How in the world did that game end up in overtime?

The Vancouver Canucks very much hung on for dear life, losing a 4-3 decision in overtime to the Carolina Hurricanes. They didn’t deserve to get that far though, as the ice was so tilted in favour of the home team that it wasn’t even funny. The Canucks got fortunate that Kevin Lankinen played his heart out to get them one point, and the team itself needs to play a lot better than the effort they turned in last night.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

I have genuinely never seen anything like this. The entire game was so thoroughly dominated by Carolina that the stats have to be seen to be believed. Just one glance at the Y-axis tells us how big the margin was for both Corsi and expected goals, with Vancouver never even appearing to play the same game as their opposition. At 5v5, the Canucks finished with 20.91 CF%, 8.70 HDCF%, and 17.12 xGF%. Vancouver might as well not have shown up with those share metrics, managing a paltry 0.80 total xGF at even strength. That would’ve been fine had they either played solid defence to limit the Canes, or had offset it through some special teams production. Instead, they did neither.

Again, this is genuinely unprecedented when it comes to a heat map. The sheer amount of chances that the Canes had was stupid. At 5v5 play, the margin was 44 to 9 for the home team. That’s right, Carolina had nearly five times the amount of total scoring chances at even strength play that Vancouver had. It’s just embarrassing at that point. Naturally, with such a big gap in total scoring chances, the high-danger chances were equally lopsided. The Hurricanes posted 21 high-danger chances in comparison to Vancouver’s 2. It’s hard to imagine anything going worse.

Corsi Champ: In a game where the Canucks were pulverized, Linus Karlsson led the team with a 41.18 CF%, taking advantage of his deployment against the Canes’ bottom 6 and managing to come out of it relatively unscathed. On ice for 1 goal for and 0 goals against, Karlsson tallied a 23.65 xGF% which doesn’t sound great, but was actually 7.94 xGF% rel to team average. Yes, that number was just a bit above team average, which goes to show how bad this game went for the entire team.

Corsi Chump: Kiefer Sherwood brought up the rear in the Corsi department, only managing to put up 9.09 CF% last night against the Hurricanes. It wasn’t a great game for him or his line (which we’ll get to), as the winger was on ice for 1.66 xGA to produce the third-worst xGF% of 5.01. The worst part is that Sherwood’s xGF% was still just -19.44 xGF% rel to team average, which shows how bad it really was for all skaters. He was on ice for a 1-16 hole in scoring chances, with a further 0-7 deficit in high-danger chances.

xGF: The only Canuck to break 50.00 xGF% was Tom Willander, who led the team with 57.08 to his name. This wasn’t just coming in sheltered minutes either, as the Swede was rolled up against a lot of the Hurricanes’ middle 6 as the depleted defence corps needed him to step on up. Willander was on ice for a relatively good 3-4 scoring chance battle, with just a 1-2 high-danger chance split coming during his TOI. That’s pretty darn good considering just how bad the game was as a whole for the Canucks, and low-event minutes can’t be overstated in their importance. The only Canuck to outdo Willander’s 0.39 raw xGF was Marcus Pettersson, who led the team with 0.52 xGF.

GSAx: The stats won’t reflect the kind of game Kevin Lankinen had. With how limp and pathetic the team was in front of him, the Finnish netminder was pretty much the sole reason why the Canucks even have a point to speak about in this contest. Carolina put up 4.23 xGF across all situations, meaning that Lankinen’s GSAx was just a 0.23. All four goals against were middle-danger, which did drag those numbers down a bit. But again, putting it into context with the team’s performance, Lankinen was nothing short of excellent to help Vancouver literally fight off a natural disaster.

Why are we keeping this line together: Understanding that Vancouver’s injury problems make it difficult to adjust the lineup too much, it’s still frustrating to see Adam Foote insist on icing Kiefer Sherwood, Lukas Reichel, and Brock Boeser together on a line. They’ve struggled mightily in the analytics department, and it’s nerfing two of the only offensive threats that the Canucks have in their lineup. Together, the trio had a team-low 6.25 CF%, 0.69 xGF%, giving up 8 scoring chances and 4 high-danger chances with absolutely nothing else going the Canucks’ way. Simply put, they were terrible together, and that hasn’t been isolated to just this contest as well. Boeser and Sherwood were the two worst skaters last night, according to the analytics, and a big reason is the type of deployment that they’ve been put out there for. This line needed to be broken up yesterday.

Makeshift top pairing: The stats from Elias Pettersson and Filip Hronek partnering up together were a little amusing, if it wasn’t so sadly reflective of the Canucks’ injury status right now. The two of them were horrifically shelled just like the rest of the team, racking up 9.30 CF% and 8.54 xGF%, giving up a 2-19 hole in total scoring chances and 1-9 deficit in high-danger chances. Again, it’s the byproduct of a rough game from the entire roster, but their stats certainly weren’t encouraging either. Hopefully Hronek won’t be out for long either as he exited the game on concussion spotter’s watch.

These numbers would actually be funny if they weren’t so sad. The Canucks got ragdolled against the Hurricanes and the score should’ve been so much worse than it was. As it stands, the loser point was more than what they could’ve asked for out of this contest, and getting some good contributions from their 1C in Elias Pettersson is a miniscule positive in this bleak time. But, it’s also discouraging to watch this team flounder, especially with the injuries and discourse surrounding this group. It’s hard to see just how this can get better at this point.

Vancouver travels down the East Coast, taking on the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday.