what to make of this, but it scares me.

(VAN is marked as “WES” here. Don’t ask why)