In order to secure an emotional win over the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night, the Vancouver Canucks were forced to kill off a late major penalty that extended into overtime.
Nashville’s late, five-minute power play opportunity stemmed from an incident in which Canucks winger Alex Burrows was assessed a major penalty and a game misconduct for interfering with Predators forward Paul Gaustad.
Canucks defender Kevin Bieksa was also thrown out of the game after appearing to skate by and mock Gaustad while the injured Predators checker lay prone on the ice.
That wasn’t the only borderline incident in the game. In the first period Bieksa tagged Predators forward Viktor Stalberg with an illegal check to the head. It was a rather blatant violation of rule 48, and the sort of hit that Stephane Quintal’s Department of Player Safety has been most vigilant about policing.
Fortunately for them, Bieksa and Burrows narrowly escaped from Smashville without receiving supplemental discipline. But the club’s habit of undisciplined play has to be a cause for concern.
It’s enough of a concern that head coach Willie Desjardins admitted during a local radio show appearance on Wednesday evening that the topic of playing a more disciplined style was discussed by the Canucks’ “leadership group” in the wake of the latest Burrows-related controversy.
“It’s a real fine line because you have to play with a lot of emotion,” Desjardins said. “If (we) don’t have a lot of emotion we don’t have a chance. We have to keep our emotional level up and those two guys (Bieksa and Burrows) are real leaders in that area for us and they play on the edge a little bit…
“It’s something that you have to be intense with,” he continued, “but you have to keep yourself on the game.”
Playing with emotion hasn’t been this club’s issue. Staying ‘on the game’ and out of the penalty box has been.
Through 77 games the Vancouver Canucks have been whistled for 346 penalties, according to data from war-on-ice.com. Only the Columbus Blue Jackets, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Winnipeg Jets have been penalized more often.
On the flip side the Canucks have drawn a roughly league-average number of penalties, their opponents being called for 309 penalties on the year.
Put those numbers together and the Canucks have a team penalty differential that sits at minus-37 –- the fifth worst mark in the league. The only teams that have been worse by this metric are either firmly ensconced in the draft lottery (Columbus, the Arizona Coyotes, the Buffalo Sabres) or are fighting desperately for their playoff lives (Winnipeg). That’s not the sort of company a good team wants to keep.
Luckily, the club boasts the sort of stingy penalty-killing units that are capable of bailing them out in short-handed situations. The Canucks’ 85.9 percent penalty kill rate is the third best in the league, and the team is easily the league’s premiere 4-on-5 shot suppression outfit.
Even so, when you’re short-handed as often as the Canucks have been, you’re playing with fire.
The Canucks’ opponents convert on 14.1 percent of their power play opportunities, so every single penalty that the Canucks take is worth .141 goals against. It follows that the club’s lack of team-level discipline has cost them five additional goals against over the course of the year, roughly equivalent to an extra win in the standings.
It could cost the Canucks even more dearly come playoff time. The Los Angeles Kings and the Calgary Flames, Vancouver’s two most likely playoff opponents, are extraordinarily disciplined compared to Vancouver. Over the course of the season the Flames have been called for 99 fewer penalties than the Canucks, while the Kings have been assessed 53 fewer penalties.
Generally hockey fans like to believe that whistles remain in referees’ pockets come Stanley Cup playoff time, and in a macro sense that’s sort of true. Fewer penalties are called in the playoffs. It’s a hallowed tradition, like playoff beards and double overtime and emaciation.
Calls can still swing a series though. You may recall that the last time the Canucks were in the postseason they received a whopping 14 fewer power-play opportunities than their opponents –- the San Jose Sharks -– during the course of a four-game sweep. Vancouver controlled play at 5-on-5 in that series. It was, to a large extent, the massive disparity in penalties assessed and drawn that permitted the Sharks to make quick work of the Canucks.
Outside of Vancouver’s home rink there stands a statue of innovative, legendary former Canucks bench boss Roger Neilson. The statue depicts Neilson smiling and waving a white towel in mock surrender to the on-ice officials, a reference to a famous incident from the club’s run to the Stanley Cup final in 1982.
When one of the most iconic images in franchise history is a coach finding a colourful way to complain about the refereeing, it’s fair to say that it’s in the lifeblood of the organization.
For this team though the past is just that: the past. In the present and near future, it’s critical that this Canucks squad strike a better balance between playing emotional hockey and playing disciplined hockey.
