Now that felt like a truly rebuilding team’s type of game.

The Vancouver Canucks lost a 4-1 decision to the New Jersey Devils in an afternoon game on the road, resulting in one of the more “boring” losses of the season. The Canucks simply didn’t look like they stood a chance in making it all that competitive, dazed and confused for a good chunk of the game. Sure, they didn’t have the door blown open on them on the scoreboard like in Carolina, but the game quality simply wasn’t good. Again, understandable, but certainly disappointing to watch regardless.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

There was a glimmer of hope with Linus Karlsson’s opening tally that the Canucks would make this a bounceback effort. However, that quickly faded as New Jersey steered the ship in their favour for most of the contest. Never did any of the share metrics in a period finish in Vancouver’s direction; the Devils never dropped below 53% in either CF% or xGF%. It is worth mentioning, however, that about halfway through the second the Canucks did see a bit of a surge. In that span, Vancouver managed to produce enough to finish with a 7-1 high-danger chance advantage despite producing a 46.27 xGF% share in the middle frame.

The heat map actually doesn’t look that bad from last night. With three of the four goals coming off power plays, the Canucks actually did fairly decent at containing the Devils at 5v5 play. While the overall scoring chances were 29-19 for New Jersey, the Canucks managed to close that gap and actually lead the Devils by a 10-9 margin in high-danger chances. Most of that is from the aforementioned second-period push, but credit to the Canucks for managing to keep the Devils away from the slot area. The only time it really got bad for Vancouver was the third, where they found themselves in a 1-5 hole in high-danger chances.

Corsi Champ: In the absence of reliable veteran play on the back end, Elias Pettersson, the defenceman, has stepped up to the plate in a big way. His 53.85 CF% led all Canuck skaters yesterday, holding a 7-5 shot advantage with a 3-0 high-danger chance edge during his TOI. Pettersson ate up his minutes without causing much fuss, which is everything that you could want out of a defenceman. His 53.54 xGF% made him the 4th-best Canuck in that category too as an added cherry on top of his performance against the Devils.

Corsi Chump: Max Sasson was bottom of the barrel in Corsi last night, racking up 26.09 CF% as part of the Canucks’ worst forward line at 5v5 play. Sasson’s numbers aren’t great when looking across the board, being on ice for the second-most xGA at 1.35 and posting the team’s worst xGF% at 8.41. It just wasn’t good for him and the rest of his linemates (which we’ll get to in a bit), as the Devils took full advantage of having the last change at home to match up against them.

xGF: Once again, it was the first line that did the majority of the play driving offensively as Jake DeBrusk found himself with the team’s best xGF% of 65.13. This was with a team-high 1.03 xGF to his name, on ice for an 8-1 high-danger chance advantage. Unfortunately for the Canucks, they couldn’t convert on these numbers to find the scoresheet, but it shouldn’t take away from the effort that DeBrusk and his linemates had in trying to make a difference for Vancouver.

GSAx: This is a tough one. Leevi Meriläinen saw the start and actually didn’t do too poorly for himself. New Jersey accumulated 3.66 xGF against him, meaning that the netminder finished with a 0.66 GSAx to his name. Meriläinen saw 2 high-danger goals against and 1 middle-danger goal against, playing pretty darn well with all things considered to keep the Canucks within a fighting chance. The tough aspect to this is the fact that Meriläinen had to come out of the game to get his skate repaired after getting it exploded off a shot by Luke Hughes. During that span, Kevin Lankinen came in relief and gave up a goal against as he faced 0.56 xGF. In his defence, the singular goal was a high-danger chance, but that still put Lankinen at a -0.43 GSAx in just 5:27 TOI – as well as handing him the loss.

Fourth Line Struggles: As mentioned briefly before, the Bains – Sasson – Gallagher line got absolutely pummeled against the Devils. The numbers really aren’t pretty to look at – together, the trio managed a team-worst 31.58 CF% with all three other lines above 40.00 CF%, while their xGF% of 10.62 was far and beyond the worst amongst all forward combinations. Despite just seeing 7:45 TOI, they were on ice for 1.04 xGA, which was yet another team-worst. For context, the next highest xGA was 0.48, and that was Elias Pettersson’s first line which saw 12:04 of action at even strength. Suffice it to say that this is a performance the fourth line would like to flush from their memories.

Where the first pair struggled: Zeev Buium and Filip Hronek did not look good as a pairing against New Jersey, with the former actually being on ice for the most xGA (1.82) of any Canuck last night. Together, the duo had to tackle the top 6 of the Devils and didn’t really move the needle in a positive direction. On ice for the single 5v5 goal against, Buium-Hronek only managed 38.89 CF% and 21.69 xGF%, despite actually seeing a positive skew in deployment in the offensive zone. The only solace is that the scoring chances weren’t particularly bad, sitting at an overall 3-7 hole but just a 1-2 deficit in high-danger chances. However, one would expect more out of these two in particular, considering the level of play that they’re capable of.

The Canucks didn’t look very good or very sharp against the Devils. There was a lot to be desired, and while the 5v5 play wasn’t horrible, the momentum that they gave up on the penalty kill meant that they were fighting uphill on the road for the majority of the game. It wasn’t the response that one would’ve hoped for after getting blown out by the Canes, and there were quite a few players who underperformed as well.

Vancouver gets a chance to redeem themselves tonight as they head into Madison Square Garden to face the New York Rangers.