VANCOUVER — After parting ways with Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen just before the March 1 trade deadline, the Vancouver Canucks’ direction going forward finally seemed clear. Whatever you call it—rebuilding, retooling—the focus this season was no longer squarely on somehow squeaking into the playoffs.
And yet, to the frustration of at least a sizeable portion of the fan base, the Canucks were still picking up points. They’d lost three of five games since the March 1 deadline, but they’d managed to snap up loser points in two of them.
On Saturday, facing the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Canucks briefly looked as if they might be set to grab, at the very least, a point for a fifth consecutive game. The Penguins looked sluggish at the start, though you could hardly blame them: the team was playing its third game in four days, having most recently beaten the Edmonton Oilers in a shootout the night before.
Canucks captain Henrik Sedin attributed the loss to a difference in speed: the Canucks simply couldn’t keep up with the Penguins.
“I still believe it’s a team that, if we can play a little bit quicker, we can get a lot more chances against this team,” he said. “But I don’t think we’re quick enough right now with the passes.”
Before the midpoint of the first period, the Canucks had a goal taken back after Michael Chaput tipped a goal-line pass from Daniel Sedin past Matt Murray. A Pittsburgh challenge led to the reversal of the call on the ice, which spurred a round of hearty boos from the home crowd.
“From my point of view, it should’ve been a goal, I think, but the refs thought otherwise,” Chaput said, adding that he felt the disallowed goal might have been the turning point in the game. “The momentum would have been on our side, and I think they kind of got some energy from that.”
Pittsburgh had consecutive strong chances in the Canucks’ end as the first period wound down. Their best chance was saved by former Penguin Jayson Megna, who extricated the puck from behind Ryan Miller inches from the goal line.
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The Penguins entered the second period with more energy than the first, taking over the shots-on-goal contest after ending the first period with only a one-shot edge over the Canucks.
After an extended stretch without whistles, Sidney Crosby earned the game’s first power play, intercepting a clearing attempt and then drawing a hooking penalty from Sven Baertschi. Four minutes later, Crosby drew a second penalty—this time a slashing call on Luca Sbisa. The Penguins were able to maintain possession for what seemed like a comically long period of time before Miller snatched a Conor Sheary shot out of the air to draw a whistle.
On the subsequent power play, Phil Kessel was left shaking his head wondering how the puck stayed out after his shot ended up beneath a sprawled-out Ryan Miller, whose strong play was largely responsible for the Canucks escaping two penalty kills unscathed.
With just under four minutes remaining in the second, an Ian Cole shot from the Canucks’ blue line beat Miller blocker-side thanks in large part to a screen from Oskar Sundqvist.
Pittsburgh very nearly doubled their lead late in the second, with another dazzling save by Miller being the difference—his 34th save through 40 minutes.
“I thought we were quicker in the first period than we were in the second,” Sedin said. “We just weren’t able to get pucks up the ice, and we turned a lot of pucks over, so that was the difference.”
Entering the third period on a power play, the Canucks momentarily appeared to tie the game—at least until it became clear Sven Baertschi had knocked the puck out of the air with a high stick.
With the help of a power play following a Nikita Tryamkin penalty, Pittsburgh broke the 40-shot threshold midway through the third period.
“It doesn’t surprise me if we get outshot, like 35 or 25 or that,” said Vancouver coach Willie Desjardins. “But over 40—we gotta keep it under that.”
With only three minutes remaining, Jake Guentzel doubled Pittsburgh’s lead. Miller soon left his net to give the Canucks an extra attacker, and the Penguins increased their margin to three with just over a minute remaining.
“It’s been the case for some games this year where I think it feels like we’re always waiting for something to happen,” Sedin said of his team’s third-period performance. “When you do that, you’re skating the wrong way. And when you turn the puck over then it’s—they’re gonna come back and hurt you. They had a lot of three-on-twos, two-on-ones in the third where we were hoping for something to happen, and they capitalized.”
With the shutout, Murray completed 120 minutes of scoreless hockey against the Canucks this season.
Miller, despite the loss, made 45 saves—nine coming during Vancouver penalty kills—good for a goals-against average of .957 on the night. Sedin said he’d put on a clinic, while Chaput felt the whole team would need to perform better to live up to the standard the Canucks’ goaltender has been setting.
“He’s been amazing these past few games, even all year. He’s seeing the puck, he’s making some huge saves for us,” Chaput said. “We’ve just got to score some goals. He’s doing the job for us. We’ve got to do it for him.”
It would be easy to argue that Vancouver has been remarkably unlucky of late: the team was missing both Markus Granlund and Chris Tanev to food poisoning on Saturday, while newcomer Nikolay Goldobin missed his second game to an illness, and Loui Eriksson remains out with a lower body injury—and that’s not to mention the mumps saga.
“I get these calls late at night, and I always know when I get that call that it’s not a good sign,” said Desjardins, who explained that Tanev had made a trip to the ER, while Granlund showed up to Rogers Arena but could barely walk.
But with several Canucks playing through injuries, and youngsters like Goldobin looking to prove themselves, definitive losses like the one on Saturday night might just allow for more freedom going forward. Which means, at least for fans hoping to see their team slide further down the standings, the Canucks failing to steal a loser point versus is good news, if not good luck.
