Stick-taps and glove-drops is a recurring feature after every Canucks game giving some quick kudos and criticism before the longer I Watched This Game feature. Feel free to leave your own stick-taps and glove-drops in the comments.
Gloves dropped with Dan Girardi, whose hit on Thursday injured Brock Boeser’s game, knocking him out of this game. A Canucks game without Boeser barely counts.
Dropping the gloves with Jake Virtanen on the opening goal. After he turned the puck over in the neutral zone, Troy Stecher got the puck back and tried to bank it up the boards. As the Hurricanes brought it back in, Virtanen took a long loop in the neutral zone instead of the quick stop-and-start needed on the backcheck. He should have been the second forward back in the zone behind Bo Horvat to take the trailing defenceman. Instead, that defenceman, Brett Pesce, was open and fired the first shot of the game past Jacob Markstrom.
I’ll throw in a glove drop for Sven Baertschi, who had a chance to get back when Virtanen stopped moving his feet, but he stopped skating and coasted as well. Virtanen should have been the first back, but Baertschi had a chance to cover for him and didn’t.
A tap of the stick to Darren Archibald, who made his season debut — on his birthday, no less — against the Hurricanes. He had a solid game, getting in hard on the forecheck and playing a physical game. He was credited with four hits, dropped the gloves with Klas Dahlbeck, and created a couple scoring chances to boot. It wasn’t quite second star-worthy, but he played a good game.
Giving any Canuck at all a star in this game is being extremely generous. #Canucks pic.twitter.com/Mp7FtddvBb
— Daniel Wagner (@passittobulis) February 10, 2018
Stick-tap to the Sedins, who formed the Canucks’ best forward line of the night with Thomas Vanek and Loui Eriksson. With the Canucks struggling to make anything happen, the Sedin line had some decent possession in the offensive zone and actually looked dangerous. Did they score? No. But we’ll take what we can get.
He didn’t have a lot of help in front of him all game, but the gloves are dropped for Jacob Markstrom on the second Hurricanes goal. He got caught cheating off his post looking over his wrong shoulder and Phillip Di Giuseppe banked the puck in off his skate.
I’ll drop the gloves with Troy Stecher on the third goal. With Alex Edler cutting off the boards on the left side, Stecher should have been back in the neutral zone preventing the breakaway pass. Instead, he let Sebastian Aho sneak in behind him. Jakob Slavin hit him with a fantastic outlet pass and Aho beat Markstrom five-hole.
Alex Edler gets the gloves dropped too. After a really good stretch of games for the veteran defenceman, he and Stecher ended up on the ice for all four Carolina goals. The Canucks’ top pairing spent most of the game in the defensive zone in this game.
Dropping the gloves with Travis Green for benching Ben Hutton. He played a few shifts with Erik Gudbranson and Alex Biega in the first period, then a couple short shifts in the second, then sat for the rest of the game. He didn’t seem to do anything egregiously wrong and the rest of the Canucks’ defencemen weren’t playing well enough to keep him out, so it’s baffling. I can see the reasoning behind how Green deals with the each player, but I can’t wrap my head around his treatment of Hutton.
Tap of the stick to Reid Boucher and Michael Del Zotto on the Canucks’ lone goal. Boucher didn’t get an assist, but it was his hit on the zone entry and subsequent work along the boards that helped create the opportunity for Del Zotto, whose wrist shot from the boards pinballed off a Hurricane skate and beat Scott Darling.
Nic Dowd gets the gloves dropped on the fourth Carolina goal. He gave the puck away in the neutral zone and Justin Williams walked in and ripped the puck into the top corner. The Hurricanes out-shot the Canucks 10-to-5 when Dowd was on the ice and shot attempts were 20-to-7. In a game where most of the Canucks struggled, Dowd struggled most.
