You’re not supposed to lose to the San Jose Sharks.
The Sharks are dead last in the NHL and came into Saturday’s game against the Vancouver Canucks with an ugly 3-15-2 record. Two of their three wins came in games where they were out-shot by a two-to-one margin and their goaltender stood on his head.
It’s not just bad luck for the Sharks either; they’re full value for their awful record. Their underlying analytics are atrocious — dead last in corsi percentage by a wide margin, as well as expected goals percentage.
The Canucks’ first meeting against the Sharks had people calling it a “trap game,” the type of game where a team on a roll might let their foot off the gas pedal against a lesser opponent and take a bad beat. Instead, the Canucks steamrolled the Sharks 10-1.
The second meeting perhaps should have been a wake-up call that the Sharks shouldn’t be taken lightly, as it was a much closer game. The Canucks still won, however, and perhaps that left them feeling a little too hubristic. Maybe the Sharks were playing the long game with setting the trap for the Canucks.
Because the issue with the game is not just that they lost to the Sharks but that it was far too even of a game. The Canucks didn’t get robbed of a win by a hot goaltender or clank all their shots off the post — though they did have some near misses. Instead, the Canucks simply didn’t play well enough to earn the win and the Sharks did.
“The first half of the game, they deserved it,” said Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet about the Sharks, then corrected himself: “They deserved the game.”
Tocchet was blunt after the game, saying his team wasn’t ready to play and didn’t have enough respect for the Sharks.
“San Jose’s been playing good and they worked hard tonight and we didn’t,” said Tocchet. “We tried at the end to come back. You’ve got to respect your opponents. It’s a learning lesson: playoff teams don’t do this sort of stuff.”
That was way harsh, Tocc.
It’s also not, strictly speaking, true. Playoff teams definitely fail to show respect to lesser opponents all the time, to the point that the phrase “trap game” was coined to describe the phenomenon.
But Tocchet is sending a message with those types of comments: he expects more from the Canucks. He’s trying to set a higher standard that doesn’t allow for falling into these types of traps. A standard that doesn’t make excuses for being tired on the second half of back-to-backs but adapts how they play to win no matter the situation.
The Canucks failed to meet that standard when I watched this game.
- Honestly, I didn’t think the game was quite as bad as Tocchet made it out to be. I was all prepared to give the Canucks the benefit of the doubt — sometimes good teams lose to bad teams — but I guess that’s just typical toxic positivity from the Canucks media.
- Heck, the Canucks even technically scored just as many goals as the Sharks. It’s just that their first goal was overturned for goaltender interference because Sam Lafferty kinda sorta tripped Kaapo Kahkonen as he tipped in an Ilya Mikheyev pass after Elias Pettersson forced a turnover on the forecheck. The ol’ trip-and-tip they used to call it back in my day. I guess that’s not allowed anymore.
- Quinn Hughes somehow keeps showing new dimensions of his game. Everyone knows how smooth a skater he is but the speed burst he showed six minutes into the game to create a breakaway out of nowhere caught everyone — particularly the Sharks — completely off guard. It’s just too bad that Phil Di Giuseppe missed a wide-open net as he followed up the play.
- With that goal overturned, the Sharks opened the scoring instead. The Sharks worked the puck around the Canucks’ zone, pulling Dakota Joshua a little out of position so that he couldn’t get to the shooting lane, allowing rookie Ty Emberson a clear path to the top corner of the net. Emberson chose to follow that path, much to the chagrin of Casey DeSmith, who would have preferred a path into the crest of his jersey.
- This was a rough game for Tyler Myers, who took an ill-timed penalty in the third period that led to the game-winning goal, but also made the play that caused the defensive zone faceoff that led to Emberson’s goal. Myers inexplicably chose to knock down a puck with a high stick that was heading harmlessly to the boards, which caused an unnecessary stoppage of which the Sharks took advantage.
- The Canucks were outplayed in the first period but they responded with some masterful work on the power play to tie the game. They were zipping the puck around with the confidence of a mediocre white dude, capping it off with Quinn Hughes setting up J.T. Miller for a one-time pass cross-ice that, in turn, set up Filip Hronek for a one-time shot past Kahkonen.
- You might have noticed in these bullet points that Lafferty was on the ice with Pettersson and Mikheyev, while Hronek was on the first power play unit. That’s because Andrei Kuzmenko was a healthy scratch for the second straight game. It’s somewhat surprising that the rested Kuzmenko wouldn’t be put in for the second half of back-to-backs but it can be somewhat justified in that coaches don’t like to change a winning lineup. If Kuzmenko sits for a third game, however, the s**t will have hitteth the faneth.
- When I was a kid, I had a couple of VHS tapes of sports bloopers that I nearly wore out in the days before YouTube. Dakota Joshua accidentally wiping out referee Carter Sandlak (son of former Canuck Jim Sandlak) absolutely belongs on one of those VHS tapes. It just needs some cartoon sound effects to complete the aesthetic. So I added some.
- The Canucks’ second power play of the game was nowhere near as good as their first and the Sharks seemed to build momentum off their successful penalty kill. After a careless icing by Ian Cole, the Sharks created some chaos in the Canucks’ zone and Fabian Zetterlund found some open space in the high slot to fire home a Tomas Hertl pass.
- Brock Boeser had a metric tonne of chances in this game, with a game-high seven shots on goal and nine shot attempts that were all classified as scoring chances by Natural Stat Trick, but it seemed like he couldn’t buy a goal. The Canucks’ third power play of the game finally got him on the board, as he was waiting in the slot for a rebound off another hot Hronek shot. The puck ricocheted off J.T. Miller’s leg to Boeser and he swept it in. Like Palafin, Boeser is a top-tier sweeper.
- The third period was a disaster, the antithesis of the “professional third period” that Tocchet praised his team for after the game against the Seattle Kraken. Starting the period at 4-on-4 after a post-whistle scrum late in the second, the Canucks were caught napping by Mikael Granlund, who skated right up the middle between Boeser and Miller, undressed Hronek, and tucked the puck around DeSmith.
- “It’s not soft,” said Tocchet, who has repeatedly avoided calling anyone on his team ‘soft,’ “but we’ve got to confront. You can’t let the guy just skate through the middle of the ice.”
- “It’s four-on-four, the guys that were out there can’t give up a goal that quickly at the start of the period,” said Boeser. “That’s on us.”
- Compounding the issue was Tyler Myers, who took a minor penalty immediately off the ensuing faceoff. The Sharks capitalized, taking a two-goal lead off the stick of Cole. The defenceman tried to clear a rebound, but Mike Hoffman pushed his stick into the puck, causing him to shoot it into the net for the ol’ Ian Cole own goal.
- The Canucks finally seemed to wake up when Elias Pettersson threw a big hit on Calen Addison. Matt Benning — nephew of Jim Benning — took exception and threw a cheap shot on Pettersson, shoving him from behind into the boards, leading to a massive near-line-brawl scrum. If a fourth-line forward had made that hit, everyone would be talking about him dragging the Canucks into the fight.
- Benning clearly thought that the Pettersson hit was dirty, which it wasn’t. I haven’t seen a Benning be that wrong about Pettersson since Jim wanted Cody Glass at the 2017 NHL Entry Draft.
- Pettersson’s big hit had all of the Canucks buzzing for the rest of the third period, with even Conor Garland laying a licking on Zetterlund with a big hit, which is definitely not something Garland is known for.
- At one point, Nils Höglander got bumped up to play with Miller and Boeser, which is well deserved. In any case, Anthony Beauvillier was doing absolutely nothing on their wing, which has unfortunately become the story of Beauvillier’s season so far. One has to wonder if he’ll be the next player to get scratched after Kuzmenko.
- Quinn Hughes was everywhere in the offensive zone late in the third period as the Canucks pushed for the comeback. He had a whopping 29:49 in ice time and a game-high 16 shot attempts, as he tried to make something — anything — happen for the Canucks. He was, as Brennan Lee Mulligan would say, uhhh...incredible.
- With the net empty behind them for the extra attack, the Canucks got within one. Pettersson sent a pass down low to Miller, who spun in front to try a jam play that didn’t go, but Boeser was waiting at the backdoor to send the rebound, like Devon, where it belonged.
- That goal gave Boeser 15 on the season, tying him for the league lead with Nikita Kucherov. He’s already halfway to that seemingly unreachable 30-goal mark and we’re just a quarter of the way into the season.
- Miller nearly tied the game in the final seconds of the game, as a rebound off a Hronek point shot fell right at his feet in the slot, but he not only hoisted the puck over the net but right over the glass and out of play. He doubled over in anguished disbelief, as if the puck going out of play had sucker-punched him right in the gut.
- As much as the Canucks didn’t play all that great for most of the game and the end result of losing to the worst team in the NHL is less than ideal, the final minutes of this game were wildly entertaining. The Canucks need to capture some of the energy with which they played those final minutes and sprinkle them liberally throughout the other 50-odd minutes of the game and they’ll be fine.
