This one hurts.
Of the Vancouver Canucks’ seven games on this all-important homestand heading into the trade deadline, this game against the Detroit Red Wings was supposed to be the easy win. The other games against bottom-of-the-standings teams held hidden dangers — the Montreal Canadiens were on a hot streak after a coaching change and the Buffalo Sabres have been knocking off tough opponents left and right in March.
The Red Wings, though? They’ve been outright awful. Heading into Thursday’s game in Vancouver, the Red Wings had lost six straight and eight of their last nine. It’s not just the losses either — they’d been outscored 52-to-28 in those nine games, averaging 5.8 goals against per game.
That’s what made Thursday’s loss so shocking. The Canucks didn’t just lose — they couldn’t even score a goal, dropping what should have been the most easily winnable game of the homestand 1-0.
Part of it was Red Wings goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic, who made 43 saves for the shutout, but even that seems misleading. The Canucks struggled to get to the inside to create dangerous scoring chances and, when they did, they frequently missed the net.
According to hockey analytics site Natural Stat Trick, high-danger chances at 5-on-5 were 14-to-5 for the Red Wings, which goes to show just how many of the Canucks’ 43 shots on goal came from the perimeter.
“You can’t score on the perimeter when a goalie’s playing good and everything he’s seeing, he’s stopping,” said Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau. “You’ve got to find ways and we didn’t. We didn’t get in his way, we didn’t sacrifice enough to get in his face so that he couldn’t see shots. Consequently, he’s making all the saves and he’s making them look easy.”
Failing to get to the hardest areas of the ice when the Canucks desperately need every point they can get simply isn’t good enough.
Once again, the Canucks’ troubles started in the first period, where they have struggled mightily all season.
“The goalie played good, there’s no doubt about that but that first period might have been our worst period all year, including the games we gave up five goals,” said Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau. “We must have given the puck away 25 times.”
Perhaps they took the Red Wings too lightly. They know they have a tough opponent coming up on Saturday in the Calgary Flames, then a tough road trip after the trade deadline. Maybe they felt this game didn’t need a 100%, 60-minute effort.
“We just didn’t have any anything,” said Boudreau. “I just thought it was lack of effort in the first period, like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to win eventually, so it doesn’t matter.’”
The Canucks did not eventually win when I watched this game.
- Nils Höglander was out with an undisclosed injury after leaving practice on Wednesday. That’s a tough loss for the Canucks — as much as he has struggled to find the back of the net this season, he’s the Canucks best player when it comes to creating high-danger chances. In a game where they couldn’t seem to get to the net, it would’ve been nice to have him in the lineup.
- It’s not like the Canucks didn’t create any chances at all. Elias Pettersson had a glorious point-blank chance on an aerial pass from Nic Petan in the first period but he was robbed by Nedeljkovic’s blocker, which did what it was designed to do.
- The issue wasn’t just the lack of dangerous chances for the Canucks but the number of chances they gave up. Boudreau lamented the number of giveaways but what was most egregious is how unnecessary most of them were. It wasn’t like the Canucks were giving up the puck while being heavily pressured — they were just sloppier than dumping water on a rare steak at Truffoni’s.
- This giveaway by Tyler Myers seemed particularly avoidable. Yes, the puck was bouncing as it came to Myers as he backed into the Canucks’ zone but it’s absolutely baffling that Myers gives it only the gentlest of taps, practically handing it directly to Filip Zadina with gift wrap and a bow. That led directly to two Grade A chances for the Red Wings or, as they called them in the U.S., Ath Grade chances.
- The Red Wings finished the first period with 18 shots on goal and Thatcher Demko stopped them all. His best came in the final minute of the period, as he mugged Lucas Raymond and stole his wallet with a strong push off his right skate to lunge across and take away a sure goal.
- That scoring chance came against Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Tyler Myers, which was a pattern in the first period. At 5-on-5, shot attempts were 16-2 for the Red Wings when that pairing was on the ice, shots on goal were 10-2, and high-danger chances were 5-0. And that was just in the first period because they were split up to start the second.
- This was a rough night for Brock Boeser, who had some of the Canucks’ best chances to score, particularly on a second-period power play. Like Patty Pendergast, oopsie doopsie, he muffed them up again. He was in the right place at the right time but sent two backdoor chances wide, then later had a pass on a 2-on-1 chance hop right over his stick.
- What made matters worse is the Red Wings counter-attacked at the end of the power play and scored the only goal of the game. It wasn’t just a missed opportunity — it cost them the game.
- It was a complete fluke of a goal. Pius Suter and Vladislav Namestnikov attacked 2-on-1 and, as Suter attempted to return a pass to Namestnikov in tight, Quinn Hughes reached out to disrupt it and the puck instead deflected five-hole on Demko. But those are the kinds of bad breaks that can happen when you give up so many great scoring chances.
- Demko was otherwise perfect all game. It took an absurdly bad bounce to beat him but the Canucks couldn’t get a similar bounce against Nedeljkovic. But sometimes you have to create your own bounces and the Canucks didn’t have a single high-danger chance in the third period and that was with two power plays.
- It was a rough night on the out-of-town scoreboard too. All three of the most catchable teams in the standings — the Dallas Stars, Edmonton Oilers, and Vegas Golden Knights — won on Thursday night. The Dallas Stars’ win was particularly painful for Canucks fans: they got a game-tying goal against the Montreal Canadiens with 10 seconds left and won in overtime.
