The Hangover – Recapping Vancouver’s 4-3 win vs. Columbus

(Image via CP)

On St. Patrick’s Day, a hockey game was played between the Vancouver Canucks and the Columbus Blue Jackets. The day after St. Patrick’s Day, a hockey writer watched the game, wrote a few numbers down, and saw that the home team scored more goals than the away team. Daniel Sedin had two of them, David Booth had another, and Alex Edler had a very pretty one.

For a little bit of extra analysis, some numbers and the Statistical Three Stars and Goats, click past the jump.

-The important numbers: 17-11 the scoring chances for the Canucks, 12-9 at even strength, but the score-tied 5-on-5 chances were actually a 2-2 draw.

There aren’t many takeaways from this game. For one, I’m a little hungover and have some other things to do, but also because Columbus is a really, really, really bad team and there isn’t so much I’d like to discuss about them. There were four or five times during the game I thought to record a scoring chance off a Columbus stick, but they either missed the shot or passed the puck from a good location to a worse location. Add to how much the Canucks dominated zone time (NHL.com had the shot attempts at 82-62 for Vancouver) and you can see why this game went the way it did.

-Even so, I thought Cory Schneider had a pretty mediocre start. He was in good position for the first goal against, it just snuck through (real Roberto Luongo-esque, actually, given the reaction on Twitter that it was a “soft goal”) but I’d have liked to have see him stop either of the point shots for goals off from the point (neither recorded as chances) even though they hit Ryan Kesler in both cases before going in. Goals like that are why I stopped counting goals not off chances as part of the Statistical Three Stars, because in some cases it’s just bad luck.

-He let out a few rebounds, too. Mind you, Steve Mason wasn’t any better at the other end.

-Dan Hamhuis had a team-high six shot attempts for Vancouver. Six of those were blocked by Columbus, who were forced to block 34 shots in this one. When the puck is often at your end of the ice, it’s really easy to rack up a high shot block count.

-I don’t care what anybody says, I quite like Kevin Weekes as an analyst. The knowledge is there, he just has difficulty expressing his thoughts because he has no broadcast background. That’s not to say he’d make a good General Manager, but I’m not sure any TV personality does.

-Rick Nash needs out, but he was pretty invisible in this one. He had six shots on goal, but none of them were chances in the first 58:52 of this game.

-In the first period, Zack Kassian was set up by Maxim Lapierre. In the second period, Maxim Lapierre was set up by Zack Kassian. Symmetry.

-I’m beginning to doubt the quality of Ryan Kesler’s wrist shot, and think he just may have gotten lucky last year with his high goal total.

-Columbus had a couple of chances when they pulled the goalie, but I neglect to get those in the official count. Philosophy and all.

-Check out Chris Tanev and Aaron Rome’s scoring chance +/- in this one. They had a very good game. Both players are pretty un-talented offensively, but are real smart players both on and off the puck in the neutral and defensive zones, which is where you want your third-pairing D to make good decisions.

Actually, the real funny thing about the “Three Goats” is that those are the three players Thom and I have spitballed about coming back in a possible trade for Cory Schneider. Guess they didn’t really show it in this one, however, but Nikitin had the disadvantage of playing 6+ minutes against Tanev, and Johansen drew the short straw in that matchup from a forward perspective.