Instant Reaction: The Canucks turn in another stinker on Hockey Night in Canada with loss vs. Jets

So it turns out Elias Pettersson is pretty important to the Vancouver Canucks.

I mean, that has to explain at least a part of the Canucks’ performance tonight, right?

With Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser both out due to illness, JT Miller slotted in with Andrei Kuzmenko and Ilya Mikheyev on his wings in Pettersson’s usual spot at centre.

Both Lane Pederson and Sheldon Dries found themselves in the lineup on the third line. Eventually, the Canucks shuffled their lines and moved Miller back to the wing, with Sheldon Dries being asked to centre the second line with Kuzmenko and Mikheyev.

You likely watched the game, but if you didn’t, the best way to describe it is as a snooze fest.

It was low event, low passion, and the fans who did stick it out at Rogers Arena were quiet. And that’s not a criticism of the home crowd. They didn’t have much to cheer about.

They did have something to boo about, and they were sure to do that. One fan even threw a jersey on the ice.

For the second Hockey Night in Canada game in a row, the Canucks turned in a stinker of a game. Last week, it was a 3-0 shutout loss to the Minnesota Wild, and tonight, it was a 5-1 loss to the Jets. There’s no sense in trying to analyze specific parts of this game and this team in a game like this.

This team is incapable of competing with good teams on a nightly basis, full stop.

They can barely eke out wins over teams designed to be rebuilding teams, and yet, there’s no indication that the higher-ups in the organization think anything other than “retooling on the fly” is necessary.

Anyway, my main instant reaction to this game is that Bo Horvat appearing to get out of the way of a point shot that ended up beating Spencer Martin is a good metaphor for the dysfunction in this organization right now.

Why would Horvat risk injuring himself by blocking that shot? Even if he does and the shot doesn’t go in, the Canucks still almost certainly lose this game, and that’s not Horvat’s fault.

His long-term future is up in the air, and he’s likely heading for a team willing to pay him a lot more money than the Canucks are.

At the same time, what kind of message does it send to a team when their captain appears as though he’s getting out of the way of shots? And again, this isn’t supposed to be a criticism of Horvat — hell, he may have not even had time to process everything happening and was instead just trying to make sure his goalie could see the puck. Rather, it’s a comment on the state of this organization at the present time.

This team just feels like they’re operating without conviction, without direction, and without a plan from top to bottom, and it’s tough to watch.

Here’s what Bruce Boudreau had to say after the loss tonight:

“It’s more frustrating watching our team sometimes when you can go from great to whatever tonight was. You try to build them up and tell them how good they were in Calgary and then we come here and it’s not even the same team.”

Of course, the main point of this series is for our readers to have a place to comment on the game, so let’s hear yours! Let us know in the comments section below how you’re feeling after this game!