It's like the old joke: "I'm so upset. I left two Canucks tickets on the dashboard in my car; someone broke in and left two more!"
Only, you still need to pay an arm and a leg to get into Rogers Arena these days, even as the ticket clearly isn't worth the price. Prior to Thursday night's game against the Los Angeles Kings, university students who had signed up for the Canucks' "student rush" program received a notification that tickets were available for the evening's game "starting at $179."
Student rush tickets are supposed to be heavily discounted to help students get in the door. In past seasons, those tickets have typically been $50 or less. As was pointed out by several people, including Postmedia's Patrick Johnston, you could get official resale tickets for the game for a cheaper price than the supposedly discounted student rush tickets.
Canucks fans aren't getting what they pay for
Whether Canucks fans paid for "discounted" tickets or paid full fare, they were ripped off on Thursday night. The Canucks put on a pitiful performance in a 5-1 loss to the Kings, made worse by the fact that they were hoping to bounce back from an equally dismal 6-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets a couple of nights earlier. Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise, given the Canucks have an ugly 7-9-6 record on home ice this season.
Somehow, the two losses were made even more disappointing because they came after a stirring 3-0 win over the Atlantic Division-leading Toronto Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada.
It wasn't even the first time this season the Canucks have followed up what appeared to be a statement shutout win with one of their worst games of the season.
A month ago, the Canucks shut out the reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers 4-0. Then they promptly lost 5-1 to the Boston Bruins with a performance so bad that head coach Rick Tocchet said it pissed off the coaching staff.
It's part of a larger trend this season of the Canucks being completely unable to string wins together. It's been 22 games since the Canucks last put together two wins in a row. They haven't won three games in a row since November 7.
At this point, it's hard for Canucks fans to even enjoy wins because it feels like the other shoe will drop when the puck does on the next game.
Of course, it's hard to enjoy any Canucks games right now. Even when they win, they're playing some of the most stultifyingly boring hockey in the entire NHL.
The Canucks' offence is boring and predictable
The Canucks are dead last in the NHL in shots on goal this season, with 1104 shots in 44 games — an average of 25.1 shots per game. They've had 30+ shots just once in their last 20 games and they have had just 10 games this season with 30+ shots.
It's not just the lack of shots that makes the Canucks unexciting. After all, not all shots are created equal and some are definitely more exciting than others. But the Canucks don't create scoring chances either. According to Natural Stat Trick, they're also dead last in the league with the fewest high-danger scoring chances.
At this point, the Canucks' offence is sadly predictable. They chip the puck in behind the opposing defence and try to win it back on the forecheck. if they're successful, they move the puck from low-to-high to a defenceman. If that defenceman is Quinn Hughes, he'll do something phenomenal and the Canucks might have a chance to score. If not, that defenceman will either take a point shot that will likely get blocked or send the puck down low so the forward can try to win it back again and start the whole process over.
The Canucks rarely gain the offensive zone with possession of the puck. They rarely create odd-man rushes. They rarely get the goaltender moving with east-west with cross-seam passes in the offensive zone. They rarely set up forwards in the slot or at the backdoor for clean shots at the net.
Despite a Hart-caliber season from Hughes and a collection of talented forwards, the Canucks have become boring.
Low-event hockey wasn't Tocchet's plan
Boring hockey was not what Tocchet was aiming for this season. In training camp, Tocchet preached a more up-tempo attack, saying that he wanted the team to take more risks. The intent was to create more offence after the team's goalscoring evaporated in the playoffs.
"I really want to stress a transition game,” said Tocchet. “A lot of regroups, a lot of odd-man rushes — just a lot of speed. I’d like to really put that into place.”
But it turns out you need defencemen who can actually move the puck in order to play an up-tempo, transition-heavy game. The Canucks don't have that, aside from Hughes. So now, it seems like Tocchet is taking a far more conservative approach, because he sees low-event hockey as the only way this roster can win games.
“We’ve been playing a lot of low-event games. We’re struggling to score goals. We feel we’ve got to stay in the game that way,” said Tocchet when he was asked about scratching puck-moving defenceman Erik Brännström before he was waived and sent down to the AHL. “I think when you’re a puck-moving defenceman, you’ve also got to defend."
If all of this sounds familiar, this is what happened to Travis Green just before he got fired. The former Canucks coach had the team playing an aggressive style when he first came to Vancouver but, by the end of his tenure, was playing it safe and trying to win low-event games with a defence-first approach designed to limit odd-man rushes for the opposition but also limited them for the Canucks.
It didn't work then and it isn't working now. The Canucks need to create more in transition, attack the opposing blue line with possession, and do more with the puck in the offensive zone than just take point shots with traffic. Not only would that lead to more excitement for Canucks fans but it could give them a better chance of winning some games again.
"We've got to score goals"
At least Tocchet seems to be aware of the problem. Ahead of the game against the Kings, the Canucks head coach said he wanted to see more variety in how his team created offence.
"Obviously, we've got to score goals," said Tocchet. "We did some good video on how to create...Whether you go downhill or whatever, don't defer. Don't always go low-to-high. There's times where we can take the puck to the interior or sometimes, early in the game, a good old wraparound gets you in the game."
Their work in the video room evidently didn't stick.
The good news for the Canucks is they still have 38 games to get back on track and they're still in the thick of the playoff race, just one point behind the Calgary Flames for the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference. But they need to turn things around in a hurry, not just to stay in that playoff race but to keep fans engaged in the season.
"I mean, I'm an optimistic guy and I believe in our group," said Hughes on Thursday night. "I believe in our group but, in saying that, it's game 44 and we need to be figuring out stuff out quickly."
The question is whether the Canucks can figure things out with their current personnel or if it's time for management to make a major change.
