“Very poor.”
That was Canucks head coach Travis Green’s blunt assessment of how his team played on Wednesday night against the Montreal Canadiens.
For someone who has a tendency for understatement in post-game interviews, that’s a stinging rebuke from Green. He wasn’t done either.
“We just had a lot of players that didn’t play very well,” he said. “We’re not a team that can bring a C, D-game — not many teams in the NHL are — and get away with a point or a win. We deserved exactly what we got tonight.”
That’s been a frequent refrain from Green after losses: in order to win, every player on the team needs to bring their A-game. The best teams in the NHL are sometimes able to coast to a win because of their depth of talent. The Canucks can’t. Unless, to a man, they outwork the other team, the Canucks can’t win games and that’s an exhausting way to go through a season.
On Wednesday, the Canucks didn’t outwork the Canadiens. Not even close.
“They came out hungrier right from the start and they outworked us tonight, that’s all there is to it, ” said Brock Boeser, who had the Canucks’ lone goal. “Everyone in the room can say they’re not happy with that performance. We know how we can play and we have the expectation to play a lot better than that and we know our standard. That’s unacceptable.”
The Canucks didn’t look like the same team that had just rattled off three wins in a row, if only by the skin of their teeth. They looked a lot more like the team that struggled so much in January and early February, giving up 45 shots on goal and taking five minor penalties.
Things started to go wrong from the opening puck drop, as the Canadiens swarmed the Canucks like honeybees on a hornet and the Canucks had no defence — aside from another fantastic performance from Thatcher Demko.
It’s not a good sign when your goaltender had a legitimately great game and was clearly your best player, and you still gave up five goals.
“I thought the first period, we looked extremely slow and I didn't think we passed the puck well all night,” said Green. “We had simple passes that you should be able to make at any given time that we didn't execute.”
The Canadiens, on the other hand, had no trouble executing. They summarily executed the Canucks when I watched this game.
- The game had a weird 8:00 pm start time so that it wouldn’t overlap with Sportsnet’s national broadcast of the Ottawa Senators at Edmonton Oilers. Obviously, the Canucks' poor start was because it felt like it was already the second period, and we all know how bad they’ve been in second periods this season.
- The Canucks were even gifted with an early power play, but couldn’t manage a shot on goal. They had just one good scoring chance in the first period and it came shorthanded on a rush by Brandon Sutter. Everything else was all Montreal.
- Whether because he was trying to get his team going or because he was venting his own frustrations, J.T. Miller dropped the gloves with Ben Chiarot off a neutral zone faceoff. Miller just ignored the dropped puck and exchanged punches with Chiarot, who angrily threw his helmet down the tunnel after the fight because he injured his hand on Miller’s visor. He didn’t return to the game.
- It was an odd choice for Miller because he was the Canucks’ number one centre with Elias Pettersson out of the lineup and Brandon Sutter had already left the bench (though he would return in the second period). That left the team with just two centres. Adam Gaudette had to shift back to centre to end the period.
- Both Shea Weber and Phil Danault claimed that Chiarot fighting Miller sparked the team, which seems extraordinarily silly considering the Canadiens were out-shooting the Canucks 13-3 at the time of the fight. The Canadiens were already a roaring bonfire and definitely didn’t need any additional sparks. It’s likely they just wanted to feel better about Chiarot injuring himself so pointlessly, so they imagined that there was a point to it after all.
- The Canadiens opened the scoring a few minutes after the fight but that just seemed inevitable. It was their 15th shot of the period.
- The 1-0 goal was of a piece with the rest of the game. The Canucks got control of the puck in the defensive zone — in this case, Nate Schmidt — and were immediately surrounded by hardworking Canadien forecheckers — in this case, Tyler Toffoli and Brendan Gallagher. Schmidt coughed up the puck and Toffoli got it out to Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who was left open by Bo Horvat as he tried to help out his defenceman. As Horvat tried to recover, he screened Demko, who was helpless to stop Kotkaniemi’s slap shot.
- The score was still just 1-0 after the first period thanks to how outstanding Demko was, making 15 saves on 16 shots, so the Canucks still had the opportunity to come back in this game. Like Pope Gregory I, Demko gave them the chance.
- They didn’t do anything with the chance. Two minutes into the second period, Jordie Benn made the worst pinch since Lone Star. J.T. Miller, covering for Benn, didn’t see Corey Perry behind him. On the resultant 2-on-1, Perry took a pass from Paul Byron and had a clear path to deke right around Demko.
- The Canucks got one back thanks to a far more effective power play that wasted no time throwing pucks on net instead of looking for a perfect play. As a result, they made a perfect play. Miller protected the puck down the right boards, then sent a pass to Quinn Hughes at the point, who made a lovely one-touch pass to Boeser, putting it in the perfect spot for a one-timer.
- There weren’t a lot of good things to talk about, so let’s just take a moment to enjoy Boeser’s perfect shot. It doesn’t get any better than this: there’s no wobble on that puck whatsoever — it just goes straight over Carey Price’s shoulder, right by his head where there’s no possible way for him to get his glove up in time. It’s mesmerizing.
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- Unfortunately, the Canucks couldn’t build on Boeser’s goal and Shea Weber matched it with a rocket of a one-timer of his own to restore the two-goal lead. Later in the third period, Jeff Petry beat him with a wrist shot top corner to make it 4-1. Then Danault finished off a rebound to cap it off at 5-1.
- Throughout it all, Demko kept bailing out his teammates, stopping wraparounds, 2-on-1s, shorthanded breakaways, the works. The players in front of him did nothing to deserve it, but Demko did his absolute best to keep them in this game as long as possible.
- One of the few skaters that actually looked good in this game was Jayce Hawryluk. His best shift came in the third period, where he set up Tyler Myers with a nifty backhand pass, then drove the net as Myers shot. The puck just rolled wide of the post and Hawryluk kept up his puck pursuit. Even when he lost his stick, he barreled into Brett Kulak to free up the puck, but Myers was unable to pick it up. It was one of the few give-a-damn sequences in the entire game for the Canucks.
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- “I don't think it was very hard to look like you had more jump than a lot of the guys in our lineup. We didn't have a lot of jump with our team,” said Green. “I'm not gonna sit here and start saying that we had a bunch of guys play well in a 5-1 loss but if you're asking me about Hawryluk, I thought he was alright tonight.”
- Honestly, from the master of understatement, that is glowing praise for Hawryluk, particularly, as he said, in a 5-1 loss. You take what you can get.
