On today’s episode of Canucks Conversation, David Quadrelli and Harman Dayal analyzed the Vancouver Canucks’ 2-1 overtime loss to the Washington Capitals and welcomed Rinkwide’s Jeff Paterson to discuss the team’s ongoing offensive struggles.

Harm started by reflecting on a crucial missed opportunity during the Canucks’ four-minute power play in the second period, where Quinn Hughes remained stuck in the penalty box until the next whistle.

“At some point, they should’ve just iced the puck or gone offside, anything to cause a stoppage and get Hughes out of the box because the entries were just miserable without him engineering them,” said Harm. “He’s the one with the skating ability whether he’s getting up the ice and laying it back or single-handedly skating it in and getting set up; he’s their biggest asset for power play entries.”

While the Canucks showed promise in the second half of the game, Harman highlighted an ongoing issue with sluggish starts.

“Their first-period shots on goal totals in their last handful of games: three against Washington, four against Montreal, nine against Nashville, six against Seattle, eleven against Calgary, and then six against each of San Jose, Seattle, and Ottawa. They can’t consistently crack more than six or seven shots in the first period which is putting a team that already struggles to manufacture offence behind the eight-ball. Like I said, it was a pretty good game for the Canucks, but the lacklustre, sluggish starts are an issue for this team.”

Despite the loss, Quads found a positive takeaway in the Canucks’ ability to sustain offensive pressure.

“The most promising win from that game if you takeaway anything, and it’s their seventh straight overtime loss which isn’t great, but that was the first time in recent memory that the Canucks have stacked shifts,” said Quads. “If you’re looking for the silver lining, it’s that they were the better team at five-on-five and that’s not easy to do against this Capitals team.”

“It was reminiscent of last year’s Canucks,” agreed Harm. “The forecheck was effective, they weren’t turning pucks over, they were connected and they started building momentum. A lot of that was Hughes, it was his second game back and he was brilliant, another masterclass performance from him. In the second half of regulation time, the Caps barely had any scoring chances which is impressive considering they’re the highest scoring team in the NHL. For the Canucks to limit the damage that way and start controlling play again was a really promising sign.”

Jeff Paterson joined the conversation to discuss the Canucks’ offensive struggles, particularly the lack of five-on-five production.

“Three of their last five games, they haven’t scored a five-on-five goal, and you have to do that if you want to win games,” said JPat. “Their top scorers are 30-40 goal guys which means they’re going to go stretches without scoring like Brock Boeser who was hot a week ago and is now ice cold. The top of the lineup isn’t all that productive and there’s zero supporting scoring right now.”

“With all these overtime games, you have to bake it into the schedule that it’s not a 60-minute game anymore and a lot of them are going to go past regulation. They need a goal from a Nils Höglander, Pius Suter, Danton Heinen, etcetera; a goal from them could be the difference in a game. I’m not asking them to score every night, but their secondary scoring has completely evaporated and in the absence of Elias Pettersson, that stuff matters.”

JPat also pointed out that the Canucks’ roster limitations make it difficult to consistently produce results.

“The front office has to recognize that the players Tocchet has to work with right now simply aren’t good enough to get results. They were able to outplay the Washington Capitals for 60+ minutes but in the end, the guys they have couldn’t generate the offence needed.”

You can watch the full segment below: