Sleepwalking on the road.

The Vancouver Canucks lost in quite dreary fashion, a boring 2-1 defeat against the Utah Hockey Club. There really isn’t too much to this loss either – the Canucks simply didn’t look like they were up for anything last night. There wasn’t a lot of action or high-danger chances, and the power plays didn’t do much either. Even accounting for all situations, Vancouver simply didn’t have enough juice to get the result. That sucks, especially considering that they lost the previous night in similar fashion.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

With the first period being bogged down by penalties, there wasn’t much 5v5 time for either team to get into a rhythm. However, coming out of the intermission, it looked like the Canucks were going to take the initiative. They had a good stretch run that led to a power play, where they capitalized for the opening goal of the game. After that, though…there wasn’t much to speak of. Actually, they just let Utah run away with the momentum. The hosts finished the period with a dominating 62.86 CF% and 78.51 xGF%, completely taking away anything Vancouver managed to create at the start of the frame. This only continued into the third, with Utah playing more than solid enough to ensure the Canucks never managed to seize the initiative again in this loss.

As the heat map shows, there weren’t a ton of scoring chances to speak of last night. Both teams didn’t see much 5v5 time but still didn’t make the most of it. Utah held a 15-7 scoring chance advantage, with both teams splitting a 5-5 high-danger chance battle at even strength and neither team establishing much of a hot spot in front of the crease area. Accounting for all situations, that scoring chance battle jumps to 25-19 in favour of Utah, while the high-danger chances balanced out once more at 9-9. There really just wasn’t a lot of action.

Corsi Champ: Of all players, it was Tyler Myers that led the way in the Corsi department for the Canucks. He recorded a 54.17 CF% playing primarily against the likes of Logan Cooley and Nick Schmaltz, but unfortunately, the puck possession didn’t really amount to much. Myers was on ice for a goal against, his 46.93 xGF%, the third best amongst all Canuck defencemen. At the very least, he managed to hold a 2-0 high-danger chance advantage, but there really wasn’t much else to highlight in Myers’ performance.

Corsi Chump: Teddy Blueger got absolutely smoked against Utah. His 30.00 CF% came with team lows in xGF (0.05) and xGF% (11.79), on ice for not a single scoring chance for while giving up five scoring chances against. At the very least, only one of those chances was high danger, but there wasn’t any real redeeming qualities to Blueger’s performance. It was just as unremarkable as the rest of the team last night.

xGF: It was a very limited sample size for Arshdeep Bains, but playing on the fourth line with just five minutes of ice time thanks to special teams, the winger racked up a team-best 72.97 xGF%. It should say a lot that his 0.49 xGF was the fifth-best mark on the team in such a limited deployment. Bains managed to hold a 2-1 lead in high-danger chances as well at 5v5, accounting for just under half of Vancouver’s chances. Leading the way in raw xGF was Filip Chytil, whose 0.69 was definitely an underwhelming number for a team lead. His xGF% of 68.89% was actually second right behind Bains, so at least one of the top six forwards was holding some good shares.

GSAx: At the very least, Arturs Silovs had a good game. With Utah racking up 2.59 xGF, Silovs finished with a 0.59 GSAx, doing his fair share to give the Canucks a fighting chance in this one. The goals against were split between a high-danger chance and a middle-danger chance, with the Latvian netminder managing to hold out everything else. It’s nice to see this after the rough start that he had to the year, but unfortunately for Silovs, the team in front of him couldn’t manage more than 15 shots and one goal to support him.

General underperformance: There’s really nothing that stands out when looking at the stat sheet. Everyone was just in the mushy middle, and that’s the most frustrating part. Normally, we would highlight a really good or a really bad performance that went under the radar. But in this one? Everyone was just tepid. No forward line broke 50.00 CF% or 50.00 xGF%. Only five players cracked that 50.00 CF% barrier individually. Sure, there were rough numbers, but given just how uneventful the game was, it was more of them not achieving much versus playing particularly poorly. This team just feels like they are asleep at the wheel, and it’s especially frustrating when they got two great performances back-to-back from Kevin Lankinen and Silovs.

The Canucks didn’t do horrifically bad. But they weren’t good either. It was a game where it looked like they were just going through the motions, unable to seize advantage when they could’ve done so. And that sucks because the hope was for the game breakers to be game-breaking, for them to be able to take advantage of winnable contests to secure points in this playoff race. Vancouver didn’t have any of that. Arturs Silovs was probably the only bright spot in this contest.

Vancouver heads into LA to face the Kings on Wednesday.