Ducks fly together?
The Vancouver Canucks blew a 2-0 lead to the Anaheim Ducks, wasting Tyler Myers’ efforts to lose 5-2 on the road. That score was just as disappointing as the rest of the game, the Canucks’ best players not playing up to standard and simply letting the win slip from their grasp. There was no urgency, no desire, as Anaheim just wanted this game, this result more than Vancouver. And that’s just generally unacceptable when it comes to an NHL-calibre contest.
Here’s the loss, by the numbers.
As always, you can find our glossary guide of advanced stats here.

Game Flow

The first period was promising enough. Vancouver played well, getting themselves up 2-0 off the backs of an early penalty kill. They would finish the opening frame with a 54.17 CF% and 62.16 xGF% share, putting up a 0.63 xGF in the period alone. But after racking up three high-danger scoring chances in the first, the Canucks would go on to record just two more combined in the second and third. Their feet didn’t just come off the gas pedal – they left the vehicle entirely. Vancouver would only be able to accumulate 0.75 xGF for the rest of the game, Anaheim taking a massive 59.08 and 73.19 xGF% shares in the second and third respectively to put a stranglehold on the game. The third is particularly alarming, as though it should’ve been the Canucks pushing to get back into this game, they looked limp while the Ducks ran circles around them.

Heat Map

The heat map flatters the Canucks a bit, but make no mistake – Vancouver is not a good offensive chance generating team. That’s probably not a revolutionary fact, but between the Kings game and the Ducks game, they’ve combined for a total of 7 high-danger chances at 5v5 play. Last night, it wasn’t high-event hockey, with Anaheim racking up a limited 18-15 lead in scoring chances. However, whereas they managed 9 high-danger chances at even strength, the Canucks only had 5 with the large chunk of them coming in the first period. Vancouver would also only manage to create a single high-danger chance on the man-advantage as well. Simply put, it isn’t good, and it’s a pattern that’s been going on since the start of the year.

Individual Advanced Stats

Corsi Champ: Filip Chytil is outplaying Elias Pettersson (though that isn’t exactly a high bar) to be Vancouver’s de facto 1C. Problem is, if Chytil is a team’s 1C, things probably aren’t going great. The Czech racked up a team-best 70.00 CF%, standing at 27.81 CF% rel to team average. Slotting between Conor Garland and Dakota Joshua, Chytil was mostly playing against the likes of Leo Carlsson and Mason McTavish, doing a fine job in getting chances towards the net compared to the rest of the team. Problem was, he didn’t make one of them pay, but at least he was doing something productive.
Corsi Chump: And here’s why Chytil is the 1C, as Elias Pettersson brings up the rear in the Corsi department. His 21.05 CF% was pretty rough, a full -35.87 CF% rel to team average. That translated into the second-worst xGF% on the night with 29.39, on ice for the 4th-most xGA (0.67) while managing to post the 4th-worst xGF of 0.28. While Pettersson was on the ice, the Canucks were outchanced 1-5 with a 1-3 difference in high-danger chances. That is not good, especially when you’re supposed to be the team’s best offensive forward option. Now, the deployment for Pettersson was also not the kindest – he wasn’t given a single shift start in the offensive zone, and only 12.50% of his faceoff starts were in the o-zone as well.
xGF: Hey look, it’s Chytil again. Thanks to posting a team-best 0.11 xGA, his 79.70 xGF% stood as the team’s high mark. Chytil was on ice for a 5-2 scoring chance advantage with a 3-1 high-danger chance edge too, meaning that 60% of the Canucks’ high-danger chances came while he was on the ice. Great for him, but the team needed to be a lot better outside of his contributions. Raw xGF saw Quinn Hughes lead the team with a 0.73 xGF, which wasn’t bad given the context of the team, but certainly not good enough to win this game.
GSAx: This is what can happen when you don’t take advantage of good goalie performances, because Arturs Silovs did not have his best outing against the Ducks. Last night, against 2.25 xGF, he gave up 4 goals to finish with a -1.75 GSAx. That’s not ideal by any means, and while he wasn’t the sole reason why the Canucks lost, the Latvian netminder didn’t do anything to help this team either. The goals were distributed as 1 high-danger, 1 middle-danger, and 2 low-danger, which also isn’t the best either. Unforunately for Vancouver, there was no goalie performance that could give them a chance to steal this result.

Statistical Musings

So how bad was it actually?: From the numbers, Pettersson did not have a good night, and the line that he featured on with Nils Hoglander and Jake DeBrusk simply added fuel on top of that tirefire. The trio finished with a team-low 11.11 CF% despite playing the second-most minutes of any forward line at 5v5 (marginally too – it was 3 seconds away from the top line’s 7:10). They were on ice for 5 shots against with 0 shots for, sitting at a 38.45 xGF% and a 1-3 deficit in scoring chances. Of course, their deployment exclusively in the defensive zone probably didn’t help matters there, but the point remains that for two top 6 forwards, they were remarkably below average all of last night.

As a team

CF% – 48.08% HDCF% – 37.50% xGF% – 41.58%
The Canucks were once again not good enough to win a hockey game. Unlike in the Kings contest though, the Canucks didn’t have the goaltending to be able to steal a point, much less two, last night. It’s especially disappointing given how decent they looked in the first, jumping out to a 2-0 lead. But for whatever reason the team sat back, let Anaheim get their foothold back int the game, and never pushed back. With their top forwards underperforming, there’s only so much a player like Hughes can do to try and even things out. It didn’t work out that way last night.
Vancouver travels up the I-5 to Seattle to play the Kraken on Saturday.
Stats provided by naturalstattrick.com
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