Good grief.

The Vancouver Canucks got embarrassed on national television, losing 5-0 to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Simply put, the gulf in quality between these two teams was on evident display, a completely lacklustre and lifeless display from the Canucks in this shutout loss. They couldn’t do anything of note, couldn’t get anything going, and just looked terrible as a whole. If the season until this point hadn’t proven that the Canucks need an actual rebuild, this game did so in spades.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

The game flow chart is misleading. Both the expected goals and Corsi favoured the Canucks not because they were better, but because they simply had relatively more of the puck. In the first, the Canucks had four power plays. Not scoring on them aside, usually when a team is on the man-advantage, they can generate some momentum and carry that forth going on into the return to 5v5. Instead, it seemed that the Canucks simply let the Leafs do whatever they wanted, and it resulted in Toronto capitalizing thrice in that opening frame. The rest of the way, Vancouver simply didn’t have anything in the tank to make this an interesting contest.

Again, does the heat map show that the Canucks were relatively better at chance generation? Yes, but it wasn’t to the extent that it might appear. Overall, the scoring chances sat at 20-19 for the Canucks who also had a 12-8 high-danger chance edge. Vancouver actually split those up pretty evenly, with 4 in each period. That being said though, considering that they had quite a lot of the puck, it showed that the Leafs did more than their fair share to limit the damage that the Canucks could’ve done. As well, it wasn’t like Vancouver was particularly threatening even from the high-danger chances, with a lack of talent and finish on full display.

Corsi Champ: Zeev Buium bounced back after a rougher game last time out, posting a 77.78 CF% to lead the team against the Leafs. During the defenceman’s TOI, he had an 8-3 shot advantage, holding a 71.73 xGF% share and a 5-2 high-danger chance differential despite being on ice for a goal against. It was a relatively good night on the stat sheet for Buium, who got moved to play alongside Tyler Myers last night.

Corsi Chump: Elias Pettersson (the forward) didn’t have a good night on the stat sheet. Trailing the team in CF% with his 25.00, it translated to other categories as well as EP40 posted a team-worst 19.37 xGF% with a 1-5 hole in scoring chances and 1-3 deficit in high-danger chances. At the very least, he wasn’t on ice for a goal against, and did create some decent looks on the power play. Still, it wasn’t a very good game for Pettersson as a whole, but then again the entire team did not look great at all.

xGF: It is a sign of the times that Aatu Räty not only led this team in xGF% at 96.17, but also raw xGF with his 1.44. The kicker in all of this is that Räty only played 8:58 at 5v5 play, making him the third-least played Canuck last night. Räty was on ice for a 9-2 scoring chance lead and a big 7-0 high-danger chance advantage, which isn’t an insignificant proportion of Vancouver’s total amount of high-danger chances. The Finn also tied for the best FO% amongst Canuck centermen with a 40% win rate in the faceoff dot – again not a great raw number but one of the better ones on the team. Given how well he played, one can surely expect Räty to be scratched for the next contest.

GSAx: One of the most interesting things that comes from looking at GSAx is how eerily it can show when Thatcher Demko is hurt again. The American netminder came into this contest having posted shaky outing in his last couple starts, and continued that trend in the first. Facing only 0.53 xGF for just the first, Demko conceded 2 high-danger goals and 1 middle-danger goal to finish with a -2.47 GSAx before exiting the game with a lower-body injury. In relief, Kevin Lankinen gave up 2 high-danger goals against 1.74 xGF, meaning that his GSAx finished at a marginally better -0.26. Not the best from either, but hey, this Canucks team in front of them certainly wasn’t confidence-inspiring either.

The Canucks are not a good hockey team. They haven’t been all season and this game yet underlines it all that much more. Special teams that can’t accomplish anything, even strength play that’s uninspiring at best, and constantly chasing the game as opposed to playing their own style. The veterans are putting forward lacklustre displays and the rookies/young guys are floundering. It just feels like the bottom has fallen out – which is good for the long-term success of this franchise to collect some high-end talent.

Vancouver heads into Montreal for their next contest, taking on a surging Canadiens team approaching the other end of a rebuild.