For one whole game, it felt like the Vancouver Canucks were a good team capable of great things.
On Monday, they took a three-goal lead in the first period and played sound defensive hockey the rest of the way in front of Thatcher Demko, who recorded his first career regular season shutout. It was against the Winnipeg Jets too, the second-best team in the all-Canadian North Division so far this season.
On Tuesday, the bubble burst. It’s not that the Canucks were outright terrible; they just very obviously were not as good as the Jets.
It doesn’t help that Braden Holtby is making his .897 save percentage from last season look less like a one-year dip and more like a sign for what was to come. He has an .893 save percentage so far this season and has given up at least three goals in nine of his 11 starts. He’s given up four or more goals in six of his starts — more than half.
It’s concerning.
It also shouldn’t be surprising. Holtby is on the wrong side of 30 and his game has been trending downwards for several seasons. The Canucks were hoping that working with goaltending coach Ian Clark would help Holtby bounce back to his Vezina-caliber form from several years ago, but that was always a gamble.
It was also an expensive gamble. Holtby’s two-year deal worth $4.3 million per year isn’t looking great right now.
For context, Holtby’s .893 save percentage is the worst by any Canucks goaltender that has played at least 10 games in a season since Dan Cloutier’s .892 save percentage over 13 games in 2005-06, a season in which Cloutier dealt with a concussion, whiplash, an ACL tear, and knee surgery.
Let’s be clear: the Canucks have not given Holtby much help in front of him this season. He faces an average of 33 shots per game, one of the highest shot rates against in the NHL. On Tuesday night in Winnipeg, he once again faced a bevy of odd-man rushes and chances off of defensive zone turnovers.
Even considering that environment, however, Holtby hasn’t been good enough and that was certainly true on Tuesday.
“I have to make those stops tonight, that’s about as simple as it gets,” said Holtby after the game. “Back-to-back, a game we felt we needed to win, myself and the rest of us, we need to be better.”
At least Holtby can take comfort that he’s not the only one-time Vezina winner who is struggling this season. Carey Price also has an .893 save percentage this season. Fun fact: the latest Vegas odds give Price the same chance at winning the Vezina Trophy this season as Connor Hellebuyck. Wild.
Meanwhile, the odds are very good that I watched this game. I wouldn’t bet against it.
- After the game, head coach Travis Green was quick to say that he wasn’t going to pin this loss on his goaltender, which is fair. The Canucks only scored two goals, which isn’t going to be enough to win most nights. While they managed 32 shots on goal, quality scoring chances were few and far between.
- Green’s diagnosis: they weren’t hard enough on the puck. “Be formless — shapeless — like water,” said Bruce Lee. “Water can flow or it can crash — be water, my friend.” Regrettably, the Canucks did a little too much flowing and not enough crashing.
- “I thought we lost way too many puck battles tonight, I thought we were a little soft when we had the puck at times, and that was the difference in the game,” said Green. “It was a big difference. We tracked those things from the night before and for me that was the major difference in the game.”
- Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller both said that the effort level wasn’t where it needed to be. “We have to bring a better effort than what we did today to be able to win,” said Pettersson and he’s not wrong. The Canucks simply are not good enough to win unless every player on the ice is putting everything they have out on the ice, which is a pretty exhausting way to go through a season.
- “We get a chance to hang around a game, 3-2 going into the third, we need to come out with at least a point today — at least put a better effort on the ice than that,” said Miller. “We’re not in position to not bring your best. We need to play our best 9 times out of 10 and we’ve shown that even when we do play our best, it’s hard to win. No excuses, we need to be better and push ourselves.”
- Again, Miller isn’t wrong, but it’s pretty frustrating to keep hearing from him that the Canucks need more effort when he’s been one of the players that hasn’t always given his best effort. For example, on the first goal he skated hard through the neutral zone on the backcheck, but then stopped skating at the blue line and didn’t take Mason Appleton at the backdoor. As a result, he could only hack Appleton down as he scored on an Adam Lowry rebound.
- To be fair to Miller, he was at the end of a shift and Travis Hamonic played the 3-on-2 wishier and washier than Charlie Brown. Instead of making a firm play on Lowry driving up the middle, he stayed in no man’s land between Lowry and Appleton, checking neither. If Hamonic was more decisive on Lowry, perhaps Miller would have made a stronger play on Appleton. Of course, that doesn’t explain Miller coasting from the blue line, but I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
- One player crashed like water in this game: Alex Edler. He bulldozed Mark Scheifele midway through the first period at the Canucks blueline. By the NHL’s guidelines, it was a clean hit, driving through Scheifele’s chest as he reached for the puck, but he definitely made some head contact. Like when Bernardo killed Riff, the Jets weren’t happy and were spoiling for a fight.
- Elias Pettersson tied the game by doing what he’s done all season: hitting the post and crossbar. After a great play by Brock Boeser to be first to the puck and find Pettersson, he sent a wicked wrist shot that hit both irons like the Two-Gun Kid, going off both the post and the crossbar before hitting Laurent Boissoit’s back and rolling into the net.
- Quinn Hughes had a signature shift towards the end of the first period, wheeling around the offensive zone, making opposing players’ knees buckle with his quick changes of direction, and creating some dangerous chances. By the end of it, Nikolaj Ehlers resorted to just giving him a big hug, either because he fell in love or because he was so winded by the stops and starts that he needed to lean on something to stay upright.
- If only Hughes had been on the ice with Pettersson and Boeser for this shift instead of the bottom-six. Jay Beagle came on the ice for Brandon Sutter as the shift came to an end and literally booted the puck when he got a pass in the slot, ending the offensive zone possession.
- The first period ended in crushing fashion for the Canucks. With seconds left to play, Sutter watched a puck slide past him agonizingly slowly, then tried to recover and, instead of swatting the puck to the sideboards with the seconds ticking off the clock, he hit it towards the middle where a hard-charging Matthieu Perreault stole it and beat Holtby with a backhand with 2.6 seconds left.
- Kyle Connor extended the lead to 3-1 on the power play. As Holtby came across to challenge Connor, he had more holes in him than Huckleberry Hound after getting repeatedly shot by a lion with a revolver. Connor picked one, beating Holtby five-hole.
- “It’s almost thinking a little too much, I’m trying to do too much, expecting a good play instead of staying tight and reaching out,” said Holtby. “Trying too hard to make the big save, I guess. Mentally, that just can’t happen. It’s on me to be better in those aspects.”
- The Canucks got a last-second goal of their own at the end of the second period using an unusual power play setup. Pettersson was in the bumper position in the middle, while Miller took his usual spot at the right faceoff circle. Miller showed that he can drill a one-timer too, sending a pass from Hughes past Brossoit’s blocker with 4.7 seconds on the clock.
- Unfortunately, the Canucks weren’t able to build on the late goal in the third period. While they couldn’t put another puck in the net, Pettersson did put a glove in the net. Evidently feeling he was being interfered with by Josh Morrissey, he clamped his arm down on Morrissey’s glove, pulling it right off his hand then chucking it to the ice before giving it a little tap through Brossoit’s legs into the net.
- Petey was slightly more petty than the last time he stole someone’s glove.
- The fourth goal was a weird one. Holtby made a save, then tried to dive on the puck. In doing so, he pushed himself completely out of his crease, with one major issue: he didn’t have the puck. Blake Wheeler sent the puck to Paul Stastny in front and he had a wide-open net. While the skaters were scrambling in front of him, Holtby did himself no favours.
- “I thought it was under me. I didn’t see it squirt loose,” said Holtby. “Those plays, it usually takes the ref a second or two to make sure it’s covered, so I didn’t want to move. By the time that time passed, I looked and it was back in front.”
- At one point with about six minutes remaining in the game, Miller yelled some rather crass instructions to Hamonic, evidently wanting the defenceman to“f***ing move” into the middle of the ice to receive a pass instead of standing along the boards at the blueline. It was jarring and even John Shorthouse skipped a beat in the flow of his play-by-play.
- Wheeler added an empty net goal to make it 5-2 and that’s all she wrote. And that’s all I’m writing. Sigh.
