Look on the bright side: it took the Vancouver Canucks 27 games to have a .500 record last season. This year, it took them just four.
The Canucks 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday wasn’t as lacklustre an effort as their last loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday. In fact, some of the effort was lustrous as all get out.
“Love the battle, love the battle, so hats off to the guys — they competed,” said head coach Rick Tocchet, adding, “Guys played hard right ‘til the end.”
If you think that sounds a little bit like the language of a moral victory, you wouldn’t be wrong. It feels a little early in the season to be commending the Canucks for competing in a loss.
Still, when the team laid an egg like they did on Tuesday, you have to break it open and try to make an omelette out of it. So sure, praise the Canucks for trying, then season it with the salt, pepper, and herbs of some gentle criticism.
“We’ve just got to clean up the crucial mistakes,” said Tocchet. “There were three or four of them tonight. We always talk about ‘don’t duplicate your mistakes’ and I thought we did on a couple of those goals. Those are the difference.”
I feel like I made a crucial mistake too when I watched this game.
- Mark Friedman made his debut for the Canucks, entering the lineup for the scratched Noah Juulsen. He was largely fine, even if the Canucks were out-shot 8-to-0 in the 14:49 he was on the ice at 5-on-5. He also had a fight — for certain definitions of “fight” — with Tanner Jeannot. Overall, he wasn’t particularly good, but he didn’t make me want to tear my hair out in frustration, which is a major upgrade on some Canucks defencemen.
- Speaking of, it’s probably about time that Tyler Myers got scratched. Of the “crucial mistakes” mentioned by Tocchet, the biggest, most glaring mistakes were committed by Myers, directly costing the Canucks two goals in a one-goal game. If he wasn’t in this game…well, it still would have only been a tie because he scored one of their goals, but that’s beside the point.
- Myers’ mistakes weren’t the only ones. The Lightning’s first goal started with a terrible pass back into the defensive zone by Phil Di Giuseppe on the penalty kill. It’s just that Myers made it so much worse with one of the most confounding turnovers I’ve ever seen. With acres of room, millenia of time, and in a situation where icing the puck is encouraged, Myers managed to put the puck right on the tape of Nicholas Paul's stick and Nicholas Paul does not play for the Canucks.
- After the turnover, Thatcher Demko committed highway robbery on the first chance for Steven Stamkos and even stopped Stamkos’s rebound chance, but couldn’t do anything about Paul jabbing in the loose puck in the crease. Demko is not a miracle worker — you can’t turn water into wine when the water is actually mud.
- Like, look at this. Look at this! How do you get the puck in this situation and give it away? How?
- “Obviously, he made that mistake on the first one,” said Tocchet. “I wish he stayed on his feet because if he stays on his feet, he probably doesn’t get the goal. That’s the duplicating mistakes.”
- “Duplicating mistakes” sounds like players are making the same mistake twice, but what Tocchet likely means is closer to “compounding errors” — making multiple mistakes in a row that add up. Myers’ turnover compounded the bad Di Giuseppe pass, but he also had an opportunity to get to the crease and box out Paul, leaving Demko to deal with Stamkos. Instead, he made things worse by sliding in between Paul and Stamkos, effectively taking neither player. Myers was compounding like a fracture.
- Let’s be blunt: if a rookie made the same play that Myers did, everyone would agree that he wasn’t ready for the NHL. If a call-up from the AHL made that play, he’d immediately get sent back down.
- The Canucks responded in the opening shift of the second period, thanks to the J.T. Miller line — the only line that seems to have an identity. Di Giuseppe got in hard on the forecheck, forcing a rushed pass that Miller picked off below the goal line. Boeser slipped into a soft spot on the ice and Miller found him there for the one-timed finish. Simple: forecheck, pass, snipe.
- Less than a minute later, Myers gave the Canucks the lead. Elias Pettersson picked off a clearing attempt at the LIghtning blue line and spotted Myers cross ice, who had about as much room as he did earlier on the penalty kill. This time, he did something a lot more effective with that space, blasting a slap shot top shelf past Jonah Johansson.
- One of the subtler, yet still crucial, Canucks mistakes led to the 2-2 goal. “We’re up 2-1, we’re in control, I thought we played really good and then one of our guys dives in as F3 and gives them — I think it was the second or third goal,” said Tocchet. “There’s pressure moments and you’ve gotta make sure you’re in the right spots at the right time.”
- I believe this is the moment Tocchet is referring to. Nils Höglander is F1, the first forward in on the forecheck. Sam Lafferty is F2, supporting the forecheck and funneling the play up the right wing, where Carson Soucy is pinching up in the neutral zone. Conor Garland is F3 and his job is to cover for the pinching Soucy to ensure the Canucks have two men back.
- Instead, Garland swerves toward the puck battle on the boards, leaving Mark Friedman all alone as the last man back. Friedman, not realizing that his man, Luke Glendening, had gone off for a line change, stayed central instead of closing on Michael Eyssimont, giving the Lightning forward room to beat Thatcher Demko. But none of that happens if Garland was, as Tocchet said, in the right spot at the right time.
- 69 seconds later, Nikita Kucherov gave the Lightning the lead after hemming the Miller line in the defensive zone. Miller was too slow to close on the Lightning star and didn’t get in his shooting lane, so Kucherov was able to roof the puck past a screened Demko to make it 3-2.
- Miller was easily the Canucks’ best player in the offensive zone in this game, buzzing with intent every time he stepped over the Lightning blue line. Defensively…well, nobody’s perfect. In his defence, it was at the end of a minute-long shift and Kucherov is an all-world talent, but Miller is the guy who says he craves playing against the best players in the world. It would just be nice to see that same hunger for the puck in the defensive zone that he shows on the forecheck.
- The weirder moment for Miller came a little bit earlier in the second period. Again hemmed in the defensive zone and again at the end of a long shift, Miller decided to just bolt to the bench for a line change when the puck came to Filip Hronek still in the defensive zone. Ideally, Miller would have been at the boards for an outlet pass to ensure the puck got out of the zone. Instead, Hronek’s clearing attempt was cut off and Lightning continued to pour on the pressure as Sam Lafferty had to scramble from the bench to get into the play.
- Miller going off for a line change was so unexpected that the scorekeepers for the game didn’t even notice that it happened. The official gamesheets say that Miller was still on the ice when Demko froze the puck, as if the scorekeepers went, “Did he just leave the ice with the puck still in the defensive zone? No, that’s impossible. Of course he didn’t. No one would do that, especially not with the long change in the second period. That number 18 on the ice must be Miller — 8+1=9, after all.”
- After taking a Tyler Myers slap shot off the leg last game and missing practice, Elias Pettersson looked like he still wasn’t 100% and was frequently laboured in his skating. He still picked up two assists, because he’s Elias Freaking Pettersson, but he wasn’t his usual dominant self.
- It didn’t help Pettersson that Myers tackled him on the 4-2 goal. Pettersson got into a battle on the boards while on the penalty kill and Myers went barrelling in like a human bowling ball, also known as The Raffi Torres. Unfortunately, it was a 7-10 split, as Myers missed both Lightning players and instead ended up splayed out on top of Pettersson, turning the 5-on-4 power play temporarily into a 5-on-2, which permanently turned into a goal.
- The Canucks at least managed to claw one back in the final minutes. With Demko pulled for the extra attacker, Pettersson set up Filip Hronek for a one-timer. The shot never got through: it went off Erik Cernak’s butt, then off Miller’s face, but Miller wasn’t fazed by the butt-puck to the face and had the presence of mind to knock it in to make it 4-3.
- The Canucks poured on the pressure to close out the game but couldn’t find the back of the net again, ending wiht a frustrating sequence where neither Pettersson nor Hughes seemed aware of how much time was remaining as they passed the puck back and forth with less than ten seconds remaining. Aggravating!
- Look, the Canucks have made it clear that they want to make things tough on their opponents this season. We just didn’t know that they considered the Canucks fans watching the game their opponents.
