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Canucks Army Postgame: Top Marks & Turnovers
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Grainne Downey
Dec 2, 2015, 02:17 ESTUpdated:
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One day after what was easily their worst outing of the season, the Canucks hobbled into the Staples Centre to attempt to salvage their 4 game road trip. This attempt would be without Jake Virtanen, Chris Higgins, and Chris Tanev, who were all injured in Anaheim. It was a magnificent effort on the part of one Jacob Markstrom, who stole the Canucks a point that they had no business getting. 
The injuries meant that Andrey Pedan became the 7th Canuck to make his NHL debut this season. Though he’s a defenseman, Pedan made his debut on the fourth line. This meant that Tanev was replaced with Alex Biega and the Canucks lineup was the strangest it has been all year:

THE GOOD

Jacob Markstrom played a wonderful game, stopping 38 of 40 shots. It seems like an exaggeration to say that Markstrom singlehandedly took the game to OT, but the Canucks had no shots in the final 20 minutes of the game. He was the team’s best penalty killer and essentially dragged his teammates into the extra frame. 
Markstrom was eventually beaten by this Drew Doughty powerplay goal in the third period:
The other nice part about the game for the Canucks was Daniel Sedin’s opening tally. Yannick Weber does some nice work to gain the zone and Henrik sets up his brother for a nice little one timer. Good job, Sedins!

THE BAD

The flatline in the third period says everything you need to know about how this game went for the Canucks. LA was certainly the better team. Given the Canucks’ haphazard lineup and the absence of Chris “really good defensively” Tanev, expecting a neat defensive performance would have been silly. That said, the Canucks skaters were a little too eager to get into the holiday spirit, giving the puck away all over the place. Most memorable was Alex Edler’s hilarious and game-deciding giveaway in OT: 
Despite the Canucks’ play and the game’s outcome, this was a more watchable effort than yesterday’s game in Anaheim – at least for the first two periods. For those who said that tonight’s game could not possibly be worse than Monday night’s, you were correct. The biggest thing that the Canucks can hope for now is a speedy recovery for Chris Tanev. 

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