A heartbreaking ending after clawing for the overtime point.

The Vancouver Canucks lost 4-3 in overtime against the St. Louis Blues. There was plenty of action on the scoreboard with a clutch Brock Boeser clap bomb that sent this game into the extra frame. But taking this game into context away from the goals, and the stats shows a pretty low-key affair. Neither team really managed to get all that much going in expected goals or scoring chances, with the players capitalizing against how the probabilities were going for the majority of the night.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

The game flow definitely favoured the Blues for the entirety of the night, but looking at the Y-axis, it’s apparent that the raw values weren’t anything mind-blowing. St. Louis had a 64.71 CF% and 89.56 xGF% advantage in the first period, but that xGF% was a result of the 0.56-0.06 xGF split against the Canucks. In other words, it was Vancouver’s inability to generate expected goals that really made the share metrics skew in St. Louis’ favour. That would be a common theme throughout last night, as Vancouver would record the best xGF in a single period by any team with a 0.81 in the second. Besides that, neither team could really get a ton of quality looks, which we’ll dive into in the next section.

Just from the first glance at the heat map, it’s apparent that both teams struggled to do much of anything at 5v5. While the overall scoring chances were 21-19 for the Blues, that margin shrunk to 7-3 high-danger chances for the home team. Yup, at 5v5, both teams totaled 10 HDCF. As a result, Vancouver didn’t have a hot spot in the slot area, while if you squint, you can make one out for St. Louis. The goals appeared to come despite what the teams were generating overall, which was basically scoring against the probabilities that they were creating.

Corsi Champ: Kiefer Sherwood continues to cement himself as an invaluable depth piece for this Canucks group. Leading the team with a 63.33 CF%, the winger managed to split 5-5 scoring chances during his ice time while only giving up 1 high-danger chance against. Sherwood got the scoring going for Vancouver when things weren’t quite going their way and also tied the NHL record for hits in a single season with 10 hits last night. Talk about making your impact felt.

Corsi Chump: It’s the second consecutive game that Elias Petterson the defenceman has floundered a little at 5v5. Bringing up the rear of the team with a 15.38 CF%, the defenceman’s stats didn’t get much better as he went on to record team-low 0.02 xGF and 5.57 xGF%, sitting comfortably at -40.20 xGF% rel to team average. Pettersson wasn’t iced against anyone particularly difficult to play against, but considering how low-event this game was statistically, it was hard to dig himself out of this statistical hole.

xGF: For the second game in a row, Filip Hronek was separated from Quinn Hughes. Against the Blues, it was the Czech defender leading the Canucks in xGF% at 49.64. Again, he’s below the even 50% threshold, but that xGF% number was still 13.83 xGF% rel to team average. Hronek found himself lined up next to Marcus Pettersson and finished with an even 9-9 split in scoring chances, with the high-danger chances standing at 1-2 for the Blues. Not bad, all things considered, and certainly helps the Canucks even out their pairings just that much more. Raw xGF saw Hughes lead the team with a 0.69, showing just how difficult it was to accumulate expected goals last night.

GSAx: As a result of neither team managing to get anything going on the expected goals front, Kevin Lankinen’s metrics suffered a lot. St. Louis only racked up 1.85 xGF across all situations last night, and with 4 goals against, the netminder tallied a -2.15 GSAx on the night. Two of the goals came off high-danger shots, while the other two were split evenly from middle-danger and low-danger. It wasn’t the best performance from Lankinen between the pipes, and he was just marginally beaten out by Jordan Binnington’s -1.76 GSAx.

Pettersson vs Thomas: Last night, the Blues opted to match Robert Thomas up against Elias Pettersson the forward. This was along with the likes of Justin Faulk and Philip Broberg backing the Blues forward up. For Vancouver’s top centerman, he still got his licks in, managing to wrestle CF% shares above 50 against all of these opponents, while also generating 46.61 xGF% against Thomas. While Petey was out there for 1 high-danger chance against at 5v5 without a single HDCF, the forward was basically neutralizing St. Louis’ top defence pairing and one of their best lines. Plus, Pettersson made them look like absolute fools when setting up Boeser for the game-tying goal. That Hoglander-Pettersson-Boeser line looks to be dynamite so far.

The share metrics suggest that the Canucks should’ve lost this game. The raw numbers suggest it should’ve been a lot more low-scoring. But regardless, it was an entertaining ending that saw the Canucks fight back to secure a pretty massive loser point in the playoff race for that last wildcard spot. The only downside to losing to the Blues specifically is that they’re directly involved in that postseason picture for the Canucks, and Vancouver now has to play some really good hockey in this stretch run to the end of the year. But, with their best players finally playing like some of their best players… perhaps things won’t end in early April.

Vancouver heads into New York for a matinee matchup against JT Miller and the Rangers on Saturday.