Photo Credit: Bruce Fedyck/USA TODAY Sports

Now that an unsuccessful road trip has come to an appropriate end with a 4-1 loss in Winnipeg, the Vancouver Canucks will return home a humbled group.

It was a brutal seven-game trip for the club, who squandered a promising start to the campaign by dropping six of seven contests, picking up just four of 14 possible points. The club lost narrowly on this road trip and they lost creatively. Vancouver blew big leads, lost close games, surrendered more points in the 3-on-3, shot themselves in the foot on special teams and received shoddy goaltending. 

And yet, for all of the bad, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the Canucks deserved better – both in Wednesday night’s game and on this road trip. This probably isn’t a good team, but this isn’t a lottery team. This team is better and played better than the ugly 1-4-2 record they racked up against likely non-playoff teams in the Eastern Conference. 

Alexandre Grenier made his NHL debut on Wednesday night, and he had his moments before being largely stapled to the bench in the third period. Grenier played only one third period shift until after Winnipeg’s empty netter, when he received his second. 

Grenier was the only young player on the roster who wasn’t in Desjardins’ regular third-period rotation, and I’m not really sure why. He’s lanky, but I thought he played a direct game with some success. His chip and chase game is fun to watch, just because it’s fun to watch a man that big skate that quickly, and he really should’ve had a goal on Ondrej Pavelec in the second. 

Unfortunately for Grenier, who was plugged into Radim Vrbata’s spot on the third line, he inherited Vrbata’s luck:

Though the Canucks did pretty well and carried play for about a 35 minutes stretch from the middle part of the first period until about five minutes into the third – when they completely flat lined – they were a bit slow out of the gate. It’s likely that Winnipeg got fired up by Luca Sbisa’s rule 48 violation on Nikolaj Ehlers.

I didn’t think that it was a rule 48 violation at the time, and apparently the NHL’s Department of Player Safety agrees according to a report from TSN’s Darren Dreger. 

For Sbisa’s trouble he earned the right to get absolutely, mercilessly worked over by Anthony Peluso. Though we don’t know when or how Sbisa – who left the game in the second period and didn’t return – sustained his re-injury, this seems like a decent bet:

We should also note that on Sbisa’s penatly, the Jets scored a power-play goal to open the scoring. Ryan Miller was in a good position to make the save, but the puck just squeezed through him. It was a more difficult save than it probably looked like, since Miller was moving quickly from left to right, which will always open up all sorts of holes on a goaltender, but its also been that kind of road trip. 

After Winnipeg’s game-opening goal the Canucks sort of found their feet, and were particularly good in the second frame. Bo Horvat, whose had a tough roadtrip, showed some flashes of his late-season form and probably should’ve had a goal in this one. Make that, definitely should’ve had a goal in this one.

On this road trip Horvat was asked to do a tonne of defensive heavy lifting with Brandon Sutter out of the lineup, and mostly struggled. He was pretty good at 5-on-5 in this one though, and personally I thought he was at his best when he had at least one capable top-of-the-roster quality two-way winger on his line – whether it was Radim Vrbata in Ottawa, or Alex Burrows in Winnipeg. 

If the Canucks are going to keep throwing Horvat out there as the second-line centre, perhaps he should get a chance to play with both upon Vrbata’s return from injury. Just a suggestion.

Daniel Sedin twins scored Vancouver’s only goal, and did so on a first-unit power play that featured Chris Tanev on the point. Tanev was ignored in that spot both by Vancouver’s forwards and by Winnipeg’s penalty killers. The goal itself was nice though:

(Courtesy: NHL.com)

The Canucks ultimately lost the game as a result of some unforced defensive errors. Matt Bartkowski was victimized repeatedly on the game-winning goal, while Dan Hamhuis didn’t exactly cover himself in glory on Scheifele’s game-sealing third period goal. 

I’m of the opinion that Vancouver’s much-maligned defensive corps has mostly performed pretty well this season. At the very least, they’ve moved the puck and contributed more in terms of producing offense than we had any right to expect. The in-zone play has been iffy at times though, and it certainly was tonight, although the fact that Vancouver played the second half of the final game on a gruelling road trip with only five D should be noted.

Vancouver is going to have to do better to avoid losing any more ground in a very weak Pacific Division. The rest of the month doesn’t look particularly kind though, as the club will return home to face the defending champs, before taking on Cory Schneider’s Devils and heading out on a pretty difficult fourth-game trip, with stops in Dallas, Minnesota, and a back-to-back against the Los Angeles teams. 

Somehow the Canucks are still lodged in a playoff spot, but they won’t be able to keep pace for long if they can’t get some saves, play better defense, and work out whatever it is that’s afflicting their special teams.