The Vancouver Canucks are coming off a truly terrible homestand but it really seemed like they were heading in the right direction towards the end of it.
They had a great game against the Dallas Stars, with the power play propelling them to a 6-3 win. They were the better team against the Anaheim Ducks, even if they lost in overtime. Even the previous two games provided some hope. They were solid at 5-on-5 against the Nashville Predators and only lost because of special teams. Against the New York Rangers, they mounted a stirring third period comeback to win in overtime.
So, even with a below .500 record, there was reason to be optimistic as the Canucks headed out on the road. Those were games the Canucks could build on to help them turn the corner on the season.
Instead, they were absolutely atrocious against the Colorado Avalanche.
There’s no sugarcoating it: the Canucks stunk on ice, wallowing to a 7-1 loss. They were putrid, rancid, and fetid. To paraphrase Roger Ebert’s review of “Freddy Got Fingered,” the Canucks didn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. The Canucks don’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.
It was a bad game and they should feel bad.
They do, of course.
“We should be embarrassed,” said Bo Horvat. “We obviously didn’t come to play tonight and it definitely showed out there. They outworked us, outplayed us, and it’s unacceptable and we can’t let that happen again.”
Horvat called out the team’s lack of effort in the first period and when it was suggested the team rolled over, he didn’t disagree.
“We’ve shown in the past where we’ve been resilient and not rolled over. Tonight, we just — I don’t know. I don’t know what happened,” said Horvat.
Tanner Pearson gave the team’s start an evocative description, suggesting they tip-toed into the game. That sounds about right. It wasn’t just that the Canucks gave up three goals in the first period, it’s that they gave up three goals before they even got two shots. The Avalanche steamrolled the Canucks like, well, an avalanche.
“Maybe we thought we were playing good hockey and it could be easy,” said Pearson. “If you think it’s gonna be easy, you’re gonna get one handed to you.”
It's not like the Avalanche have been an unstoppable powerhouse this season. While they were labeled a Stanley Cup contender, they were 4-5-1 heading into Thursday — a worse points percentage than the Canucks. They were also missing their best player, Nathan MacKinnon, who is expected to miss three weeks with a lower body injury.
But the Avalanche came out on Thursday like the Cup contenders everyone expected them to be, while the Canucks came out like a wet dishrag.
“That’s not Canuck hockey, it’s not the way we want to play,” said Horvat. “This has to be a one-off.”
Bouncing back from this kind of loss is easier said than done. Sometimes, a big loss can be a catalyst for change, as it wakes up a team and helps them realize what’s going wrong and what they can do better. A key turning point for the Canucks’ 2010-11 season was a 7-1 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks in November. They went 44-13-6 the rest of the season after that brutal loss.
Other times, an ugly loss just crushes a team and they struggle to recover. What the Canucks do next will say a lot.
“It should fire us up to play better and to be better our next game,” said Horvat, adding later, “I think we are still a good team and we have good hockey players in that room that know that this wasn’t good enough and that we have to come and respond in Vegas and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The question is, what do you do with the game against the Avalanche? Do you toss it in the trash and start fresh or do you need to dig deep into the game to figure out what went wrong? It’s clear what camp Pearson is in.
“I think you've got to toss this one, to be honest. I don't think there's a whole lot to learn from it,” said Pearson. “It's pretty evident. So I'll be honest, I'd rather throw that one out than re-look at it.”
Pearson likely won’t get his wish.
“We’re never a group that just burns the tape,” said head coach Travis Green. “I think there’s something to learn from every game and we’ve got a lot of guys that need to show their character next game and respond with a much better effort, that’s for sure.”
I wish I had a tape to burn, but all I can do is delete it from my PVR after I watched this game.
- Old-school PITB readers may recall a tag that we used on posts called “Everyone sucked tonight.” This would have been a good game to use that tag.
- I mean, Nils Höglander played well. I thought Quinn Hughes played okay. Brock Boeser, Tanner Pearson, and Bo Horvat had their moments, I guess. I’m grasping at straws to find something positive to say, to be honest.
- Green certainly didn't pull any punches after the loss. When asked if he was more concerned about. the team's performance in the first or the second period, Green bluntly said, "We weren't good in the third either."
- Thatcher Demko gave up 6 goals on 26 shots and he didn’t even seem that bad. It goes to show that when Demko isn’t making miraculous saves, the Canucks might be in trouble.
- “It’s completely not his fault. He’s been a stud for us all year,” said Horvat of Demko. “He deserves better from us.”
- It started with a goal against on the power play, which is unsurprising given the Canucks’ league-worst penalty kill. On an Avalanche zone entry, the Canucks’ structure fell apart, giving Nazem Kadri a point-blank chance. Demko robbed him but the rebound popped out to Valeri Nichushkin, who had inside position on Jason Dickinson to score into the open net.
- The Canucks had a power play themselves to reply. They didn’t get a single shot on goal. Then the Avalanche hemmed in the Canucks’ fourth line in the defensive zone. In the chaos, Oliver Ekman-Larsson lost Gabriel Landeskog at the backdoor easier than my son loses his glasses. Like me looking in the most obvious possible place, Cale Makar found Landeskog, giving the Avalanche captain a tap-in.
- Elias Pettersson didn’t have a single shot on goal in this game. What he did have, however, was an egregious turnover in the defensive zone for the 3-0 goal. Bowen Byram caught Pettersson off-guard and knocked the puck off his stick just inside the Canucks’ blue line and Mikko Rantanen turned on the puck like Olly turned on Jon Snow, stabbing it past Demko.
- Second verse, same as the first. The Avalanche made it 4-0 on another dominant shift in the second period. J.T. Miller got lost in the defensive zone, leaving defencemen Kyle Burroughs and Jack Rathbone trying to check three Avalanche players. Logan O’Connor ended up wide open at the backdoor and a bouncing pass from Sam Girard found its way to him for the goal.
- Another power play ended in disastrous fashion for the Canucks, as the Avalanche got a 2-on-1 after an errant pass from Höglander. Ekman-Larsson made an aggressive play on the puck carrier, but O’Connor slipped a pass under the defenceman’s stick and Darren Helm, all alone, made no mistake, scoring the shorthanded goal.
- And then Devon Toews made it 6-0 directly off a faceoff win. It was a scrambled draw with 11 seconds left and, reaching through a mess of sticks, Juho Lammikko accidentally poked it right back to Girard, who moved it across to Toews for the one-timer through traffic that deflected up off Lammikko’s leg before going post and in.
- That was the end of the night for Demko. Green explained that he didn’t pull him from the game earlier as he didn’t want Jaroslav Halak going in cold. Instead, he gave him the second intermission to warm up before going in net.
- Höglander was one of the few Canucks who played well. He hit the post on a chance in the first period and got the Canucks’ lone goal in the third. Hughes created a turnover with a hard pinch down the boards and Miller immediately fired the puck towards the net. Höglander got his stick on the shot to tip it off the post then battled for the rebound, shovelling it past Darcy Kuemper to break the shutout.
- Tucker Poolman could be looking at a suspension for a stick-swinging incident in the third period. Kiefer Sherwood finished his check on the Canucks’ defenceman and he swung around and walloped Sherwood in the side of his head with his Sherwood.
- Okay, Poolman actually uses a Warrior stick — only five players in the NHL still use a Sherwood stick — but how can you resist a pun like that?
- Poolman got a five-minute major and a match penalty and, of course, the Avalanche scored on the power play to make it 7-1. Halak juggled a Rantanen shot and J.T. Compher batted in the rebound out of mid-air before Tyler Myers could box him out.
- Except, that's not what actually happened. Compher never touched the puck. Halak actually snagged the puck out of mid-air (as opposed to low-air or high-air) but, as he did so, Myers smacked the puck right out of his glove and into the net. It was an own goal — the perfect capstone to this game.
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- This game sucked.
