SAN JOSE, Calif. – In a statement game, the Vancouver Canucks shouted: “Our power play sucks!” Other than that, they were fine.
But if they’d played any better, they might have lost by a touchdown.
Needing a response to a slow, sloppy performance Thursday in Anaheim and expected by coach Travis Green to be better on Saturday, the Canucks dominated the San Jose Sharks over the final two periods but surrendered a critical shorthanded goal before an absurd final two minutes ended with a 5-0 Vancouver loss.
The Sharks scored twice into an empty net and once, by Chris Tierney, on a penalty shot with 12.2 seconds remaining as the Canucks played well enough to win but lost by five. Shots were 41-31 for Vancouver, 31-17 over the final 40 minutes.
Including the 4-1 debacle against the Ducks two nights earlier, the Canucks have been outscored 9-1 in California and now they get to play the Golden State’s best team, visiting the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday. Luckily, the National Hockey League no longer has a team in Oakland.
“Last 45 or 50 minutes, we outshot that team badly, which is not easy to do in this rink,” Canucks winger Daniel Sedin said. “We’ve got to stay positive about it. The process is so important. But there are games when good teams just put their foot down and make sure the losing stops. We’ve got to make sure we stop the losing.”
“I think we played better than the score showed,” defenceman Alex Edler said. “They were coming hard the first 10 minutes, but after that I thought we were better. We did a lot of good things in the second and third periods. We battled harder, helped each other better. We have five-man units all over the ice. It’s something we can build on.”
The problem is whatever the Canucks’ build is liable to sink in the quicksand of their power play.
For more than three years the power play has been debilitating. It’s not an elephant in the room for the Canucks. It is the room. They have lived uncomfortably and lost frequently because their man-advantage unit fails them in key games and undermines other improvements.
Two of three garbage-time goals for San Jose were, technically, scored shorthanded because Sharks forward Timo Meier was issued a major penalty and game misconduct with 1:23 remaining for hitting the Canucks’ Michael Del Zotto in the face with the butt of his stick.
But the legitimate shorthanded goal that crushed the Canucks came at 15:59 of the second period when the Sharks, clinging to a fluky 1-0 lead and under constant pressure at even strength, got a breakaway goal from Logan Couture after a weak giveaway by Vancouver captain Henrik Sedin.
The Canucks were outshooting the Sharks 13-2 in the middle period before Joel Ward’s slashing penalty put Vancouver on the power play. Instead of pulling even, the Canucks fell further behind when Couture slipped a backhand deke between Vancouver goalie Jacob Markstrom’s pads.
But that’s the Canucks power play for you.
Since the start of the 2015-16 season, Vancouver’s power play is the worst in the NHL at 15 per cent. It’s a full point below the next poorest team, the Colorado Avalanche, and has produced just 81 goals in 181 games.
This season, the Canucks’ power play is ranked 27th with a 14.1 per cent success rate. It has generated 10 goals in 17 games, but five of those man-advantage goals were bunched into two nights, so the power play has scored in only seven games. Saturday was the 10th time Vancouver’s power play was blanked.
The Canucks are 4-5-1 in those games. They’re 4-2-1 when the power play scores.
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Over 26 months, the Canucks have changed head coaches, changed assistants who run the power play, and juggled on-ice personnel. Four of the five skaters signed as free agents in July were supposed to bring power-play skills to Vancouver and still the power play continues to cost the Canucks games.
“Your plan is always to have an effective power play,” one of the newcomers, Sam Gagner, said when asked if he’s surprised by the Canucks’ struggles with the man-advantage. “I don’t think we should ever expect it to go poorly or have a negative mindset going into a man-advantage. We just have to continue to work through it, talk through it and make sure we’re doing the right things. The first couple of power plays were OK tonight, and then it went downhill.”
This season, at least, the shortage of power-play goals was offset for a while by superior Canucks penalty killing, but Vancouver’s shorthanded unit has been getting torched in November. Opposing power plays were 7-for-16 against the Canucks before the Sharks were blanked Saturday.
San Jose, of course, didn’t need its power play. All it needed was Vancouver’s.
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