The San Jose Sharks and their five game win streak accompanied Lunar New Year celebrations at Rogers Arena Monday night, as the Vancouver Canucks attempted to improve a 2-2-1 record since coming back from their bye week.

The two big stories of the night for Canucks going into the game were, of course, the NHL debuts of both 22-year-old Zack MacEwen on right wing and 19-year-old Mikey DiPietro in goal. We had known that MacEwen would draw into the lineup much earlier in the day, but the DiPietro news dropped less than an hour before the puck did. Fans were understandably losing their minds at the prospect of seeing both of these players get the nod:

At first, it was curious that Travis Green chose tonight of all nights for DiPietro to make his first NHL start. With games against both Anaheim and Los Angeles later this week, there were far more beatable opponents on offer for the young goalie to face first, not to mention the fact that those two games are scheduled on back-to-back nights. After a Herculean 44-save effort against the Calgary Flames on Saturday night and a rare day off Sunday, it wouldn’t be crazy to suggest that Jacob Markstrom simply needed a break after starting 5 games in 8 nights. It would later turn out that simple lower body tightness was the reason for the start, but questions would arise as the game played out regarding how Canucks management chose to handle their goalie situation.

Lineups for both teams as per Jeff Paterson on Twitter:

Side note: With Sutter out of the lineup, Beagle was given an A to wear for the first time.

Unfortunately, the Year of the Pig would not start well for the home team. Logan Couture easily out-battled Erik Gudbranson behind the Canucks net before snapping a quick pass to Timo Meier, who was ready and waiting to bang it past DiPietro for the Sharks first goal of the night. Tyler Motte was in position to cover Meier, but got caught watching the play and failed to clear the front of the net:

Couture’s assist increased his scoring streak to 11 points in his last 8 games against Vancouver (6 goals, 5 assists), while Pavelski’s assist was the 400th of his career.

Things very quickly got worse on a weird play at 3:22 when Vancouver native Evander Kane tossed the puck into the Canucks zone. Ben Hutton tried to glove it down, but it bounced off his hand, over DiPietro, and into the net:

Hutton was visibly upset with himself and was later seen on camera apologizing to DiPietro, taking responsibility for the goal. This series of events would end up summarizing how the night would go overall. The team fell into a deep hole pretty much right off the bat and just never really threatened to come back. Fans who were initially excited to see a bit of the future hit the ice saw their excitement turn to complete, abject horror in a matter of minutes:

Melkor Karlsson would then tip in a Brent Burns shot from the point at 8:48 to make it 3-0 Sharks:

3 goals on just 5 shots. The one positive takeaway from this god-awful period was the fact that DiPietro wasn’t really at fault for what was happening at light-speed around him. The Canucks clearly miss Alex Edler, and the rest of the defence simply did nothing to prevent the Sharks from treating the 19-year-old OHL goalie the way a pack of vicious, hungry wolves would treat a sick baby deer. The fans were obviously desperate for the young goalie to do well, cheering every successful save despite the lopsided early score.

The Canucks didn’t even manage to register a shot on net until the 12-minute mark of the period. There were a series of sloppy passes and line changes, and even Elias Pettersson looked a tad off to start. Luckily, Kane got called for roughing Troy Stecher and gave Vancouver their first power play of the game. When things are looking down, you just have to start taking baby steps in the right direction, and getting some time in the offensive side of the ice is exactly what the team needed to finish strong. The 1st unit was quiet, but Markus Granlund and Loui Eriksson had an energetic series of surprisingly good chances; particularly Granlund off of a nice rebound. Signs of life, but no luck yet.

Things finally changed for the better with only a handful of seconds left in the period when Horvat connected on a pass from Pettersson. It was Horvat’s 20th goal of the year, giving him his third straight 20-goal season:

It can’t be said enough how well this play demonstrates what makes Pettersson as good as he is. He entered the zone only to be challenged directly by Brent Burns, with Kevin Labanc providing double-coverage in support. He responded by throwing on the brakes, weighing his options, faking left, and throwing a perfect no-look, cross-ice pass to an open Bo Horvat.

The impressive thing isn’t just that he did all of this in a split second. The impressive thing is watching how he pivots and angles his body; how he controls his speed and distance. He makes a series of decisions mentally under extreme pressure at incredible speed, and once he’s decided what the play is going to be, he is able to perform the exact series of precise body movements necessary to execute what he’s decided to do.

And we’re not talking about one big sweeping body motion. If you really slow the replay down, you can count a crazy number of interdependent movements that he’s making as his ankles, knees, hips, and other joints all seem to be doing different things all at the same time. It’s nuts.

I honestly can’t stop watching it.

This was a much better beginning for Vancouver, giving hope to distraught fans that the Pettersson magic at the end of the last period was a sign of a potential comeback. The Canucks outshot the Sharks 4-0 and would find a way to somehow lead San Jose in shots for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the 3 goals scored by the opposition in the 1st frame were matched in the 2nd:

Evander Kane in from centre ice, firing a wrist shot over DiPietro’s left shoulder at 4:36. Shark goals on their first shots of each of the first two periods, and Kane’s 16th multi-point game this season.

Tomas Hertl takes a short backhand pass from Kane and makes it 7 goals and 7 assists in his last 11 games against the Canucks. I’d say that the Sharks have some real Canuck killers on their roster, but the truth is that the Sharks are just a great team with some great players. And they have been for a while.

By this point, Travis Green was constantly line juggling, looking for anything to give his team a lift. Fans were finally able to see Virtanen play with Roussel and Horvat, but the trio produced nothing together in the game.

For the Sharks’ 6th goal of the game, Joe Thornton lumbered down the wing and made a pass he’s probably made over a thousand times…

Right, I guess he has made that pass over a thousand times. Joe Thornton finally passed Gordie Howe to take sole possession of 9th overall in the record books for career regular season assists. He has more than a decent chance to pass a few more guys on that list, too. All in all, a great career and a great player who I think will be sorely missed the day he retires.

Anyways, I love Joe Thornton as a player, but this is beginning to feel like too much celebrating of Shark accomplishments. Let’s see how Canucks Twitter is doing:

Oh.

Antoine Roussel started the next period in a way that is quickly becoming familiar to Canucks fans – his team was down, so he got in Brenden Dillon’s face and tried to fire everyone up. On a night where it felt like many players were simply passengers, Roussel’s effort was both noticeable and appreciated.

At the 0:45 mark, Pettersson was tripped by Justin Braun, sending the Canucks to the power play. Unfortunately, the highlight of the man-advantage was a windmill save by DiPietro to block a short-handed attempt by Evander Kane to score a hat-trick goal:

The Sharks would then be gifted a series of power plays as Boeser and Gudbranson were each called for slashing. Gudbranson’s was particularly egregious, and obviously came out of frustration. While I can understand that a night like this isn’t fun for the players, they still can’t let themselves get to that point. They just can’t afford it, and Gudbranson has played long enough to know that.

A better moment for the boys in blue, and one of the only rewarding moments of the night, came in the form of a Pouliot goal assisted by… #71, Zack MacEwen:

It was a great effort by all involved. Horvat batted the puck down out of the air. MacEwen took control on his forehand and spun to face the goalie before trying to tuck it in behind Martin’s left pad. Goldobin did a great job staying involved, recollecting the puck immediately behind the net, and making a nice play to slip it back to MacEwen, who circled back and passed it right through the legs of Melkor Karlsson to a well-position Pouliot. Good for MacEwen to get his first point, and a nice group effort. I want to see more of Goldobin and MacEwen together.

It was almost immediately followed by another Sharks goal, but I’m honestly sick of talking about the Sharks scoring, so we’re just gonna skip that part. The silver lining here is that this is surprisingly only the second time this season that a team has scored 7 goals against the Canucks. The first was in their second game of the year; a 7-4 loss to the Flames. So that’s nice.

The Canucks were never in this game. If anything, this game exposed what they are as a team without Alex Edler or Jacob Markstrom on the ice. Of course you can say that most teams are obviously going to see less success in general if you take away their best defenceman and starting goalie, but truly good teams have enough good players that they can overcome losses like that. That’s why depth is important. If you take away one or two guys and the drop is that precipitous, can you really say that you have a good “team”? This isn’t meant to pile on and be negative, but these are the sort of questions you have to ask yourself if you think you’re a playoff team and you’re facing a trade deadline in a few weeks. That’s the difference between contenders and pretenders. Hopefully Canucks management knows what they honestly are.

This game also raised serious questions about the organization’s ability to manage their roster and be prepared to deal with injuries. Questions are being asked about why Travis Green didn’t have another goalie available to play if Markstrom truly was hurt enough to not be an option to play. Who exactly is going to be in net against the Ducks? The Kings? Against the Sharks again next Saturday?

It could very well be Markstrom. But what if the injury is more serious than they thought? The Canucks don’t have a great record when it comes to dealing with injuries the right way the first time around. What if he suffers a new injury? Throwing the kid a game was a fine idea, but are we a tweaked Markstrom groin away from having DiPietro, an OHL goalie, as the indefinite starter of the Vancouver Canucks?

This was an issue that was raised as far back as a month ago. Why hasn’t it been resolved yet? Why did they give Anders Nilson away, basically for free? And why wasn’t another move made to acquire a goaltender when management lost McKenna to waivers?

As far as the storyline going into the game, DiPietro deserved better. He was hung out to dry by his teammates and by his organization. It may not have been on purpose, but they still let it happen. Luckily, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to let something like this really get him down, but the Canucks all of a sudden find themselves desperately needing another goalie option.