Not the prettiest of losses, but it wasn’t an ugly loss either. Heck, those jerseys were fire as well.

A brief respite from the lead-up to the NHL trade deadline saw the Vancouver Canucks lose 2-1 at home against the Minnesota Wild. The scoreline does flatter them a bit — the Wild were unlucky not to score more with how well they played. It’s an expected result, although the fact that it wasn’t worse might appear to give false hope to members of management and fans. On top of not picking up any points, some good individual performances were featured in this one.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

Much of the reason why the team stats aren’t more tilted is due largely to the Canucks being pretty darn good on their power plays. The game started out in favour of the Wild, who didn’t tilt the scales entirely in their direction but maintained a solid lead in expected goals and puck possession. That changed after the Canucks’ second power play which saw them capitalize with a Brock Boeser goal. That spike in puck possession built them a lead that Minnesota wouldn’t be able to entirely chip away at until the third.

What should be noted is how besides the spikes on the power play, Minnesota completely wrecked Vancouver in CF% and xGF%. The Wild finished the game with 56.90 CF% and 56.34 xGF% shares, but when looking at the even strength results, those numbers rise to 62.35 CF% and 59.14 xGF%. It speaks to how the Canucks reverted into old habits, getting outplayed at 5v5 and getting out-chanced as well. Minnesota has always played well in Rogers Arena for whatever reason, and with the run that they’re currently on, there really wasn’t any question about how they performed last night.

Are there any surprises looking at the heat map? In a game where Vancouver got out-shot 36-22, the large spread of Minnesota shots probably makes sense. But what makes this more interesting is how despite the shot differential, the gap narrows down in terms of scoring chances and high-danger chances. Remember, a scoring chance does not necessarily need to reach the net to be recorded as such. The Wild held a slim 34-30 scoring chance lead, with an even slimmer 11-10 high-danger chance lead. What this might imply is that the Canucks did a good job at responding with their own chances, but not enough of them reached the net for it to have mattered. As well, to nitpick a little at the heat map, it’s somewhat frustrating to see the Wild establish a clear hotspot in front of the goal with one more high-danger chance than the Canucks, who had lukewarm hotspots in the slot area.

Corsi Champ: Andrei Kuzmenko once again finds himself as the Corsi champ of the Canucks, leading the roster with a 60.00 CF%, enough for a 22.79 CF% rel. It was an excellent effort for the anti-tank commander as per usual, leveraging his puck possession ability into tangible opportunities. Kuzmenko finished with the 4th highest xGF (1.29) and put 11 scoring chances on the board, yielding 4 against. Among that, Kuzmenko had 5 high-danger chances for with merely 1 coming the other way. There still has yet to be an extended period of the season in which he has struggled, which is nice to see in the Russian’s first year in the NHL.

Corsi Chump: This one belongs to Guillaume Brisebois, who once again was tasked with babysitting Tyler Myers. Unfortunately, unlike last time out, Brisebois wasn’t able to make much of a difference for Myers. He came in dead last in CF%, a 26.47 giving him a -23.53 CF% rel to team average. What’s interesting to note is that despite the struggles in puck possession, Brisebois didn’t have the worst nights defensively. A 41.17 xGF% ranks him ahead of his partner’s 32.99 xGF%, and Brisebois even managed to limit the Wild’s high-danger opportunities on his flank. Though he got shelled with 16 scoring chances against, only 2 of them were considered high-danger. Meanwhile, out of the 5 scoring chances that Brisebois had, 3 were registered as high-danger.