This was a deeply unpleasant hockey game to watch, so I can’t imagine it was all that much more pleasant to play.
The St. Louis Blues played a grinding, gritty, low-event game, which is apparently the Vancouver Canucks’ kryptonite. They got bored into making mistakes by the Philadelphia Flyers a week ago and the Blues beat them in a somewhat similar way.
It was the kind of game that desperately needed one of the Canucks’ game-breaking forwards to step up and, well, break the game. And they didn’t.
J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson had just one shot on goal each. The power play didn’t get a single shot on goal on their one opportunity. They just couldn’t get anything going.
But maybe it wasn’t their fault.
Miller and his linemates spent most of the game hard-matched against the Blues’ top line, more concerned with shutting them down than creating any offence themselves. Meanwhile, Pettersson had two linemates with a lot of speed but not a lot of offensive creativity or finish in Ilya Mikheyev and Sam Lafferty.
That’s because Andrei Kuzmenko was a healthy scratch for the fifth time this season, depriving Pettersson of one of the few wingers on the team who can think the game at the same level he does.
When you scratch a top-six forward coming off a 39-goal season and you win, you get praised for keeping players accountable and committing to a winning brand of hockey.
When you scratch that same top-six forward and lose…well, that’s when the second-guessing starts.
It’s understandable that head coach Rick Tocchet would be frustrated with Kuzmenko, whose game isn’t a great fit for his north-south template. There are times when he’s missing assignments on the forecheck or failing to pick up his man in the defensive zone and Tocchet is a strong believer in hammering those details.
But Pettersson also needs someone to play with.
Lafferty has been excellent this season as a speedy bottom-six winger but it was painful to watch him with Pettersson in this game. They were completely disconnected all game and it left Pettersson adrift with no one to support him.
Sure, Pettersson is an elite player who ought to be able to drive a line but it’s impossible for him to do it on his own, especially against a hard-checking team like the Blues. There were so many occasions where Pettersson made a clever play to escape the defensive zone or create a potential advantage in the offensive zone and the play just died because there was no one to continue what he started.
So, what are the Canucks going to do? They’re throttling one of their top players with wingers that can’t support his style of play and they’re repeatedly scratching a $5.5 million winger who had 39 goals last season. What’s the solution?
I honestly don’t know and I had a lot of time to think of ideas while I watched this game.
- Here's a sign of just how dull this game was: the NHL’s official highlight video embedded above devoted about twenty seconds of its nine-minute run time to the build-up and execution of a Nikita Zadorov wrist shot from centre ice. The shot was so uneventful that the Blues’ commentary team did not even see fit to mention that it was happening as it happened. It was a complete non-event but I guess it qualifies as a "highlight" of this game.
- It didn’t seem like the Canucks were going to have trouble scoring in this game when they got the first goal of the game just two minutes in. Instead of the top-six coming through, it was The Good Job Boys on the third line. Conor Garland fed the puck down low to Dakota Joshua, who chipped it to Teddy Blueger, who fed a wide-open Garland for a one-timer past Jordan Binnington.
- Unfortunately, the Good Job Boys were also on the ice for the first goal against. It was a broken play and Garland chased after the puck, which left a lot of open ice on the weak side that Joshua needed to fill in Garland’s stead. He didn’t but Colton Parayko did, taking a pass and using his time and space to fling a puck off the far post and in. Like the Day of the Dead opening of Spectre, it was a superb shot.
- One of the Canucks’ star players had a big performance. Unfortunately, it was Thatcher Demko, who couldn’t exactly be expected to score any goals. He did his darnedest to prevent them, though, making 30 saves on 32 shots. Thanks to Demko, the Canucks only lost by one; unfortunately, like the underside of the pillow, that’s cold comfort.
- The power play had just one opportunity in this game as the Canucks didn’t have the puck possession time or moving feet to draw more than one penalty. Garland skated in Kuzmenko’s spot on the first power play unit and it didn’t work out very well. The Canucks could barely get set up in the offensive zone and managed just two shot attempts, both point shots that went well wide. Like the time I declined that alien’s invitation to fly in his beautiful spaceship, it was a missed opportunity.
- The Canucks’ power play is 1-for-11 in the five games that Kuzmenko has been a healthy scratch. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
- While the Canucks couldn’t find another goal, they had their chances. Teddy Blueger stole a puck in front of the net and nearly tucked it five-hole on Binnington, Brock Boeser missed the net on a lovely passing play by Quinn Hughes and Miller, and Nils Höglander sent a rebound wide of the net after Hughes set up Nils Åman for a great chance in front. Like me with any DIY project, they just couldn’t finish.
- Linus Karlsson got into the lineup after a call-up from Abbotsford and a communication breakdown between him and Höglander led to the Blues’ game-winning goal. Karlsson and Höglander got their wires crossed and both went for the puck-carrier, leaving Rob Thomas all alone like it was 3 a.m. Thomas sent the puck rocketing up like a platinum record, leaving Demko no chance to stop it.
- Hughes pretty much never left the ice as the Canucks pushed for the tying goal. He had just three shifts in the final 11 minute of the game but they were long, long shifts: 2:08, 1:55, and 3:34. That last shift was the final 3:34 of the game, though he did get the benefit of a timeout in the middle of it. Those look less like shift lengths and more like song lengths on a pop-punk record.
- Those long shifts at the end of the game pushed Hughes’ ice time up to 27:43, which is a lot, but not even close to his highest of the season. In fact, it only ranks eighth.
- The Canucks haven’t had any issues bouncing back from subpar performances this season, so it’s hard to get too worked up about one loss. It is a little troubling to have this loss and the loss to the Flyers so close together — that’s the kind of combination of losses that have you looking for patterns — but we’ll see how the Canucks respond the rest of this road trip.
