With his team’s slim playoff hopes hanging in the balance, Calgary Flames’ head coach Darryl Sutter looked down his bench for who should take the crucial third shot in the shootout.
Somehow, Sutter looked past the team’s two leading scorers, Tyler Toffoli and Elias Lindholm, and landed on Nick Ritchie. With the game on his stick, Ritchie failed to score, and the Nashville Predators responded with two goals in the shootout to win the game and end the Flames’ playoff hopes while keep their own playoff hopes just barely alive.
Sutter’s decision to go with Ritchie could be justified in any number of ways. Ritchie had actually scored on the Predators’ Juuse Saros in one of his very few previous shootout attempts. Toffoli had just failed to score on Thatcher Demko in the same situation against the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday, so perhaps that was in the back of Sutter’s mind. Maybe, in a way, the Canucks did play spoiler.
It’s a disastrous result for the Flames, who spent a lot of money and a lot of term on Jonathan Huberdeau and Nazem Kadri in an attempt to avoid taking a step back after losing Johnny Gaudreau to free agency and being forced into trading Matthew Tkachuk. Now they’ve missed the playoffs and they’re one of the oldest teams in the NHL, giving them no guarantees that they can bounce back in the future.
Of course, the Flames’ season wasn’t lost because Darryl Sutter picked Nick Ritchie for a single shootout but it feels emblematic of everything that went wrong for them this season.
But why am I talking so much about a decision made by the Flames that was in no way connected to the Canucks’ Monday night game against the Los Angeles Kings? It’s mainly because that game in Calgary was really interesting and entertaining, while this game in Los Angeles was very much not.
The Canucks couldn't muster up a single goal in a game that critics are calling, "A snoozefest for the ages," "One to avoid," and "Please god, make it stop."
Also, if there’s one thing that brings all Canucks fans together, it’s seeing the Flames fail.
I experienced some good old-fashioned schadenfreude while I watched this game.
- What the Canucks and Kings game lacked in entertainment, it made up for in fashion. The Kings were wearing their nineties-inspired third jerseys, making this the rare time the home team wore white, while the Canucks brought their own nineties-inspired third jerseys, wearing the black skate on the road. Combine that with the incredibly boring nineties-style trap the Kings were playing all night and this game was nostalgia city.
- The most notable thing that happened in the first period is that Luc Robitaille hand-delivered a bottle of wine to John Garrett in the broadcast booth. You have to appreciate both the classy gesture from the Kings and Robitaille matching the Kings’ chrome helmets.
- As a sign of how dull the first period was, two of the “highlights” from the first period in the NHL’s recap video are of passes from Phil Di Giuseppe that nearly led to shots on goal. Nearly! Be still, my beating heart.
- I appreciate that Rick Tocchet is trying Vitaly Kravtsov on a line with Elias Pettersson. The Canucks have to figure out what they have in Kravtsov, if anything, as he’s a restricted free agent in need of a new contract. So, why not try him in a bunch of different situations to see what works? After this game, they got their answer about whether he fits with Pettersson: heck no.
- Andrei Kuzmenko seems to be in Tocchet’s doghouse again. The second period started with a power play but Di Giuseppe was in Kuzmenko’s spot on the first unit. Di Giuseppe had spent just seven seconds on the power play all season — he played 2:01 on the power play in this game. That the Canucks were shut out for just the second time all season is probably unrelated.
- There was some sudden emotion in this otherwise dreary game in the second period, leading to Sheldon Dries pummeling Sean Durzi and J.T. Miller squaring off against Adrian Kempe. I don’t know why the Kings, who are heading to the playoffs in a week, are getting into fights against the Canucks, but it seems ill-advised. Kempe leads the Kings with 38 goals this season — just imagine he got injured a week before the playoffs because he felt he absolutely had to fight in game 81 of the regular season against a team 23 points below them in the standings.
- This was the toughest test yet for the Canucks’ young college free agents, Akito Hirose and Cole McWard. While neither one was outright terrible, they both showed some warts and illustrated that they both have some work to do before they can be declared NHLers. For the first time since joining the Canucks, forechecking pressure seemed to get to Hirose, as he had a couple of turnovers on one shift in the defensive zone in the first period. Shots on goal were 10-3 for the Kings when Hirose was on the ice.
- McWard’s struggle-bus shift came in the second period. He made a good play to knock Blake Lizotte off his feet behind the net, but then made the mistake of leaving Lizotte alone to double-team Alex Iafallo, who was already in a battle with Ethan Bear. That meant both defencemen were down below the goal line and Lizotte got free to centre the puck to Arthur Kaliyev. McWard, to his credit, got back to the front of the net, but he went spinning looking for the puck instead of looking to tie up a stick. Kaliyev got two whacks at the puck, putting the first off McWard, then the second between Collin Delia’s legs.
- In defence of McWard, Kaliyev was Sheldon Dries’ man and Dries’ attempt to check Kaliyev was about as substantial as a mosquito’s fart.
- The Kings made it 2-0 on a brutal line change by Kravtsov. Tyler Myers was under pressure from Trevor Moore and couldn’t handle a bouncing puck, turning it over to Phillip Danault, but he and Bear recovered to cover Moore and Danault. The trouble was that Kravtsov changed before the Canucks had control, so Nils Åman coming off the bench couldn’t get to the trailer, Vladislav Gavrikov, to prevent him from picking his spot over Delia’s glove.
- Honestly, I’m surprised Kravtsov even got a shift after that line change. That’s the kind of stuff that drives coaches bananas.
- Speaking of things Kravtsov did in this game that would infuriate a coach, what in the world was this flyby of the puck? Even if you think Quinn Hughes is going to play the puck, at least tap it to him while putting your body in a position to protect the puck. Like playing Pictionary with Kirk Van Houten, Kravtsov left me bewildered all game.
- I don’t really have anything else to say about this game. Drew Doughty iced it by not icing it, sending a puck from his own endboards into the empty net to make it 3-0. The Canucks managed just 20 shots on goal. It was crummy. Please remind me to watch any playoff series other than the one with the Kings in it.
