A winless road trip.

The Vancouver Canucks struck early, but couldn’t manage to stem the tide for too long as the Tampa Bay Lightning eventually claimed this one 4-2 in regulation. The home team absolutely deserved to win this one, and the Canucks just didn’t have an answer for anything the Bolts threw at them. With this result, the Canucks only managed to claim a single point on the road for this entire 6-game road trip. Great for the tank, if nothing else.

Here’s the loss, by the numbers.

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

The game flow really shows everything it needed to show. Tampa had full control of this game and especially at even strength, where the CF% and xGF% trend lines never left their favour. Vancouver’s best period territorially was the third, coming in at a 48.15 CF%, but also saw them post the worst xGF% of the game at 22.16. Vancouver never managed to break 40.00 xGF% either, the closest they came being in the first period at 39.25 xGF%. It just wasn’t a great game from top to bottom for the Canucks, and with the large majority of this game being played at even strength, it meant that they were on the back foot more often than not.

The heat map is what one would expect from the eye-test as well. Tampa had a 31-20 lead in overall chances and a 16-7 high-danger chance lead as well, with their hot spot being larger and established while the Canucks barely have anything of their own. It wasn’t terrible for the first two periods, where the Canucks got out-high-danger-chanced 6-3 and 6-4 in the first and second, respectively. However, the third was where Vancouver got blanked 4-0 to really pad that statistical lead Tampa had. Not great at 5v5 play, to say the least.

Corsi Champ: If there was one silver lining, it was seeing Zeev Buium putting in some great stats in the loss. Coming in with a team-best 61.29 CF%, the defenceman was paired up with Victor Mancini and fared pretty well for himself across the board. On ice for a goal for and 0 goals against, Buium recorded the third-best xGF on the team at 0.98 and the fourth-best xGF% of 62.80. The only caveat to all of this is the fact that Buium was primarily put on ice against the bottom of Tampa’s lineup, along with the fact that he saw 100% of his shift starts in the offensive zone and 66.67% of his faceoff starts there as well. So, the numbers are a little juiced from that, but it’s better than the other results that Buium put up in the early part of the year.

Corsi Chump: Tom Willander’s reward for playing well to start the season? Paired up with Jamie Oleksiak and tossed out there for matchup duties against the Lightning’s top players. The Swede recorded a team-low 28.57 CF%, outshot 2-8 and outchanced 4-13 in his 19:01 TOI. While posting the third-worst xGA of 1.21 might sound rough, consider this – Willander didn’t give up a single goal against during even-strength play. That’s pretty darn impressive considering the quality of competition, and especially when taking into consideration that the Pettersson-Hronek pairing was on ice for all three goals against.

xGF: Victor Mancini profited alongside Zeev Buium last night, tallying the team’s best xGF% of 70.84 off the back of a team-best 0.34 xGA. The defenceman was on ice for a 7-2 lead in scoring chances and 4-1 high-danger chance edge, which makes sense given his opposition and deployment. In terms of raw xGF, Max Sasson came in at a 1.04 xGF, on ice for the most HDCF of any Canuck skater at 6. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to convert that into anything tangible on the scoresheet.

GSAx: Kevin Lankinen had a relatively strong bounce-back performance compared to his previous outings. Facing a 3.52 xGF from the Lightning yesterday, the Finn gave up 2 high-danger goals, a middle-danger goal, and a low-danger goal for a -0.48 GSAx. Again, it’s not the best thing in the whole world to end up in the negatives, but considering just how porous Lankinen has been to start the season, this performance was a welcome respite.

Top Pair Troubles: It’s tough to play against Nikita Kucherov, and the Elias Pettersson – Filip Hronek pairing had to bear the brunt of that last night against Tampa. The duo were the best option that Vancouver had to offer against one of the best players in the league, and the advanced stats paint a picture of a pairing that was simply overwhelmed. Together, they held a decent enough 35.71 CF%, but gave up a 4-14 deficit in shots for a 1.38 xGA and 24.16 xGF%. All three of Tampa’s 5v5 goals were scored against this pairing, off 7 HDCA with Pettersson-Hronek on the ice. Again, the blame doesn’t solely rest on their shoulders, but they just couldn’t match up well against the Lightning’s biggest guns.

Lekkerimäki’s worst game of the year: One of the storylines so far to start the season has been Jonathan Lekkerimäki stepping up at a critical juncture to cement himself in the NHL. Against Tampa though, the Swede was putting up some rough statistics due to how the Lightning shut down Vancouver’s top unit. Lekkerimäki actually finished with a team-worst 9.07 xGF% to his name, on ice for two goals against and a 2-8 hole in overall scoring chances. It’s a blip and considering the opposition, it is reasonable. Hopefully though, Lekkerimäki can bounce back from this performance and especially after coming home from this long road trip.

The Canucks got outplayed last night, and the fact that the scoreboard was so close is more a credit to Lankinen than it is to the entire team. At least they didn’t get blown out, but the quality of play just wasn’t quite there for the Canucks. It is the end of a long road trip, and with how many times this team’s legs have given up on them in the third, this performance simply reinforced that trend. Hopefully they can snap this losing skid at home.

Vancouver does manage to get some rest before hosting the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night.