Floor collapsing under Canucks with yet another dismal loss

VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Canucks’ great free-agent auction attracted scouts or managers from 14 other National Hockey League teams on Tuesday night. But it wasn’t exactly an easy sell from Canuck players at Rogers Arena.

We wonder if the trade emissaries saw much of anything they liked from Vancouver, although they’d probably love to be able to bid on the improving San Jose Sharks, who won easily, 5-2.

With the rebuilding Canucks trying to sell off their impending unrestricted free agents ahead of the National Hockey League’s March 6 trade deadline — and listening to offers on other players — the team put on another dismal performance, surrendering three goals in four minutes early in the first period and rarely threatening the speedier Sharks after that.

Thirty-four-year-old Evander Kane, the playoffs-hardened winger who moved to the top of the Canucks’ trade block with last week’s exit of Kiefer Sherwood to the Sharks, did make himself noticeable in a second-period fight.

But dropping Sharks defenceman Timothy Liljegren with a punch was a dubious achievement as Kane’s opponent had never had a fighting major in five NHL seasons. 

The game was a step back for the Canucks, which seemed noteworthy considering how far adrift the team is already in the overall standings and how profoundly they have fallen in the last month.

“Very disappointing,” veteran centre Teddy Blueger, another of the UFA-eligible Canucks, said after his fourth game back from injury. “We're off to a great start (leading 1-0). We should be feeding off that energy, and then we just kind of make some mistakes again. I think we got scored on the next shift. It's tough to explain, but it's unacceptable just the way it goes in waves like that.

“I mean, obviously they're going to push throughout the course of the game, but we’ve got to be able to withstand that. We shouldn't be giving up three goals at a time within those short spans like we have been. It felt like they were just like a step ahead. We weren't executing, weren't coming out of our end clean, and didn’t have the same O-zone time we had the last couple of games.”

The Canucks have lost 14 of their last 15 games and through 54 contests — nearly two-thirds of their regular season — have won 11 times in regulation. The franchise has never been that inept through 60 minutes to this point in a season, the previous bottom being 14 regulation wins through 54 games, which last occurred in 1997-98 — the infamous season of Mike Keenan chaos.

Tuesday was yet another example how one bad goal against seemed to dishearten the team and lead to another.

After North Vancouver’s Macklin Celebrini wired a four-on-four one-timer past Canuck goalie Kevin Lankinen to tie it 1-1 at 1:51 — just 36 seconds after Tom Willander shot through Jake DeBrusk’s screen to give the home team the lead — defenceman Filip Hronek’s uncharacteristically awful turnover at his blue line allowed Adam Gaudette to rifle San Jose ahead at 4:43.

And just 1:12 after that, Vancouver failed again to defend the middle of the ice and Lankinen failed again to produce a save, as Tyler Toffoli whacked a shot under the goalie to make it 3-1.

The floor has collapsed under the Canucks, on the ice and, by extension, in the standings. They simply do not have the on-ice structure and execution to survive, well, almost anything.

“I mean, you're right,” Blueger said of the collapse in structure. “It's hard to explain. A system in hockey shouldn’t be crazy hard to understand; there's only a handful of templates, I guess, that teams play. We're just not executing, not sharp enough mentally. 

“I think maybe sometimes the negativity of, you know, the losing, it's kind of discouraging. But I don't think that's an excuse for us to get sucked into that. You're right, we should have a basic foundation of just being hard to play against (and) defending well, at least. You might not be able to score all the time, but you should be able to do the basics well. We're just not doing it.”

Top centre Elias Pettersson said: “I think there's a lot of things that need to be better. I think our structure can be better. I think when there’s times to make a play, we need to make a play, and then that leads to the next play and the next play. If we’re just fighting to defend and just throw it out, they get the puck again and then they keep us in the defensive zone all the time. We’ve just got to focus on what we can do better.”

Which is pretty well everything.

Coach Adam Foote hooked Lankinen after three goals on six shots and less than six minutes of playing time. 

Overused due to Thatcher Demko’s season-ending injury, Lankinen started for the fifth straight game, and ninth time in 11, and saw his season save percentage dip farther to .881, which ranks 41^st among 49 NHL goalies who have appeared in at least 20 games.

Reliever Nikita Tolopilo was a little better in net, but didn’t get much more help than Lankinen enjoyed. Shots halfway through the game were 22-13 for San Jose, which is on a 10-4-0 run and was driven as usual by Canadian Olympian and Hart Trophy candidate Celebrini.

The 19-year-old finished with a goal and three assists, giving him 78 points, nearly double his nearest teammate.

Celebrini’s spectacular development since the Sharks drafted him first-overall in 2024 actually provides some hope to the Canucks, who almost certainly will have the best draft-lottery odds for June’s sweepstakes.

But there is no one, alas, in this year’s draft projected to match the quality of Celebrini or Connor Bedard or, perhaps, even Matthew Schaefer, last year’s No. 1.

Still, the Canucks should get an elite player who can make a difference within a couple of years, and goodness knows they could use a couple of those.

San Jose eventually extended its lead to 5-1 before Hronek scored a power-play goal for Vancouver halfway through the third. But the Canuck power play still disappointed, failing on a five-on-three advantage for nearly two minutes late in the second period when the deficit was still just two goals.

“Every time we lose, it sucks,” Pettersson said. “We’ve been on that side a lot this year. We’ve just got to find a way or it’s going to be. . . it's hard to put into words. I mean, obviously we're trying. Coach is trying, we’re all trying. We're not going out to just give up. But we have to be better.”

Since returning from a 0-6-0 road trip, the Canucks are now 1-5-0 three-quarters of the way through their season-long eight-game homestand. The Anaheim Ducks visit Vancouver on Thursday.