One of the criticisms of the current Vancouver Canucks is that they have no identity as a team.
But it really seems like they do have an identity: they’re the team that blows multi-goal leads and falls to pieces when faced with even the slightest amount of adversity.
That might not be a good identity but it is an identity.
On Tuesday against the Pittsburgh Penguins, they showed a true commitment to that identity. For the third time this season, they took a 3-0 lead in the first period and, for the third time this season, they gave up that 3-0 lead and lost the game.
This time, just to really hammer home that this is who they are, they blew that 3-0 lead before the first period was even over. It was like a get-the-fans-hopes-up-then-dash-them speedrun and they were going for the world record.
At this point, Canucks fans have to laugh to keep from crying.
Two games ago, the Canucks beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche with a commitment to paying the price defensively with hits and blocked shots. After that game, the refrain in the locker room after the game was that they needed to go out and do that again — buy in to a team game, play the right way defensively, and commit to the details, even when those details lead to bruised shins.
They followed up that game with a pair of defensive disasters: giving up seven goals to the Winnipeg Jets and coughing up a 3-0 lead to the Penguins.
As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” The Canucks showed me who they are when I watched this game.
- Frankly, the Canucks had no business getting a 3-0 lead in the first place. The Penguins outplayed the Canucks right from the opening puck drop, forcing multiple turnovers in the Canucks’ zone, but Spencer Martin was more on the ball than Tyler Toney and made some key saves early.
- Casey DeSmith, on the other hand, was the opposite of on the ball. Or, if he was on the ball, the ball was completely deflated. A limp piece of concave rubber that was once spherical but now completely useless to anyone. He was bad, is what I’m saying. Very, very bad.
- Conor Garland opened the scoring with a solo dash up the left wing. He darted past Pierre-Olivier Joseph at the blue line, leaving the defenceman clutching his hyphen, then moved the puck to his forehand and snapped a quick shot past DeSmith’s glove.
- Then Brock Boeser made it 2-0 after Ilya Mikheyev chipped the puck in front of the net. Boeser was surrounded by four penguins in front, which typically results in getting slapped by Skipper, but Boeser avoided that outcome by instead making a move to the backhand and hoisting the puck over DeSmith’s pad.
- 25 seconds later, it was 3-0. Elias Pettersson won an offensive zone faceoff, Luke Schenn moved the puck to Quinn Hughes, and Hughes’ shot went right through DeSmith like he wasn’t even there. Because maybe he wasn’t. Maybe M. Night Shyamalan directed this game and DeSmith not actually being there was the big Third Act twist but Hughes spoiled it just seven minutes in. Way to go, Quinn. Way to ruin it for everyone.
- The Penguins pushed back hard after the 3-0 goal and, for a moment, it seemed like Martin was going to hold the for until the Canucks could regain their footing. Instead, the Canucks took a pair of quick penalties to give the Penguins a 5-on-3 and Evgeni Malkin hammered a one-timer past Martin to make it 3-1.
- I just wanted to point out what led to the second penalty that gave the Penguins a 5-on-3: Tyler Myers inexplicably making a blind backhand pass towards the slot while killing a penalty. That led to J.T. Miller going for a desperation stick lift and instead catching Guentzel in the face with a high stick.
- Here’s a lesson for the kids out there who play hockey: uh, don’t do that. But you probably already know not to make blind backhand passes into the slot while killing a penalty because that’s sort of obvious, right? It’s the kind of thing that no coach should ever have to tell you, the kind of thing a defenceman who has played 14 seasons in the NHL should know, right? Right?
- After giving up three goals on five shots, DeSmith was pulled from the game and Dustin Tokarski — who is somehow still around — was brought in. Tokarski was drafted back in 2008 and has played a grand total of 77 NHL games in the 15 years since he was drafted. How is he still around?
- Elias Pettersson probably wishes Tokarski wasn’t around anymore, because the journeyman goaltender repeatedly stymied the Canucks star. Pettersson had two shorthanded breakaways and another golden chance alone in front, but couldn’t get the puck past Tokarski, even if by pure dumb luck, like on Pettersson’s first chance — the first shot Tokarski faced — where Pettersson slipped the puck five-hole but Tokarski’s back skate somehow still swept the puck away from the net.
- Like they were big fans of Jhené Aiko, the Penguins turned up the pressure. They hemmed in the Canucks’ third line with the defensive pairing of Myers and Oliver Ekman-Larsson — both of whom had a rough, rough game — leaving Martin scrambling to make save after save until, finally, Sidney Crosby was left alone in the slot by Sheldon Dries. Brian Dumoulin hit Crosby with a pass to redirect in for the Penguins’ second goal.
- The tying goal was a disaster for so many reasons. It starts with the faceoff, with Myers still talking to Andrei Kuzmenko about their defensive assignments as the puck was being dropped. As a result, neither of the distracted duo charged out in time to prevent Jason Zucker from getting a shot that knuckled into the top corner.
- The Myers and Kuzmenko confusion is bad but the worst part about that goal is Ekman-Larsson ducking for cover. This is supposed to be the team’s veteran leader on defence, a man wearing an A on his chest, and he’s getting out of the way of a puck he could have blocked. How can he look his teammates in the eye and ask them to buy in and sacrifice the body when he does something like this? I hate to say it, but that’s shameful, and it’s not the first time we’ve seen that from Ekman-Larsson this season.
- What’s worse, is he’s wearing Alex Edler’s old number 23 and you know that Edler would have gone full road hockey goalie in that moment to eat the puck and save a goal.
- The Canucks were pretty lucky to have a 3-0 goal early but they were pretty unlucky not to get any goals after that until the third period. Pettersson had his grade-A chances but Bo Horvat, who has had the golden touch this season, also hit the post on an open net after a great pass from Garland. Sure, it was at a tight angle, but Horvat has been money from any angle, so it was stunning to hear the clank of iron instead of the swoosh of netting, even if that swoosh is never really audible. You know what I mean.
- A minute later, the Penguins took the lead off a turnover. Ilya Mikheyev pulled up just outside of his blue line instead of getting to the red line to dump the puck in and start a line change. Malkin snuck up on Mikheyev from the blind side, stripped him of the puck, then worked a give-and-go with Zucker to get around Ekman-Larsson on the sudden 2-on-1 and create a tap-in goal.
- The Penguins got another goal on the power play right after Pettersson was robbed again by Tokarski on a shorthanded breakaway. Instead of tying the game 4-4, Pettersson couldn’t get the puck past Tokarski’s toe-karski on the deke, and Rickard Rakell made it 5-3 on the counter-attack when Malkin’s shot hit him, causing Martin to lose track of the puck, giving Rakell an open net.
- Despite giving up five goals, there’s a strong case to be made that Spencer Martin was the Canucks’ best player. That’s how bad the Canucks were defensively. Martin made 31 saves, many of them of the exceptional variety, and shut the door in the third period to give the Canucks a chance at a comeback.
- “In the first period, he had to make about ten ten-bell saves to keep us in it,” said Bruce Boudreau of Martin. “He battled hard. I thought he was pretty good, for the most part.”
- If Martin wasn’t the Canucks’ best player, it was Pettersson, who did everything he possibly could to score except actually score. He had 11 shot attempts, eight scoring chances, and five high-danger chances, by the reckoning of Natural Stat Trick.
- You just have to laugh at the NHL’s game management sometimes. With three seconds left in the second period, Jack Studnicka blatantly tripped Dumoulin right in front of referee Gord Dwyer, who literally pointed to the clock as if to say, “There wasn’t enough time left for you to do anything with the puck anyway.” Good to know that the rules don’t apply as long as there are only a few seconds left. Hook and trip to your heart’s content!
- Honestly, this is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in the NHL and, as someone who has watched basically every game the Canucks have played for over a decade, I’ve seen a lot of dumb things.
- The Canucks finally got the puck past Tokarski in the third period — sort of. Garland retrieved a rebound and relayed the puck to Boeser, who fed Ekman-Larsson at the point. His shot went wide by caromed off the boards to Travis Dermott, who backhanded the puck in. Technically speaking, since Tokarski got his pad on the puck, it didn’t really go past him, but his pad was in the net at the time, so it counts.
- With a goal, an assist, and a 7-3 shot differential when he was on the ice, it was a strong game for Boeser, made stronger when his hustle prevented an empty-net goal. The puck ricocheted strangely off the boards and was rolling in but Boeser got to the puck in the crease and swept it away. Even more, he managed to simultaneously avoid knocking the net off its moorings to keep the play alive.
- In the end, it didn’t even matter.
