Someone must’ve gotten coal in their stocking.
The Vancouver Canucks managed to blow a 4-1 lead in the third period, losing 5-4 in overtime to the Seattle Kraken. For a moment, for 50 minutes of the game, it looked like the Canucks had found something over the Christmas break. With both Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson ruled out, the lineup looked shoddy at best. And yet, the Canucks had the game by the reins, poised to pull off a victory missing two of their best players. Then, the glass slipper fell off.
Here’s the loss, by the numbers.
As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

Game Flow

The game was pretty back and forth for the majority of the afternoon. Vancouver saw themselves slide into the upper 40’s when it came to CF%, but with how limited the raw number of chances were, it didn’t affect the big picture of this game much. The Canucks only managed to post a positive xGF% in the third period, a very solid 67.56 in the final frame. Problem was, there was a clear point where they just stopped playing, and it’s exactly where the Kraken were able to get that 4-2 goal. From that point on, the Canucks just sat there taking punches until they blew the game in overtime.

Heat Map

There weren’t a whole lot of scoring chances to speak of in the game at 5v5. Vancouver held a 22-16 overall edge in chances but split evenly in high-danger chances 7-7 with a majority of them coming in the third period. Accounting for all situations, the Kraken held an 11-9 high-danger chance edge and a narrow 25-24 scoring chance lead. It still wasn’t all that much though, and it’s reflected in the heat map where high-danger looks were sparse, and not a lot of attempts were directed at the goals.

Individual Advanced Stats

Corsi Champ: Erik Brännström finds himself leading the team with a 62.07 CF% in 16:49 TOI. Pressed into elevated minutes with Vincent Desharnais as his partner, Brännström didn’t do half bad for himself. Primarily playing with anyone except the top line, and with Yanni Gourde’s line as his most common matchup, Brännström managed to finish second on the team in xGF with a 1.07, his nice 69.02 xGF% placing him third in that category. Not a bad performance considering what was asked of him and the quality of the teammates he was playing with.
Corsi Chump: Kiefer Sherwood finds himself at the bottom of the Corsi charts, coming in at a 26.32 CF% for a -22.26 CF% rel to team average. On ice for a 5v5 goal against, Sherwood also posted the team’s worst xGF% of 28.71 while facing the 4th-most xGA at 0.66. Interestingly enough though, he was only on ice for a single high-danger chance against. Sherwood did have a decent reason to be posting these kinds of numbers, as he along with Teddy Blueger and Danton Heinen were tasked with matching up against Jared McCann and Jacob Schwartz.
xGF: This one goes to Dakota Joshua, who was unfortunately denied a goal off a video review. Coming in at 76.93 xGF%, his 0.21 xGA was a team-best while putting up the 4th-best xGF of 0.69. Joshua was playing pretty well on the fourth line alongside PDG and Max Sasson, contributing to quite a bit of energy throughout the game while not being a liability on their own end. In raw xGF, Vincent Desharnais managed to wrestle that crown away from everyone with his team-best 1.14 xGF.
GSAx: Unfortunately, with how the team played in front of him, Thatcher Demko’s numbers were not good. Now granted, he himself also wasn’t at his best, letting in two goals that he should’ve easily had. With Seattle only producing a 2.66 xGF, that meant the American netminder would give up a -2.34 GSAx on the afternoon. Three of the goals against were considered high-danger, while the remaining two goals against came off low-danger opportunities. Not to excuse the team’s performance in front of him by any means, but there were some uncharacteristically soft goals that Demko let past him.

Statistical Musings

Oh boy: Until the final 10 minutes, the Carson Soucy – Noah Juulsen pairing probably would’ve gotten quite a bit of plaudits for their play in this one with Quinn Hughes sidelined. Unfortunately, the rash of errors caught up to them at the worst possible time. Soucy led the Canucks with 3 turnovers in the game, while Juulsen had more than his fair share of dicey moments leading up to the 4-3 goal turnover. That registered as a Soucy giveaway, but if Juulsen hadn’t fumbled the puck up the middle, it probably would’ve been a routine, easy clear. The pair of them recorded a 30.00 CF% and 31.62 xGF%, facing off against the Kraken’s top 6 and generally just getting dummied by them. Again, this team needs an actual top 4 defenceman to round out the top 4. Not whatever… this is.
Third pairing doing work: On the flip side of all of this is the Brännström-Desharnais pairing, who were solid against tough competition and who played with much less talent than Soucy-Juulsen did. The third pairing in name recorded an impressive 60.00 CF% and 71.89 xGF% with both Brännström and Desharnais finishing as the two leaders in xGF for the Canucks. Funny what a defenceman who can move the puck can do, right?
Where the first line sort of underwhelmed: This isn’t to say that Jake DeBrusk-JT Miller-Brock Boeser had a bad game. They did well for themselves and Boeser managed to record two goals for himself, which was a huge contribution. But at 5v5, that line only managed to produce 1 goal together while also generating the second-worst xGF of 0.20 amongst Canuck forward lines. It wasn’t awful, but when the bottom 6 has two lines that are outproducing them in raw xGF while also taking on some tougher matchups such as the Sherwood-Blueger-Heinen line (who racked up 0.27 xGF, in case anyone was curious), it is a little bit headscratching that DeBrusk-Miller-Boeser couldn’t be more effective at even strength than them.

As a team

CF% – 41.44% HDCF% – 45.00% xGF% – 46.82%
The lack of focus, attention to detail, and 60 minute effort killed the Canucks in this one. Simply put, when you’re up 4-1 in the third period with a chance to make an emphatic statement about this group being able to compete… and then proceed to collapse in the way that the Canucks did? It’s exceptionally disheartening and demonstrates so many issues with this team that far exceed the scope of just this game. How many times have similar stats been shown this season, that the Canucks simply aren’t doing enough to sustainably win games? And with Hughes and Pettersson out – that situation only grows more dire. Changes are needed to this team, and the best time for that was yesterday.
Vancouver hosts the Calgary Flames on Tuesday for their last game of the 2024 calendar year.
Stats provided by naturalstattrick.com
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