This whole giving-up-a-lead-in-the-third-period-and-losing-in-overtime thing is getting old in a hurry. This was the fourth time this season that the Canucks took a lead into the third period and subsequently lost.
But that’s not the story of this game. The story of this game is that the Dallas Stars arena DJ trolled the Canucks and their fans by playing Nickelback during the second period. Only Nickelback. During the entire period.
Sure, it meant assaulting their own fans in their own arena with Chad Kroeger and co.’s particular brand of pop-grunge (190% of their fans never want to hear Nickelback again), but at least they totally got us, right?
Well the jokes on you, Dallas: a lot of Canadians like Nickelback. Take that!
Wait.
I think I trolled myself when I watched this game.
- I’m going to be charitable and call the refereeing in this game uneven. Sure, there was the missed high stick by Jyrki Jokipakka that sent Jannik Hansen bleeding to the locker room and the pick play that led to the Stars’ third goal and the blatant hook on Radim Vrbata that took a scoring chance...but there was also the soft as butter penalty shot call for Alex Burrows and a wealth of missed calls that benefited the Canucks. So, uneven. Like, a sumo wrestler and a toddler on opposite sides of a teeter-totter uneven. Canada vs New Zealand in rugby uneven. Not divisible by two uneven.
- Burrows scored on a penalty shot for the first time in his career, but it was the second time his move worked this season, as he previously busted it out in the Canucks’ lone shootout win. Wait, Burrows has a move other than Blue Steel? I shall dub this move “Magnum” (Dear god, it’s beautiful).
- Ryan Miller was so friggin’ good in this game, except for when he wasn’t. His start to the game was stunning, stoning the Stars at every opportunity, but then he gave up an incredibly weak game-tying goal on a long, weak Patrick Sharp wristshot. It was ugly as sin, assuming that sin was committed by Mac from “Mac and Me.” Okay, maybe not that ugly.
- Alex Edler put the Canucks back in the lead with a little bit of misdirection on the power play. After two attempted slap passes into the slot, the Stars must have expected another when Edler wound up for a third time; instead, he just wired his slapshot like a telegram to the back of the net: “-.- .- -... --- --- --”.
- Jake Virtanen still hasn’t shown anything offensively, but he can certainly crush people. He obliterated Valeri Nichushkin behind the Canucks’ net in the second period. Nichushkin is 6’4”, 200+ lbs. Virtanen felled him like a tree. They can’t send him back to Junior, because he’s going to kill some poor little teenager if they do.
- With just a one-goal lead heading into the third, the Canucks seemed vulnerable, but then the Sedins and Radim Vrbata scored 10 seconds into the period. Suddenly, the Canucks looked invulnerable, but we should have known better: like Superman, the Canucks were just nigh-invulnerable and the Stars wear Kryptonite green.
- As long as it keeps happening, we’re going to keep mentioning it: Willie Desjardins keeps reducing the ice time of his young players in the third period and the Canucks keep giving up leads. And, because correlation definitely always implies causation, Desjardins’ misuse of his youth is the only reason the Canucks lost.
- Jake Virtanen played a regular shift in the third period, finishing with 4:25 in the final frame, but Sven Baertschi played 1:40, while Jared McCann and Brendan Gaunce each played 1:33. To be fair, McCann and Gaunce got crushed possession-wise, with the two worst corsi percentages of the game, but Baertschi once again led all Canucks’ forwards in corsi, despite Jamie Benn being the Dallas forward he faced the most. Seriously, the puck spends a lot more time in the offensive zone when Baertschi is on the ice, which seems like it might have been nice in that third period.
- I thought I would like 3-on-3 overtime, but it turns out the Canucks are bad at it, so I hate it.
-
When the reigning Art Ross winner, who entered the game with 8 goals in 9 games, has the puck in overtime, you have to close on him hard and prevent him from shooting the puck cleanly. Bo Horvat didn’t do that, partly because Yannick Weber had to cut in front of him to stick with his check, so Jamie Benn had all sorts of time to pick a corner and beat Miller. That’s the difficulty of 3-on-3: most teams seem to be going man-on-man defensively, where the better option might have been for Horvat and Weber to switch checks, something more likely to happen at 5-on-5.
