Patrick Sharp scored the winner with just under six minutes remaining in the third period as the Dallas Stars dropped the Vancouver Canucks 4-2 on Thursday. Here are five takeaways.
Secondary scoring?
At the moment the Vancouver Canucks are extraordinarily reliant on Daniel and Henrik Sedin to single-handedly outscore the opposition. When it happens, Vancouver wins. When it doesn’t, the Canucks lose.
On Thursday night the Canucks scored both of their goals in a 4-2 loss with the Sedin twins on the ice, but that was all the offence the club generated. It wasn’t enough to best the high-octane, multi-faceted goal-scoring machine that is the Dallas Stars.
This iteration of the Canucks isn’t the first group to be too reliant on the Sedin twins offensively, but the trend has been extraordinarily pronounced over the past month; magnified by the Sedins playing their best hockey since 2012.
Since November 1 the Canucks have manufactured 40 total goals in 16 games and 26 of those goals have come with Henrik Sedin on the ice.
Vancouver is a top-heavy club. They have a high-end first line and a credible first pair. Like Anklyosaurus, their weak spot is the soft underbelly.
The lack of secondary scoring depth has cost the club dearly during a tough 16 game stretch in which the Canucks have emerged the victor on only four occasions.
Second pair problems
It was a rough night for Dan Hamhuis and Yannick Weber.
Alexander Edler and Chris Tanev chased the Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin line around all evening. Though the most lethal forward line in hockey controlled the run of play with ease, Edler and Tanev actually did a decent enough job keeping them to the outside and limiting their shots.
With Luca Sbisa out of the lineup with a hand injury, Vancouver’s third pair of Alex Biega and Matt Bartkowski were solid, if high-event. Biega and Bartkowski fared extremely well against the bottom end of the Stars lineup and weren’t a total liability when they got caught out against the Benn line.
Thursday night’s game was won and lost by the Stars’ middle-six forward lines, who manhandled Vancouver’s second pair all night long. Weber and Hamhuis were a -8 and a -10 in scoring chance differential on Thursday night, according to war-on-ice.com and Vancouver was outshot eight-to-one when their second pair matched up against Dallas’ second or third line.
It was appropriate, ultimately, that Patrick Sharp walked easily through Hamhuis and Weber before notching the game winner.
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Challenging times
Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins challenged the Stars’ game-winning goal on Thursday night. He wanted to check whether the play was offside. It was closer on review than it seemed at first, but it was a good goal and the right call.
“It was a close call,” Desjardins said of Thursday’s unsuccessful challenge. “That late in the game, you’re going to take a chance and see if you can get it. We knew it was close. You have to try to make a call on that one.”
Desjardins has initiated two coach’s challenges — one on Thursday, and one in mid-November in Toronto — and both occurred following extremely high-leverage third-period goal against. Are we seeing something of a strategy emerging from the Canucks, where the standard for a coach’s challenge drops somewhat when the outcome is more obviously the line? Desjardins’ comments certainly imply that.
In addition to their two unsuccessful coach’s challenges, the club has also seen two of their goals reversed by the new video review regime (though one of those challenges was initiated automatically). Like the club’s struggles in 3-on-3 situations, this season’s rule changes haven’t worked in Vancouver’s favour.
The rest controversy
Starting goaltender Ryan Miller is struggling. It’s evident from the way he’s shaking his head after goals against and it’s evident from his performance.
In 13 starts since November 1, the 35-year-old workhorse has managed a meek .890 save percentage. Vancouver has won only three of those 13 contests.
On the heels of Jacob Markstrom’s 40-save performance in Los Angeles earlier this week, you can feel the second guessing beginning. It always does in Vancouver.
Miller doesn’t’ have to wear Thursday night’s 4-2 loss to Dallas. He stopped 30 of 33 shots and was occasionally excellent against the Stars. He looked particularly sharp during the second period when Dallas kicked the Canucks’ teeth in, but only tallied once despite a flurry of five-alarm scoring chances.
He wasn’t good enough to win, though. Miller seemed to lose his net on Dallas’ first-period equalizer, couldn’t hold his post and permitted a soft, early second-period goal, and the game winner sailed right through him.
It was still, on the whole, a fine game. It just wasn’t enough to chase away the ghosts of Vancouver-goaltending-controversies-past, or to settle the wagging tongues in a hockey market that traditionally reveres the backup.
Among all NHL goaltenders only Devan Dubnyk and Sergei Bobrovsky have started more games than Miller has. They’re both under 30.
There’s no question that Miller is Vancouver’s No. 1 starter. There’s also no question that Markstrom needs to play more.
“I think so,” Canucks general manager Jim Benning told Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy when asked if Markstrom should start more often. “I talked to (head coach Willie Desjardins) about that before the game and coming off of his injury we wanted to make sure we were careful with him coming back, but he’s feeling really good right now…”
Killer instinct
The Canucks killed three penalties they took in a losing effort on Thursday. It was the first time in seven games that the Canucks’ too-permissive penalty kill managed to shutout the opposition’s power play.
And what a power play it is. The Stars are stacked and their first power-play unit is next to unstoppable. Dallas currently ranks second in the NHL with a power-play conversion rate north of 25.
Vancouver’s much-maligned penalty kill snuffed out the Stars’ usually threatening man advantage play, denying the zone ably and preventing shots with active sticks and stingy positional defence in-zone. In three power-play opportunities the Stars managed just two shots on net and were often made to look out of sorts.
Thursday’s performance was a positive sign for a group of penalty killers that will face another stiff test on Saturday when the Canucks host the Boston Bruins, the NHL’s most lethal team with the man advantage.
