There’s blowing a lead, and then whatever the Vancouver Canucks did last night.

The Vancouver Canucks blew a 2-0 lead, losing 3-2 in overtime against the Minnesota Wild. Really though, they shouldn’t have been in the lead in the first place. The Canucks got outplayed across the board, only steadily getting worse throughout the game. Everything went in the favour of the Wild and much of the contest was essentially wondering when the visitors would strike, not if. Unfortunately, there are not many bright spots to take away from this one.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

The first period was the most “equal” period, as the Canucks would only finish that with a 32.26 CF% and 40.32 xGF% share. That was as good as it got last night, which isn’t a good sign. From that point on, Minnesota simply cranked everything up a notch, holding a 78.93 xGF% in the second period while posting a 0.79 xGF to the Canucks’ 0.21. That gap was stretched further in the final frame, the Wild sitting at 80.39 xGF% and a 1.56-0.38 lead in xGF. Vancouver never broke 30.00 CF% after the first period, which is also not great. No wonder Minnesota was able to come back in this one.

The heat map tells more than enough when it comes to the story of this game. Minnesota was all over Vancouver 31-13 in overall scoring chances, translating to a 12-5 high-danger chance advantage at 5v5 play. There was no hot spot to speak of for the Canucks, while the Wild were able to get plenty of looks in tight against Kevin Lankinen. To add to the misery, three of the five high-danger chances the Canucks got came in the first period, meaning that they had one apiece in the second and third. It simply is not good enough, especially when the opposition is pouring it onto you.

Corsi Champ: Quinn Hughes finds himself topping this category for the first time in a while, leading the Canucks with a 46.81 CF%. For the best Corsi mark to be under 50.00 says a lot about the overall team’s performance, and Hughes’ tally was actually 27.84 CF% rel to team average, showing just how poor the rest of the group was against the Wild. It should say a lot that the next best mark was only at 36.36 CF%.

Corsi Chump: On the other hand, Filip Hronek finished bottom of the Corsi charts with a 14.58 CF%, which put him at -31.03 CF% rel. Now, a big reason why for that kind of result was that he and Marcus Pettersson were tasked with matching up against the Wild’s top line. The end product of that was Hronek being on ice for both 5v5 goals against, finishing with the worst xGA (2.09) and xGF% (7.05) on the roster as well. The scoring chance differential was comedic – the Czech was only on ice for 2 scoring chances for, and 22 scoring chances against.

xGF: It was just that kind of overwhelming Quinn Hughes effort. The Canucks captain led by example all over the ice, posting a 49.90 xGF% with a team-high 1.22 xGF to his name as well. The biggest issue wasn’t Hughes – it was the fact that Vancouver could do literally nothing without him on the ice. Looking at the raw expected goals reveals that Hughes doubled up on the next best Canuck, while he was also the only member of the roster to finish with a positive high-danger chance split. Hughes also just so happened to be on ice for all 5 of the Canucks’ HDCF.

GSAx: For giving up 3 goals, one might expect that Kevin Lankinen would finish with a negative GSAx. But given just how overwhelming Minnesota was last night, the numbers evened out quite nicely. The Wild racked up 3.58 xGF in total through the three regulation periods and overtime, leaving Lankinen with a 0.58 GSAx. He was a big reason why the Canucks were even able to stay in the lead for so long, the team in front of him completely unable to generate any sustained momentum or pressure. The Finn didn’t give up a single low-danger goal, with 2 high-danger goals against and 1 middle-danger goal. That’s a pretty sizeable contribution to try and help the Canucks to a win.

The Canucks sucked in this one. Aside from Quinn Hughes and Kevin Lankinen, there were not a lot of positives in the team’s performance from last night. They absolutely deserved to lose, and it’s highly debatable even if they deserved to be in the lead in the first place. There was nothing that suggested that the Canucks were going to be able to see this out, and with the more time played, the more that the Wild came on to take over this contest. The result is much more generous than what the numbers painted this contest to be.

Vancouver hosts Macklin Celebrini and the San Jose Sharks on Monday for the second-to-last game of the season.