We’re almost there.

The Vancouver Canucks dropped a 2-1 decision to the Vegas Golden Knights. In all honesty, according to the eye test and the numbers, they probably deserved to lose by more. Without an excellent goaltending performance by Nikita Tolopilo, the scoreboard would’ve gotten pretty darn ugly, with the underlying numbers not at all fun to look at from this one.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

It was almost comedic how one-sided this game was. There was only one period where the Canucks were over 40.00 CF%, and that was the second, with a meagre 40.54 CF% to their name. The rest of the time, Vancouver was hovering around 30.00 CF%, posting a 32.35 CF% in the first and 31.82 CF% in the third. Naturally, possession numbers like those don’t lend very kindly to the expected goals margins that a team would want when trying to win games, and of course, the Canucks’ were not good at all. They had a 13.86 xGF% in the first, 39.35 xGF% in the second, and 22.84 xGF% in the third, all the while getting out-chanced heavily through each and every category across every period. Again, it’s a suprise that this game finished 2-1, and even more surprising that the Canucks managed to strike first with how bad the numbers were.

The heat map is a pretty good visualization of how bad things were going for the Canucks last night. Yes, they were outshot 28-11, which isn’t ideal no matter how you cut it, but the 5v5 scoring chances were also not pretty as well. They were doubled up on by the Golden Knights by a 28-14 margin, and were tripled up on in high-danger chances at 13-4. It’s just not good hockey at both ends of the ice, and while you could argue that Vegas should’ve made Vancouver pay more, the numbers relative to each other simply were not good enough from the Canucks perspective.

Corsi Champ: Elias Pettersson was at least trying to make a difference here. Leading the Canucks with a 48.00 CF%, his Corsi number was a 17.12 CF% rel to team average to show just how rough it was for the entire team as a whole. To give more context to this though, Pettersson was going head to head against Eichel’s line the entire time, so the fact that he paced the Canucks in Corsi shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially in a game where they were statistically dominated.

Corsi Chump: On the flip side, Marco Rossi and the BRO line had a rough go of things against Mitch Marner and company. Rossi recorded a team-worst 24.14 CF%, on ice for a 1-10 shot hole with a goal against. It could’ve been worse though, as Rossi also managed a 0.92 xGF% – that’s right, less than 1% of the expected goals share during his TOI. That’s a result of a team-low 0.02 xGF and 3rd-worst 1.75 xGA, with Rossi being out-chanced 1-13 and in a 0-6 high-danger chance hole. Simply put, it wasn’t a good game for him statistically.

xGF: Pettersson led the Canucks in this category too, posting a 54.96 xGF% on the night for a 39.89 xGF% rel to team average. The fact that he was this far ahead relative to team average goes to show what a struggle it was for the rest of the roster to get any of the share metrics going the Canucks’ way. Pettersson managed to hold a 5-3 lead in scoring chances and a 2-2 split in high-danger chances, which is pretty darn good given how bad the raw numbers were for Vancouver. Unfortunately, despite doing plenty of good things from the numbers, the lack of production still haunts Pettersson’s game from last night. His 0.8 xGF was the third best on the team, topped by Filip Hronek’s team-high 0.97 xGF.

GSAx: Nikita Tolopilo was balling out last night. He had to stand on his head given how bad the Canucks were around him, Vegas managing to pile on 3.74 xGF during his TOI. Turning away all but 1 middle-danger chance and 1 low-danger chance, the Belarusian netminder finished with a 1.74 GSAx, sparkling when he needed to be. Tolopilo was pretty much the only player Vancouver had that turned up consistently, and the only reason why it wasn’t a complete blowout for the Golden Knights.

This game was rough. There were little to no redeeming qualities when it came to the contents of the contest, the Canucks getting played off of their own home ice once again, and just being putrid in nearly every sense and regard. Again, if it wasn’t for Tolopilo’s excellent efforts, the final score would probably have been a lot worse. At the very least, there aren’t too many more of these games left to be watching.

Vancouver heads on the road, taking on the Los Angeles Kings tomorrow night.