Make no mistake about it; the Vancouver Canucks are still in a perfectly fine spot in the NHL standings. There is no reason to think this team can’t get things back on track if they figure out their issues. Every team tends to have its ups and downs during a season, and this very well could be the Canucks’ biggest rough patch of the year.

But you cannot help but feel a bit worried about this Canucks team performed in December.

The inconsistent hockey.

The white noise surrounding the team.

The lack of star power coming through for the club.

Hell, we’re at the point where Elias Pettersson and JT Miller aren’t being used on the same power play, and all we’ve heard from the coach is a couple of lines about how the team knows what’s up. It’s like if your neighbour’s house was on fire, and he only pulled his dog out and left the cat inside. Naturally, you’d have questions, and you’d be a bit surprised if you were simply told the cat knows what’s up.

And hey, the Canucks 3-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights isn’t some horrifying upset by any means. Not only were the Canucks playing the second of back-to-back road games, but the Golden Knights also happened to be one of the best teams in the league. In another world, a 3-1 loss to Vegas would be one of Rick Tocchet’s infamous “learning lessons,” a loss that would probably involve players not having enough juice in the third and how they just need to move their legs a bit more to open up the offence.

But the worrying trend of lack of shot production and lack of offence overall has been a longstanding issue, hiding in the background, biding its time until it can jump you in the parking lot and steal your car.

It came to the forefront in the playoffs last year when the Canucks embraced the GOTI lifestyle and did their best homage to late 90’s Minnesota Wild hockey. Shut down the middle of the ice, and make sure you score when it matters.

The offence struggled and eventually ran out in seven games to the Edmonton Oilers, but Tocchet spoke in the off-season of having to evolve, of having to adapt his system in order to generate more offence. If the players evolve, so must he, Rick declared, inspiring the fans in a way normally reserved for heroic President Thomas J. Whitmore’s speeches ahead of a world invasion.

Yet fast forward to today, and somehow, the offence has gotten worse.

Don’t get me wrong — the GOTI system is still producing defensive results. The team is still one of the best at denying scoring chances, but it is also dead last in the league at generating scoring chances.

Even if you break it down into high-danger chances, shots, goals, etc., the Canucks offence is still a very middling machine.

The end result is what we’ve been seeing as of late: some of the most tedious hockey you have ever witnessed. There is probably a multiverse version of this team where Quinn Hughes doesn’t exist, and I assume that place is known as Hell.

We’ve even had games where Head Coach Tocchet has suggested the team had a great game plan for the players, but they simply didn’t execute it, so one can imagine the coaching staff is right there beside you in feeling some frustration.

All of which leads to the question: What is the problem with this team?

Is it the coaching?

Is it the make up of the roster?

Is it the players themselves?

Was last year an illusion fueled by smelling salts and PDO?

Or is this just a bump in the road powered by seasonal illness?

When you have this many questions, this is how the relationship between Elias Pettersson and JT Miller comes into the spotlight with such furor. It’s been no secret that the two players aren’t the best of friends, but only now does it feel like it’s reaching critical mass. And it’s because people are searching for answers due to the team playing so inconsistently.

When you have a fantastic season, people don’t ask many questions. You just enjoy the champagne problems in life and enjoy the ride. Hell, even Crazy P doesn’t bother you that much when the team is winning. You just politely smile at him and pretend to clap, secure in the knowledge that, eventually, he has to go away.

But right now, the Canucks are struggling to win games, and their best players are a big reason why they’ve been losing, which just fuels the intrigue surrounding the team.

And you can say it’s people making a big deal out of nothing, but right now, we’ve had JT Miller take a leave of absence under unclear circumstances, and during that time, EP40 played some of his best hockey. Miller comes back, EP40’s offence dries up, and we have a JT Miller looking more like the guy who yelled at Collin Delia instead of the top-line player he can be. They’ve been put on separate power play lines, and Rick Tocchet has been answering fewer and fewer questions during post-game scrums as of late.

If you gave me a blueprint about how to throw fire on the gasoline in the Vancouver market, I couldn’t have come up with a better plan. It feels like we’re days away from a full-on meltdown after a current player drops a sound byte about how he thinks Henrik Sedin is kind of overrated and that the Bruins deserved the Cup in 2011.

With just four more games left in the month, we will see if the team can turn things around. And, as I said, sometimes teams struggle mid-season before finding their form. Maybe by the time February comes by, we’re all laughing about that time we thought the Canucks were falling apart.

But until we have more answers about what kind of team this is, we’re only going to find more questions.

Let’s see some gifs.

Best road hockey

Starting tonight we officially have one of the best NHL goalie tandems. Demko/Lankinen !! #Canucks

— Don (@EDDIE_TRECE) December 20, 2024

The Canucks’ best period was the first period, which makes sense considering the Knights hadn’t played since Sunday, so they were bound to be a bit slow getting back into the flow of things.

And to the Canucks credit, they actually took advantage of that fact by generating 11 shots, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot until you consider that some nights we put up banners when the Canucks manage to get five in a period.

Firmly in the blessing and a curse category is the fact that Kiefer Sherwood, Danton Heinen and Teddy Blueger were their best forwards, which I guess makes sense considering the Canucks deployed a style of hockey usually reserved for Richard Park, Darby Hendrickson, and Wes Walz.

So with hard skating and fast forechecking on the menu, Kiefer Sherwood generated the first scoring chance for Vancouver when he threw the puck on net, only to see Teddy KGB just miss putting in the rebound:

And again, I think everyone would agree that Kiefer Sherwood this season has been an amazing addition to the club. His hat trick powered Vancouver past the Colorado Avalanche recently, and he has been one of the most consistent players on this team.

It just makes it all the more glaring when Brock Boeser, JT Miller, Jake DeBrusk, and Elias Pettersson haven’t been able to produce anything lately in the way of offence.

Tocchet has mentioned how teams have game-breakers, and right now, Quinn Hughes feels like the only highly paid player who has been able to consistently step up in big moments this season.

Best free of Buffalo

Heck of a shift there by Jack Eichel.

He created multiple dangerous looks, but Lankinen was there each time.

— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) December 20, 2024

They say once you leave Buffalo, life gets so much better, and Jack Eichel is one of the main illustrations of that:

Now I know what you’re thinking: He just zipped by Tyler Myers on Rock Rock Mountain and won the Flower Cup. Surely, this is a sign that the Chaos Giraffe made multiple appearances in this game.

Well, I am here to tell you that Tyler Myers was just fine in this game. He locked in his game and played very solid defence. Not once did he try to take a banana out of his pocket and try and stab someone with it; all his usual chaotic instincts were kept in check.

In fact, Vegas’s rush was one of their few scoring chances of the first period. Vancouver was very much locked into everyone’s favourite term, “good road hockey,” which essentially means praying you score first and then trying to defend the rest of the night.

Best savoury moment

What a hardworking shift from the Heinen-Blueger-Sherwood trio. Heinen did great on the zone entry, and the chip to the front of the net may not have been entirely on purpose, but it sure worked out.

1-0 #Canucks

— David Quadrelli (@QuadrelliD) December 20, 2024

I’m going to need you to enjoy this goal because it’s the only one Vancouver gets on the night. In fact, the offence dries up pretty quickly after this, so I really hope your kink is shame and point shots:

Did Danton mean to pass that puck out in front? Nobody knows. The point is the puck still made it out in front of the net, allowing Teddy KGB to cash in on Kiefer’s shot, writing the wrong from earlier in the period.

It’s a good greasy goal, and it was more than anything Pettersson or Miller did in the game.

As stated earlier, it was the bottom six doing all of the heavy carrying on offence, as it could very easily have been 2-0 if Adan Hill hadn’t made this ludicrous save on Pius Suter:

I feel like Garland’s favourite animal is a shark because he thinks he’s a shark – just floating along the ice, biding his time until he can jump out and win a board battle. You know he auto-slams Jeff in Marvel Rivals; I don’t think any of us can doubt that.

But that good forecheck resulted in him finding Dakota Joshua, who then found Suter for what looked to be a tap-in goal. Again, the bottom six did their job, lining up along the sidewalk and flicking their cards at people walking along the strip. It’s not a pretty job, but someone has to do it.

Meanwhile the top six just sort of existed? I am sure I could come up with a fun Freemont Street metaphor here, but that game made me very tired.

That bottom six, though, they created several looks on net during the first period. Danton Heinen once again made a nice pass, this time 100% on purpose, over to Kiefer Sherwood for a good look on net:

Road hockey or not, the Canucks did play a good first period, outshooting Vegas 11-5.

Best Team Edward or Team Jacob

Team Petey for PP1 tonight.#Canucks

— Caleb (@StickSkateOrca) December 20, 2024

EP40 got custody of PP1 on the first powerplay, and the best chance was probably this Boeser backhander on net:

Hill is about 7″8″, so it’s hard to beat him when he’s not moving, but hey, at least it was a shot on net.

The Canucks first unit power play run with either EP40 or JT Miller didn’t factor into the game, so all it ended up being was a situation so awkward that even John Shorthouse had to mention on air how everyone was waiting to see who would be deployed on the first unit.

Hockey, it’s like your parents’ divorce, except everyone is talking about it.

Best power bottoms

So far the #Canucks are playing… A good game.

— StadiumChinatown.ca (@Stdm_Chinatown) December 20, 2024

You know Kiefer is feeling it when he’s out here stunting on Tanner Pearson in his own zone just for giggles:

If Nils Höglander tried that, even if he pulled it off successfully, straight to jail.

Though I guess in order to pull that off, you’d have to not have been healthy and scratched on the night.

Hockey, it’s like that time your family pet died and your parents somberly told you that it was a healthy scratch.

Best positive Jeff

#Canucks outshoot VGK 12-6. Most first period shots by Nux since 12 against Calgary on November 12th

— Jeff Paterson (@patersonjeff) December 20, 2024

That is both uplifting and sad at the same time.

Best diminishing returns

With the first period out of the way, the Canucks quickly parked the bus and attempted to survive the long change of the second period.

And with the Canucks offering up less pushback, Vegas started finding their legs and started exploring the Canucks offensive zone like they were at a high school dance, cautious but optimistic about eventually scoring.

And to the point of “good road hockey, bro” the Canucks did a good job of keeping Vegas to the outside for the most part. Vegas was resorting to point shots on Kevin Lankinen, which as we know, would never go in:

I don’t quite see what the point of even taking that shot was because Kevin isn’t the type of guy to let that sh*t in. Vegas was going to have to try harder than that to score in this game.

Best K to Q highway

Hey, Sherwood heard your prayers and he did his best to set up Quinn for a goal.

The first attempt was when he paid homage to Max Sasson not being in the lineup (Linus Karlsson was playing on Pettersson’s line, the “put that random AHL guy with Elias” game plan is back, baby!) by pulling up short and finding the trailer in Quinn Hughes, who then tried to dangle on net:

Then Sherwood finds Hughes again, this time with a deft pass down low that almost results in a tap-in for Quinn:

And that was it for shots in the second period. The Canucks only got two of them. This is what “good road hockey” consists of: When a team sits back and just prays, the other team doesn’t stumble into a goal.

Which again, I kind of get. The Canucks did play very hard to try and defend this lead.

It’s just that when it fails, it looks really ugly. It does. Nobody sees a team lose 3-1, getting outshot 21-20, and thinks “man alive, this sport HAS to go global, inject this into our veins.”

Best causalities of war

Can we make a rule that Hughes isn’t allowed to block shots? #canucks

— Simon Every (@simon_every) December 20, 2024

Quinn Hughes ate a shot and then took a while to get back up, during which time Vancouver as a city almost folded up shop:

A Vancouver Canucks team without Quinn Hughes on this roster is truly the most horrifying nightmare I could think of.

Luckily, Kevin Lankinen was there to deny Cole Schwindt, which brings to the forefront how lucky Vancouver has been to have Kevin on this team.

Best gap control

Text book hockey so far #Canucks

— steamer12 (@BastoneJeff) December 20, 2024

Carson Soucy has played much better defensively the last month, so I just wanted to use this as a good example of him closing a gap quickly:

He effectively shuts down this zone entry and rush attempt by getting his stick in the skating lane, and the closing the gap to deny an easy entry.

This is the Carson Soucy we saw last year, and this is the Carson Soucy Vancouver needs the rest of the season.

Best well that’s not good

That’s…not a great goal on Lankinen. #Canucks

— Daniel Wagner (@passittobulis) December 20, 2024

You’re telling me a simple point shot beat Kevin Lankinen in this economy?

I mean, Kevin biffed that one. That’s all on him. That being said, he’s made some incredible saves this year and played incredible hockey, so this is hardly a “CAN WE TRUST KEVIN EVER AGAIN? MY STORY:” moment, but in the context of this game and that goal? That was a brutal goal to give up. Martin Brochu makes that save; that’s all I’m saying.

Which, again, just speaks to the volatile nature of “good road hockey,” in which you attempt to defend a one-goal lead for multiple periods at a time. It’s a risky business. To quote Travis Green, this is a tough league to win games in, and they have a heck of a team over there.

Best five alarm save

That was the paddle, not the post. Unreal save by Lankinen to get something on that. #Canucks

— Grady Sas (@GradySas) December 20, 2024

Speaking of Kevin being an incredible goaltender, he kept the Canucks in it with this insane save on Mark Stone just minutes into the third period:

Make an incredible paddle save that you had no rights making, after letting in a point shot that even Kevin Woodley might have had a chance to stop — the duality of Kevin on the night.

By the time the third period started, Vegas was starting to find more cracks in the Vancouver defence, which would show itself pretty quickly with Vegas’ second goal of the night.

Best Wild Bill escapade

#Canucks sitting back like Travis Green is behind the bench

— Canoof (@Canooflehead) December 20, 2024

Will I. Am Karlsson put Vegas ahead for good a handful of seconds after that paddle save from Kevin, when he basically skated the puck out of the corner and went full Kiefer Sherwood on Vancouver:

Jake DeBrusk is not a good defensive player.

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the man is not strong on the boards. His heart is in the right place, and he has the best blue paint game on the team, but a grinding road hockey game is not a place where he shines.

He had like five seconds of being draped all over by Karlsson but could not do a single thing to stop him. I felt like I was watching myself trying to resist Deep and Delicious cake in the frozen aisle at Safeway. I know what I should do, and I try my best, but damn it, this is not a situation I am going to win at.

You also might think I am joking about this, but I straight up just took a bite of said cake.

This is who I am, damn it.

Best sitting back and praying

This team has generated a grand total of three shots since the first period. Im so fucking done with this stupid and dump chase system. Then they try to play conservative with a 1-0 lead and get burnt. #Canucks

— arpy (@Arpy6409) December 20, 2024

The worst optics of the dump-and-chase lifestyle is when you dump it in but the other team turns it into an odd-man rush against you:

This is where you have to ask the question: Does Rick Tocchet have the horses to play the style he wants (i.e. do Allvin and Rutherford have to give him other players), or does Rick have to adapt his style to get more out of this roster?

I don’t know; maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this team can figure it out and get back to a place like last year where the GOTI system didn’t feel as restricting.

But right now, the Canucks just cannot generate offence in a consistent manner at all, and it’s showing in the results and the standings.

Best player of the game

Sherwood is trying to win this game on his own.
What is Miller Petey and Boeser paid to do again? #Canucks

— kevin (@kevinlambert23) December 20, 2024

Kiefer Sherwood was the Canucks best player by a country mile, as he was streets ahead of any other forward on the team.

The fact that Kiefer got better scoring chances than either Pettersson and Miller says a lot about the state of the game on the night.

Even worse? Kiefer did it while shorthanded:

He wasn’t done there, as he almost set up Danton Heinen for a tap-in goal mere seconds later while still penalty killing:

87% of the offensive highlights on the night involved Kiefer Sherwood. That probably shouldn’t be the case if you want to win a lot of games.

Best illusion

Per @NatStatTrick, #Canucks have had a grand total of ONE high-danger scoring chance since the start of the 2nd period.

— Grady Sas (@GradySas) December 20, 2024

As the period wore down, Vegas did their own version of parking the bus. Which meant the Canucks got shots, but a majority of them were one-timers or slap shots from the point. Soucy, Forbort and Juulsen were the guys taking them, and one was an off-footed one-timer from EP40, but at no point did you ever see Adan Hill chuckle to himself while on a bus and comment about how he was in danger.

The Canucks simply couldn’t find a way to break into the GOTI, and Vegas happily ate up the clock while Vancouver fired in shots from the point. It truly felt like the strategy was “pray Quinn Hughes can cut through half the team and help score a goal”, which can work, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t working Thursday night.

It’s kind of like Sean Payton deciding to kick a field goal instead of letting Bo Nix try and get a touchdown pass to Courtland Sutton. Does he not want me to win my Fantasy Football playoff match up? Do they not even think about me when they make these decisions? Why would they do this to me?

Sorry, where was I?

Best asked and answered

Will they put Pettersson and Miller on the ice together for 6-on-5??

— Rob Williams (@RobTheHockeyGuy) December 20, 2024

At one point during the third period, Elias Pettersson ended up on the ice with Boeser and Miller, so we got about 5 seconds of the Lotto Line. What a time to be alive.

Still, it fueled hope that Elias and Miller would combine to score a goal, with Lankinen pulled for the extra man, resulting in a hockey hug that goes on a little too long as both men sobbed and apologized for their role in the rift. Eventually, they skate to the bench for a line change, ultimately knowing that the true line change just happened in their hearts. The new best friends forever would then go on to win the game in overtime, resulting in a knowing look from Rick Tocchet who foresaw all of this.

Instead, they had barely gotten onto the ice before Vegas got the empty netter:

I don’t know what’s more sad: The fact that Vegas scored, or the fact Vancouver didn’t even get to dump and chase one last time.

And that was the game. Vancouver can walk away with the knowledge that they played a good road game, but the overall narrative of the season hasn’t changed much.

And it’s true, with a bounce here or there, maybe Vancouver walks away with some points in this game, but as I said in the intro, this just feels like we’re hitting a boiling point of how the season has gone this month.

Now, all we can do is wait and see how it finishes.

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