Ott-er Dive; Canucks lose 5-2 to Dallas – Recap and scoring chances

This was a straight-up awful performance team-round by the Vancouver Canucks. The team didn’t get the saves it needed from Roberto Luongo, the defence left a lot of gaps open, and the forwards simply didn’t do enough to pressure the Dallas net. Despite two scoring chances right off the hop, including a penalty shot and the first goal from Chris Higgins, the Canucks let themselves slowly get beat up mathematically in this one.

On the plus side, my endorsement of Steve Ott at the trading deadline was vindicated. This man was a horse tonight. Not so much Seabiscuit, but more like Hidalgo. Analysis, scoring chances, Statistical Stars and Goats and more after the jump.

-The important numbers up first: the Canucks were outchanced 14-17 in this game, 13-14 at even strength and 5-6 score-tied even strength. Part of the problem was that the Canucks couldn’t come out ahead even when playing to the score. That is, being from behind, they ought to have earned more chances and shots, but a couple of ill-timed penalties and a listless performance in the neutral zone prevented against this. Vancouver just didn’t show up tonight.

-Three goals weren’t recorded as scoring chances: Alex Edler’s, which was more of a dump-in that took a lucky bounce off a Dallas stick, and Loui Eriksson’s 1-1 goal, which happened to bounce in off of him while his stick was tied up when Trevor Daley threw it randomly in front. Stephane Robidas’ empty-net goal also doesn’t count, and I’ve begun negating chances taken at either end with the net empty.

-Zack Kassian didn’t get a shot away on the play that led to a penalty shot, but I rewarded the Canucks who were on the ice when the call was made and penalized the Dallas players since they took part in a play that led to a Kassian miss off a penalty shot. And what a brutal miss it was, Richard Bachmann wasn’t fooled a bit.

-Part of my issue with the Canucks losing to the Stars is that they have a lot of players on their team who have names that bring up a “who” quality about them. Who let Tomas Vincour, Philip Larsen and Ryan Garbutt in the NHL?

-The best Canuck on the ice was probably Christopher Higgins, who had a goal, set up a chance, another shot to boot, and was perfect in 2:06 of ice-time on the penalty kill. The second best Canuck was probably Aaron Rome, who jumped up in the play a few times and created some offence.

-At one point I recorded an “Aaron Rome to Mason Raymond” scoring chance that I had to double-check to make sure it happened. Somewhat related, I think that Thom Drance was at the game tonight. Cute sign:

-Steve Ott, as mentioned above, was Hidalgo tonight. He set up four Dallas scoring chances, and that could have been more if his passes didn’t make Stars players afraid to not swing wildly and completely fan on the chance. Jamie Benn was the beneficiary of three such setups and Adam Burish got the fourth. All in all, his setups resulted in three missed shots and a goal.

-Jamie Benn hit for the cycle tonight on his chances. He took five chances, and got a goal, a shot, a miss and a rare blocked shot off a scoring chance, which occurs only when a defender is sprawling like a goaltender. In this case it was Dan Hamhuis.

-The Canucks blocked too many shots tonight. Somehow, they still blocked six fewer than Dallas.

-Roberto Luongo needs to start playing better. The Canucks aren’t a good enough team to be able to bail him out regularly.

-Henrik and Daniel Sedin have been playing well despite getting poor boxcar stats and have only X amount of points in Y games (I really don’t care enough to check) but they weren’t all in it tonight, getting beat on the chance count despite their Z zone start advantage (again, I don’t really care enough to check, because I know that they’re getting the opportunities to succeed).

-Ryan Kesler had a wild night. Three scoring chances off just five shot attempts. Usually he’s a high volume shooter who takes a good chunk of shots from the perimeter, but he was moving inside in a way that he hasn’t much in the past.

-Sami Salo was pretty bad. Nothing offensively, brutalized defensively.

-Last guy I want to mention is Mark Fistric. The former Vancouver Giant was very physical and had a game-high seven hits. However those numbers are pretty subjective. The only statistics I really trust are the ones I count, and he allowed a single scoring chance against while on the ice tonight.

-Wait, I also wanted to mention Daniel Sedin’s attempted hip-check on the second Mike Ribeiro goal. Why?

VANCOUVER

DALLAS

TOTALS (VAN on left, DAL on right)