The Vancouver Canucks were up against one yesterday when they took on the Seattle Kraken without their top two leading scorers, Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson.

The team came out with an impressive 4-1 lead, playing the low-event Rick Tocchet hockey he likes to play, as the shots were 23-20 before the monumental collapse. It was like you blinked, suffered through a couple of defensive blunders in the defensive zone and poof, we’re off to overtime.

Tocchet met with the media after the game and discussed what went wrong for the Canucks yesterday afternoon:

“We needed a couple of composure plays; we didn’t get them. I’m sure some of the guys feel bad. But we did a lot of good things – 4-1 lead.

“You’ve got to protect the guts of the ice. We had a couple of guys, if we get to the middle the puck gets pushed away. The guts of the ice was wide open, they get a rebound goal. Can’t happen.”

Despite the obvious disappointment of letting that big of a lead slip away with that little time left in regulation, Tocchet wasn’t willing to completely throw away that game plan:

“Like I said, 4-1 game, you’re feeling good about yourself and then, bing-bang. Three plays, four plays, they’re execution. We have a 3-on-1 in the other end, and we don’t execute them. They’re execution plays. You can’t throw everything out in the water because I thought, for the most part, the team played well.

“We were in good control. I don’t know if it’s the three days off. I don’t know. But we were good to that point in those five minutes. You could look at every goal where we had the puck and could have executed a play. Even when we had the puck twice with the empty net, I thought a couple of guys could have skated a little longer rather than throwing it up the middle. They’re just execution plays.”

Well, we thought we could dive into that third period collapse and see exactly what some of these failed execution plays are and break them down for you.

It honestly just looked like two different teams playing the first 55 minutes and the last five minutes because the shift before the five-minute mark, Vancouver’s fourth line was cycling the play in the Kraken end, generating offence. But as soon as Daniel Sprong, of all players, skates the puck out of his own end and carries play up the ice – where was that in Vancouver? – there was some sort of switch into full defence mode for the club.

On that ensuing Sprong rush, he gets two shot attempts off that both miss the net. The play goes back to Vince Dunn at the point, and honestly, the team’s defensive positioning is pretty perfect. Everybody is in the proper position, right beside their check, while limiting the space for the puck carrier at the point. See below:

Schwartz is Soucy’s check, but he was right in between him and the net, which is where he was supposed to be. Soucy has his stick positioned to block the pass to the streaming forward coming from the point through the slot. At the goal line, it’s not expected that Schwartz is going to shoot this puck. But he sends it toward the net, and it goes off Noah Juulsen’s rear end and past Thatcher Demko.

Here’s what Tocchet had to say in regards to that goal:

“Well, he’s got to box out Sprong. And if not, he’s got to get out of the blue. Bad things happen when a defenceman stays in the crease. You’ve got to get out. But he should have boxed out earlier. He stayed in the blue, and that’s what happens when you throw pucks on net.”

Here is a closer look at that net from play from Juulsen:

After the goal, Tocchet sends out his top line of Jake DeBrusk-JT Miller-Brock Boeser. They do a great job of clogging up the neutral zone and eventually turning the puck over.

But you’ve got to tip your hat to DeBrusk’s effort on this forecheck.

Please bear with me on these next two clips; there really isn’t much great to talk about during this late collapse. I’ve got to point out the few good parts there truly were.

And that is followed up by a solid shift from the Nils Höglander-Pius Suter-Conor Garland line:

The trio does a great job of killing time in the offensive zone but also generates some scoring chances. It was a great forechecking shift from Höglander, plus he had a sweet backhand feed from behind the net to Suter in the slot.

After that shift, the Kraken would get some offensive zone time and pull their goalie. The Canucks did a good job at limiting their pressure to the outside for two shifts. They even had an opportunity after a nice play to set up Derek Forbort with open space to feed Kiefer Sherwood for a rush chance the other way with an open net. However, Sherwood had most of his space limited by two backchecking Kraken forwards and the pass to Danton Heinen was intercepted.

Yet another opportunity for the Canucks to give themselves a three-goal lead and officially ice the game missed here in this clip.

It starts with a routine play turned near disaster as Tyler Myers is clear and away the first player back, but he gets the puck caught in his skates. Thankfully, Miller has a strong enough stick to poke it around to Boeser. The defenceman pinches, but Boeser is still able to send a short pass to clear the zone. DeBrusk wacks at the puck just over the centre ice line and just barely misses, hitting the outside of the post.

And this is where is all turns.

After a dump-in by the Kraken, Demko comes out of his net to play the puck and send a soft pass to Juulsen. And from there, it’s all confusing. He has DeBrusk heading up ice and available for an outlet pass, or he has Miller along the boards if he moves it right away. However, Juulsen looks to skate into the boards and get himself in a position where none of those options are available anymore.

So what does he do instead? Send a weak pass through the slot. With two Kraken forwards coming for that loose puck, Soucy has to make a quick play to get it on and off his stick and out of danger. However, he fans on the puck; it goes into Dunn’s equipment, and he fires it past Demko.

Here’s what Tocchet had to say regarding this goal:

“It’s an execution play. It’s a breakout. You hit the pocket. Even when we made the mistake, same thing. I think Soucy had it, it’s got to be a hard play, whatever he does, and he kind of flipped it [and] the guy knocked it down. These are execution plays. I’m sure the guys are upset and pissed about it. You know, you have to execute.”

And here we go.

The Kraken dump the puck and ring the puck around the boards. Derek Forbort is the first player on it, and he goes to skate with the puck protected on his stick, but it gets lost along the boards. The Kraken get to the loose puck first, and Suter does a great job of lifting his stick and using his weight to pin him along the boards and now is facing the puck.

However, in doing so, the Kraken player now ties up Suter’s stick, and the puck squirts out toward the faceoff dot for Schwartz to grab. This is the point where Joshua should have gone in to help Suter in the corner so he doesn’t get burned by Schwartz as he did.

The Canucks do a good job of swarming Schwartz, but with the speed he gained, it’s too late, as he’s able to dart through the coverage and gets a weak shot on target. He follows through and is able to grab the rebound and pot it past Demko to tie the game.

It was a full defensive blunder. What happens if Forbort maintains control and dumps the puck? What happens if Suter doesn’t have his stick tied up and he can make an outlet pass? What happens if Joshua doesn’t get caught puck-watching and helps Suter along the boards to grab the puck that leaks out? What happens if Myers steps up on Schwartz as he’s darting in?

There are so many what-ifs.

We head to overtime, where it was just one mistake after another. It just seemed like all the confidence was sucked out of the Canucks’ sails. They didn’t look relatively fast; they had opportunities to maintain possession, which is the most important thing in overtime, but they couldn’t connect on passes and just decided to sit back and defend.

That was until Myers made a nice check on Chandler Stephenson and sprung himself on a neutral zone breakaway. I say neutral zone breakaway because, well, that’s all it was. Shane Wright managed to catch up to Myers by the time he entered the offensive zone.

In what was now a 3-on-1, Myers tried to confuse the rookie Shane Wright by turning his back to him, pulling him away from the Boeser and Miller entering the zone. However, all that does is force him into making a spinning pass right up the middle, way ahead of Boeser and way behind Miller.

Now, the Kraken have a 2-on-0 going the other way in overtime, and Dunn makes no mistake to complete Seattle’s comeback.

There was more than just one poor play that led to the Canucks loss. But that Myers play was just the icing on the cake.

And look, I get it. It happens all the time to players when they have two passing options; they can’t decide which to pass to, and they send it in between the two options, and nobody comes up with the puck. But that could have been avoided had he just slowed down, opened up his stance, and waited for one of Boeser or Miller instead of spending a low percentage spinning pass to nobody.

The Canucks won’t have to wait too long to get their revenge, as they’ll have their shot to right this wrong on Thursday, January 2nd when they travel to Seattle.