The NHL record for most overtime losses in a season is 18.

The Vancouver Canucks dropped a 2-1 overtime decision to the Washington Capitals on Wednesday night. At the very least, they didn’t blow a third period lead, and looked marginally better than they did against the Habs. Vancouver was able to get good looks, running into a good goalie in Logan Thompson who pretty much didn’t put a foot wrong all game. Sometimes, that happens, and there’s not much more that a team can do.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

The Caps came out strong on their home ice, riding a good wave of their own Corsi and expected goals in the first period to score the opening tally of the game. After that, the Canucks were able to seize the initiative of the game. Vancouver would record a 59.09 CF% and 71.81 xGF% in the middle frame, totaling a huge 2.67 xGF while getting 9 high-danger chances at 5v5. The third was similar on the share metrics side, with the Canucks splitting the CF% 50-50 but getting a 73.37 xGF%, though the raw numbers weren’t as massive as those in the second period. However, they were unable to capitalize on that, and overtime was enough for Washington to secure the overtime winner.

It was yet another game where the Canucks got out-chanced by the opposition – BUT, this time it wasn’t as bad, and Vancouver had a good proportion of their own scoring chances being high-danger. Overall, Washington had a 26-20 edge in scoring chances and 14-12 lead in high-danger chances. If you’re the Canucks, that ratio of high-danger chances among their scoring chances is pretty good, especially given the struggles to get those grade-A looks. A large reason why the Canucks found themselves in this hole is thanks to the Capitals grabbing a 7-0 lead in high-danger chances in the opening period alone. For the Canucks, they were able to tighten it up the rest of the way, which should be encouraging.

Corsi Champ: Who else but Quinn Hughes? The Canucks captain was dragging the team into the fight in more ways than one, racking up a nice 69.05 CF% to lead the team. While he was on ice for a goal against, Hughes was also responsible for an 18-6 shot advantage for the Canucks. Hughes had a very nice 69.00 xGF% to boot as well, coming with a team-high 2.29 xGF while managing an 8-5 high-danger chance advantage too. It was unfortunate that there wasn’t any tangible offence that came from him, but Hughes was doing plenty of things right in this one.

Corsi Chump: Teddy Blueger had a rougher game compared to most of his teammates. Posting a team-worst 27.27 CF%, the Latvian forward also had the second-worst xGF% of 30.95 and xGF of 0.23, while being on ice for 6 high-danger chances against without a single high-danger chance for. There weren’t too many signs pointing to him being iced in a matchup role either, splitting time decently evenly throughout the Washington lineup while having most of his shift starts come on the fly.

xGF: Nils Höglander had a positive game. He led the team with an 87.14 xGF%, due in large part to his second-best xGA of 0.14 and the 0.94 xGF the Swede posted. Höglander was only on ice for a single high-danger chance against while seeing 4 going the other way. The only downside to all of this is that Höglander once again couldn’t find the scoresheet, the points coming few and far between for him.

GSAx: Kevin Lankinen played better against the Capitals. He faced down a 3.09 xGF that Washington produced, managing to turn aside enough to finish the game with a 1.09 GSAx. Both of the goals against were also high-danger, meaning that they had the highest likelihood of becoming goals anyways. In terms of percentages, the Finn didn’t really do anything that was too egregiously bad, and gave the Canucks a more than solid performance between the pipes. Unfortunately, Thompson just out-dueled Lankinen last night.

Where the Canucks had three actual lines: It’s been a rarity this year for the Canucks to have multiple lines going at once, and yet against the Captials, Vancouver was able to have three lines that were actually generating some offence. Starting with the Lekkerimaki-Miller-Boeser unit, the trio led the way for all Canuck forward lines with a 0.92 xGF, getting a bundle of scoring chances to try and make things happen. They were followed up by DeBrusk-Suter-Garland, who racked up 0.82 xGF and a 4-1 high-danger chance differential. To round things out, Höglander-Sasson-PDG posted a 0.70 xGF along with the team’s best xGF% of 84.96. It was a really good night when it came to getting three lines rolling and creating chances – unfortunately, none of them were able to make good of it at even strength to put the Canucks over the top.

The merry-go-round of the defence: Trying to find a fit on the back end is like playing whack-a-mole. Sometimes things go great, other times they’re just brutal. The duality of this was seen in Noah Juulsen last night, who split his time equally between Carson Soucy and Derek Forbort. There was no question that Juulsen was the Canucks’ worst defenceman by the numbers last night, but the split between Soucy and Forbot was interesting. Soucy-Juulsen recorded a 16.67 CF% and 15.53 xGF%, while Forbort-Juulsen generated 66.67 CF% and 89.74 xGF%. This was probably due to Juulsen getting moved out of a top 4 role and into something much more manageable with Forbort, keeping things low even and generally doing well in more fitting duties. Meanwhile, with Soucy paired up with Vincent Desharnais, this xGF% rose up to 73.99. There shouldn’t be too many conclusions drawn from all of this – however, it shows just what a crapshoot the back end is, especially without a consistent top 4 option to round things out.

The Canucks were better than they were against Montreal. It’s progress in the right direction. However, the result was still disappointing, especially given that they had their chances to win. Sometimes that’s just how it goes, especially when Logan Thompson turns in a performance like the one that he had last night. There were positives to take away, but the fact remains that the Canucks need to figure out what their back end looks like aside from Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek once the Czech defender returns. Otherwise, they could be stuck spinning their wheels once more.

Vancouver is back in action tomorrow, taking on the Carolina Hurricanes as their next stop on the road trip.