You can blame the referees for the Vancouver Canucks losing to the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night.
You shouldn’t, but you can if you want. You would be wrong, but it’s your right as a citizen of whatever country you’re a citizen of to be wrong about things that don’t truly matter.
Let’s be blunt: the officiating in this game was appallingly bad.
They called a two-minute minor on a hit to the head that should have been an automatic five-minute major and a game misconduct.
They called rinky-dink makeup calls that could have been avoided if they got the calls they were making up for right in the first place. Or really, the makeup calls should’ve been avoided anyway because makeup calls are stupid.
They gave the Avalanche a 5-on-3 on a soft as seafoam hooking penalty but didn’t give the Canucks a 5-on-3 on a blatant high stick.
But none of that is an excuse for the Canucks giving up a 3-0 lead. Just one of the Avalanche’s three goals in regulation was scored on a power play. The penalty that led to the game-winning overtime goal wasn’t up to the referees’ questionable discretion — it was an automatic puck-over-glass penalty that was emblematic of the Canucks’ complete loss of composure in the second half of this game.
“I know people are going to talk about soft calls here and there but I’m not going to blame the refs,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “To me, it was just we were soft on pucks, bottom line.”
Through the first period and part of the second, that wasn’t the case. The Canucks were hard on pucks, whether it was chasing the Avalanche down on the forecheck, carrying the puck with purpose through the neutral zone, or battling down low on the boards in the defensive zone. The Avalanche struggled to break the puck out cleanly and gain the blue line with possession, as the Canucks were all over them at every turn.
Then the whole thing flipped on its head: the Canucks were suddenly on their heels and unable to get through the Avalanche.
“I think we lifted our foot off the gas,” said Nikita Zadorov. “I mean, those teams, we’ve got to have a killer instinct. We can’t give them any chance to come back in the game…When you get a three-nothing lead, you’ve got to learn how to play with this lead and don’t feed the animal — just step on their throat and then shut it down.”
“We just couldn’t get anybody to grab hold of a puck, whether it was on a forecheck or a breakout, just to slow things down,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “We were a little hot potato.”
“It just sucks,” said J.T. Miller. “This has happened before. We just kind of hope it works out when we have leads instead of taking control of the game. We have been good with the lead but we’re getting to that point of the year where it’s just hard to swallow.”
“It was all us,” added Miller. “We didn’t win our battles, we didn’t execute our passes, we’re dumping it in for no reason, no forecheck. They outplayed us and they deserved to win.”
That about sums it up. Like the Canucks in this game, I took my foot off the gas halfway through this intro and let someone else take over. I couldn’t get any more negative about the Canucks’ performance than the Canucks themselves after I watched this game.
- The first half of this game painted such a different picture than the second half. This was going to be a glowing I Watched This Game about how the Canucks were announcing themselves as true Stanley Cup contenders, even if the Avalanche were playing on the second half of back-to-backs and had two top-six forwards injured, forcing them to play defenceman Caleb Jones on their second line. Even with all that in mind, the way the Canucks played early in this game was just that impressive.
- It helped that the Canucks scored early and often. The opening goal was a perfectly executed zone exit and zone entry: Ian Cole and Ilya Mikheyev zipped the puck around the boards to a zooming J.T. Miller, who attacked the Avalanche blue line with Quicksilver-esque speed. Miller threw the puck down low for Brock Boeser, then cut to the slot, ready to tip in Cole’s point shot to open the scoring just 24 seconds into the game.
- Miller did a lot of heavy lifting in this game, none heavier than the weight he helped lift off Ilya Mikheyev’s shoulders. He took a pass from Nikita Zadorov and again attacked down the left wing with speed, then circled around the Avalanche net before firing a hard pass to the front of the net. Mikheyev added the perfect ingredient — a well-timed dash to the front of the net — to elevate the dish and send it over Alexander Georgiev.
- If you had the strong sense that Mikheyev was due to score a goal, maybe that’s because you read my article from earlier in the day about how Mikheyev was due to score a goal.
- “I don’t think of it like that,” said Mikheyev when asked if it felt like a goal was coming with the way he’s played recently. “I just try, because it’s too much thinking sometimes. I just stay in the right way and just keep doing, keep working.”
- Here’s where things get controversial. With two minutes left in the first period, Josh Manson hit J.T. Miller directly in the head against the boards while he was already tied up with Samuel Girard. It’s a hit that will likely be looked at by NHL Player Safety and could result in a suspension but the referees deemed it only worthy of a two-minute minor rather than the five-minute major and game misconduct it clearly deserved.
- Miller, however, remained magnanimous: “I’m not getting into it, it’s fine. The guy plays hard, we’ve battled a lot over the years. I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”
- Miller went to the Canucks’ room, likely pulled off the ice by the NHL’s concussion spotter, so wasn’t available to play on the power play. As the second period started, the entire Canucks team took the ice and Miller didn’t come down the tunnel, causing a brief panic before he finally broke the tension by power-walking out to the bench and taking the ice. All it needed was entrance music to make it a perfect professional wrestling moment.
- Nikita Zadorov attempted to settle the score with Manson, dropping the gloves with the defenceman five minutes into the second period. Like the Canucks game, it went well for the first half and then Zadorov slipped and fell flat on his keister and it was all over.
- Like Herman’s Hermits, it was second verse, same as the first, as the Canucks once again came flying out to start the period. They took a 3-0 lead in a similar way to their first goal, with Conor Garland this time attacking up the wing with speed, curling around the net, and feeding the defenceman at the point. This time it was Zadorov, whose shot beat a screened Georgiev just inside the far post, giving him his first career Gordie Howe Hattrick.
- “Look at our goals: Garland held it, went around the net; Miller went around the net. We held the puck,” said Tocchet. “Then we started throwing pucks around, that’s what happens: somebody goes the other way, now we’ve got to defend.”
- The officials may have been terrible in this game but at least they provided some entertainment. After a dreadful interference penalty on Quinn Hughes, the Canucks’ captain was understandably upset but referee Kyle Rehman responded with the same tone of voice known to parents everywhere as they try to get their kids to go to bed — or go anywhere, really — firmly, but politely, saying, “Go to the box, please. Go to the box, please. Now.”
- Elias Lindholm came achingly close to not only making it 4-0 but getting himself off the schneid, as he hasn’t scored a goal in 12 games. With a minute left in the second period, Lindholm forced a turnover and Georgiev came out to play the loose puck only to completely whiff, giving Lindholm a wide-open net. It seemed like a gimme but Georgiev dove out and got his paddle on the puck, sending it through the crease instead of into the net.
- A minute later, the Avalanche got on the board in the dying seconds of the second. The Canucks put all three of their top centres on the ice — Miller, Lindholm, and Elias Pettersson — and got the faceoff win, but the Avalanche shot the puck in and got a lucky bounce off the boards that sent the puck careening into empty space and threw the Canucks’ defensive structure into chaos. As Devon Toews threw the puck in front, neither Lindholm nor Noah Juulsen tied up Mikko Rantanen’s stick to give him a tap-in goal.
- “That goal definitely gave them belief,” said Miller. “That’s all that team really needed. Shit happens, though, we should be able to come out in the third with a two-goal lead at home against one of the best teams in the league — I don’t understand any better reason to get up for that.”
- The Avalanche dominated the third period, out-shooting the Canucks 17-to-3. You can blame the power plays if you like but the Avalanche simply outplayed the Canucks as they pushed for the comeback. You would have thought that the Canucks were playing the second half of back-to-backs instead of the Avalanche.
- “I thought I was a genius the first half but obviously I wasn’t because I did not like the battle in the second half,” said Tocchet about the rest days he gave the team. “I don’t know if that’s the two-day layoff, I don’t know. I’ll have to figure that one out.”
- The Canucks blocked 22 shots in this game to just two blocked shots for the Avalanche. If we accept Rick Tocchet’s theory that players are more willing to block shots in front of a goaltender they like, that suggests the Canucks checked yes on the “Do you like me?” note that Casey DeSmith passed them.
- Nikita Zadorov had another theory on the skewed shot block totals: “It means they were shooting more, no?” That’s the thing: the Avalanche so completely took over the game in the third period that the final shot attempt totals were 71-to-30 in all situations. The blocked shots were largely because the Avalanche were all over the Canucks in the second half of the game.
- The Avalanche made it 3-2 on a 5-on-3 power play that Nate MacKinnon “earned” with some embellishment of the softest hook since Garrett Hedlund. The penalty call was frustrating but more frustrating was Filip Hronek failing to clear the puck down the ice after Lindholm won the faceoff. Seconds later, Cale Makar fed MacKinnon for a cannon of a one-timer past Casey DeSmith.
- The Canucks’ inability to exit the defensive zone was a constant theme of the third period and it led to the tying goal. Lindholm had control of the puck with open ice between himself and his blue line but passed the puck directly to Joel Kiviranta instead. Thirty seconds later — all in the Canucks’ zone — a wild scramble led to the puck just barely getting over the line after a heroic effort by DeSmith to stop a wraparound attempt.
- “If you’ve got the puck and you’ve got three-four feet to skate with it, then take that ice,” said Tocchet. “Then the second or third guy, know where your spot is to go to receive the puck. If the guy’s not skating with it and just wants to flip it out, then you’ve got two or three guys just skating not in a position to want [the puck]. Then you’ve got people just basically skating for the sake of skating.”
- The most frustrating moment from the officials came on the Canucks’ lone third period power play, when Hughes was blatantly high sticked directly in front of a referee as he skated up ice. That should have meant a 5-on-3 for the Canucks — making up for the soft 5-on-3 granted to the Avalanche — and a golden opportunity to score the game-winning goal. Instead, it led to a shorthanded chance for the Avalanche.
- Carson Soucy has been praised as a calming influence on the Canucks’ defence since his return from injury but he showed a lack of composure in the dying seconds of regulation. Instead of eating the puck against the boards to run out the clock, he launched the puck over the glass for a delay of game penalty with 8.7 seconds left in the third period.
- That was essentially game over. 4-on-3 power plays as a whole are lethal and the Avalanche have one of the best power plays in the league. The Avalanche didn’t need a lucky bounce to win the game but they got one anyway, as MacKinnon’s one-timer deflected off of Juulsen then went off Valeri Nichushkin’s visor and in. It was a ridiculous ricochet to cap off a ridiculous game.
- “We need people to grab ahold of it,” said Tocchet, who repeatedly said that he was looking for someone to step up as the Canucks were losing control of the game. “Their guys took over. MacKinnon said, ‘I’m taking this game.’ We need somebody — a couple guys — to counteract that. But we didn’t.”
