Is the opposite of a moral victory an immoral loss?
The Vancouver Canucks have been racking up moral victories in recent games, where the team didn’t earn an actual victory, but could take heart in knowing that they did their best and arguably even outplayed their opponents. On Monday night, the Canucks got a real victory, not just a moral one, but it somehow felt empty.
It’s certainly unfair to call the Canucks’ performance actually immoral. The Canucks didn’t act unethically in beating the Montreal Canadiens — no cheating was involved. But what else are we to call the opposite of a moral victory? Because the Canucks won the actual game but it still felt like a loss.
The Canadiens are a team in just as much disarray as the Canucks, one of the few teams in the NHL with a lower points percentage. And, like the Canucks, this wasn’t supposed to happen. The Canadiens went to the Stanley Cup Final last year and a quick trip to the basement of the NHL wasn’t meant to be in the cards.
The one difference is that the Canadiens bit the bullet and performed a clean sweep of their front office and bringing in Jeff Gorton, who is most known for rebuilding the New York Rangers and being very upfront and honest with the fans about doing so. It seems very clear what the Canadiens plan to do. Must be nice.
On the ice, however, the Canadiens are still a mess, with the 30th-ranked power play and the 31st-ranked penalty kill, while giving up more goals against than anyone else in the NHL other than the Ottawa Senators.
So, it’s hard to get excited about the Canucks beating the Canadiens, scoring a power play goal against their terrible penalty kill, and killing off their horrendous power play. That’s particularly true when the win came by one goal and required some incredible goaltending by Thatcher Demko along the way.
On the plus side, because the two teams are about at the same level this season, the game itself was fun. Turns out when two bad teams face each other, the end result can be pretty entertaining, with plenty of turnovers and defensive breakdowns to create some wide open hockey.
If it’s not particularly compelling to beat the Canadiens, the Canucks can take heart: in the midst of the actual win that was an immoral loss came a moral victory or two. It’s like a matryoshka doll of mediocrity.
For instance, Elias Pettersson scored a power goal that was pure, vintage Pettersson: a power play blast from the right faceoff circle. He also drew both of the penalties that put the Canucks on the power play, showing that he was keeping his feet moving.
If those victories seem slight, it should be telling that they’re more substantial than the actual victory over the Canadiens. I watched this game.
- Pettersson’s opening goal truly was a beauty, a one-time bomb from the PetterZone that went top corner on the far side, where Gary Larson signs his name. Evidently, Canadiens penalty killer Artturi Lehkonen didn’t get a copy of the memo that says, “Don’t let Pettersson shoot from there,” as he slid to the middle when Pettersson passed the puck to Quinn Hughes at the point, leaving Pettersson wide open.
- That was the Canucks’ 12th shot of the game and shots on goal were 12-1 at that point, 8 minutes into the game. Shots on goal were 12-12 by the end of the first, which should give you an indication of how the rest of the period went.
- To see why the Canucks gave up so many shots, take a look at this sample of the Canucks’ defensive coverage off a faceoff, as J.T. Miller takes the draw then takes nothing or nobody else. Everyone else scrambles and Josh Anderson ends up wide open in front. I don’t even think he realized how open he was, as he might have done more than just turn and backhand the puck into Demko’s pads if he knew. To paraphrase Mr. Miyagi, the Canucks no can defence.
- Quinn Hughes has quietly been very good this season, with his 16 points landing him at 9th in the NHL in defencemen scoring. He has also taken significant steps forward defensively and the broadcast highlighted one particularly nice moment where he lifted Brendan Gallagher’s stick and immediately turned that takeaway into a stretch pass to J.T. Miller for a chance in transition. Hughes leads the Canucks in corsi percentage this season.
- It’s just too bad Hughes has been saddled with Tucker Poolman for most of the season. Poolman’s puck control and passing has been truly dire, as demonstrated by the turnover that led to the Canadiens tying the game late in the first.
- Poolman sent a pass behind Bo Horvat in the neutral zone that Horvat could only try to take off his back skate. He couldn’t kick it up to his stick and the Canadiens countered. Poolman gave Jonathan Drouin too much space on the outside and Horvat didn’t take Ryan Poehling in time. Drouin found Poehling charging to the net to tip the puck past Demko.
- The Canadiens responded with a dreadful turnover of their own. Anderson, coming back in his own zone, reversed the puck to no one — at least, no one on his team. Call Horvat “Captain Nemo” because he was the “no one” that Anderson passed to and Horvat deftly piloted the puck like the Nautilus into Vulcania, sending it to Conor Garland in front for the top-shelf finish.
- That was it for scoring. After that, it was the Thatcher DemShow. The Canucks netminder made a series of fantastic saves as the Canadiens pushed to tie up the game again. He was pulling out more stops than an organist.
- Demko saved — literally — his best for last. Well, almost last. He made two more saves after this one, but his pad stacking save on Ben Chiarot was certainly his best. Miller lost track of Chiarot as he looped behind the Canucks net and the Montreal defenceman was wide open to pick up a rebound and score at his leisure, except Demko stacked them up with extra maple syrup to secure the win.
- Elias Pettersson logged just 13:13 in ice time in this game but his line with Vasily Podkolzin and Justin Dowling created some of the Canucks’ best chances, out-shooting the Canadiens 7-to-3 when they were on the ice together. It appears the new strategy to get Pettersson going is to ease up on his ice time. We’ll see how it goes.
