The Vancouver Canucks are cursed.
How else can you explain a game like Saturday’s against the New York Rangers?
In a dogfight for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, the Canucks desperately needed a win. They played like it. For once, the Canucks dominated on the shot clock, outshooting the Rangers in every period: 11-to-1 in the first, 13-to-5 in the second, and 15-to-6 in the third.
By the end of the game, shots were 39-to-12 for the Canucks, which somehow undersells just how dominant they were. The puck was constantly in the Rangers’ end of the ice, as the Canucks poured on relentless pressure and created scoring chance after scoring chance.
But somehow the Canucks still lost 5-to-3.
Kevin Lankinen, who has been so solid for the Canucks all season, gave up four goals on 11 shots. Not that it was Lankinen’s fault: he was a victim of the curse. The goals seemed preordained by the hockey gods.
Then, who else but J.T. Miller scored the dagger into the empty net against his former team to seal the win for the Rangers.
Of course.
“Can’t really complain too much about how we played,” said Quinn Hughes. “Nine times out of ten, I think we walk away with that one. In this instance, we don’t.”
But it wasn’t enough just to lose a game that they dominated. No, that wouldn’t be sufficient for the Canucks’ curse. They also had to lose two-thirds of their first line to injury, as both Elias Pettersson and Nils Höglander left the game in the second intermission and missed the entire third period.
Pettersson had finally found his form after struggling for most of the season, putting up 4 goals and 10 points in his last 8 games heading into Saturday. Höglander, meanwhile, had found a fit with Pettersson on the top line, with 6 points in his last 5 games. Now their status is up in the air.
“I looked at Footey when Petey couldn’t go,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “Is anything else going to happen?”
Tocchet then tried to put the best face on the injuries and loss.
“It’s a test for all of us. It’s adversity,” said Tocchet. “You’ve got to learn from this stuff. It makes you better in the long run. Whether it’s bad luck or whatever, it’s something that you can learn from.”
The issue is, the Canucks don’t have a long run left this season. They only have 12 games left and are currently sitting three points back of the St. Louis Blues for the final Wild Card spot in the West and are now a point behind the Calgary Flames too, with Utah Hockey Club breathing down their necks.
The Canucks don’t have time to learn lessons right now; they need to win games.
Besides, what lesson can the Canucks learn from a game in which they worked their tails off, absolutely deserved to win, and lost anyway? Life sucks and then you die?
That’s one lesson I already knew before I watched this game.
- It’s hard to understate just how much the Canucks dominated this game. They were crushing the Rangers so thoroughly that the Rangers’ own fans gave them a Bronx cheer for their second and third shots on goal, which didn’t come until the second period. That’s the most tilted the ice can get outside of ice cross downhill races.
- Perhaps because they’ve trained for years against him in practice, the Canucks absolutely dominated J.T. Miller in the faceoff circle. The former Canuck, who is top ten in the NHL in faceoff percentage, went just 3-for-16 in the circle. Even Brock Boeser won a faceoff against Miller, which had to sting.
- Kiefer Sherwood needed just one more hit to set the all-time NHL record for most hits in a season. Unsurprisingly, he set the record just 19 seconds into the game. To be honest, it was a pretty weak hit on Carson Soucy, which might explain why Sherwood racked up a whopping 12 hits in the game, matching his season-high — which is also a franchise record — to make up for it.
- Unfortunately, Sherwood finished minus-3 in plus/minus despite his line largely controlling possession. Here’s an example of how absurd plus/minus can be sometimes: Sherwood was on the ice for just five shots against all game; four of them went in.
- Jonathan Lekkerimäki got back into the lineup and had a great game. He made a fantastic play leading up to the Canucks’ opening goal, protecting the puck through the neutral zone from the much larger Juuso Parssinen — Lekkerimäki is listed at 5’11” and 172 lbs, while Parssinen is 6’3” and 212 lbs — and set up Dakota Joshua for a shot from the slot. It was great to see him Lekkerimäking something happen out there.
- After Lekkerimäki’s rush up ice, Quinn Hughes took over, utterly destroying Matt Rempe at the point — you could practically see Rempe’s lateral malleolus explode out of his ankle. Hughes left Rempe falling endlessly into the void and jumped up the left side to fire a shot on net. Joshua jumped on the rebound, hitting the post with his first attempt, then sliding in his second.
- Shout out to the Rangers fan behind the net who gave Joshua the ol’ double deuce. Much more impactful than the single deuce.
- Igor Shesterkin seemed to be getting frustrated by the onslaught of shots, because he took a bizarre penalty, jumping Sherwood and grabbing his head with his glove. Or maybe he wasn’t frustrated and that’s just the way he is, because he grabbed Conor Garland by the leg in the Canucks’ last game against the Rangers. Perhaps he's just a grabby guy.
- The referees seemed extra sensitive to keeping this game balanced, even though the Canucks were clearly out-classing the Rangers, as they gave Jake DeBrusk one of the most confusing penalties I’ve ever seen to take the Canucks off the power play given up by Shesterkin. DeBrusk was at the net front but didn’t poke at the goaltender, only to get jumped by three Rangers. Somehow, in the midst of a scrum involving four Rangers and three Canucks that the Rangers started, DeBrusk got the only penalty. That’s “game management” for you.
- It was a red flag when the Canucks were dominating in shots but only had one goal. As the saying goes, you’ve got to make hay while the sun shines. When you don’t take advantage of tilting the ice by putting the puck in the net, you’re letting the opposing team hang around instead of kicking them out the door. They were just asking for the Rangers to score the tying goal against the flow of play.
- Sure enough, with the shots 21-to-3 for the Canucks, the Rangers tied the game on their fourth shot. Adam Fox was deep in the Canucks’ zone, cut through the slot, and tipped in a point shot from Braden Schneider.
- This was a game full of missed opportunities for the Canucks, none bigger than an out-of-nowhere 5-on-2 they got midway through the second period when the Rangers forwards picked a terrible time for a line change. Nils Höglander, who started the rush with a hit in the defensive zone, had Nils Åman and his eight career goals on his right and Brock Boeser and his 201 career goals on his left; he passed to Åman.
- The first sign of Pettersson being injured came six minutes into the second period, as he showed some clear discomfort after being waved out of the faceoff circle. He briefly left the game but returned later in the period, only to leave for good in the second intermission. It’s unclear if he suffered an injury prior to that moment — he seemed fine on his previous shift.
- It’s even less clear when Höglander got injured. He only played four shifts in the second period but there was also a lot of time spent on the power play and at 4-on-4, which might explain the lack of shifts. Still, there was an 11-minute gap between his first and second shift. He fell awkwardly after a hit by Will Borgen on his first shift — maybe something flared up from that hit.
- The third period was wild, with six goals between the two teams after just two in the opening two periods. The Rangers took a 2-1 lead off the rush when the backchecking Dakota Joshua inexplicably left Jonny Brodzinski wide open in front of the net and he finished off a centring pass from J.T. Miller.
- “Some D-zone mistakes, in the end, is what cost us,” said Joshua.
- It took ten minutes for the Canucks to reply, with former Ranger Victor Mancini getting involved in the scoring. Mancini activated off the right point, swung behind the net, then set up Drew O’Connor in the slot. O’Connor’s first shot was stopped by Shesterkin, but he sent the rebound top shelf where Grandpa hides the vintage Playboys.
- The tie lasted less than a minute. K’Andre Miller jumped up the left side of the ice and threw a puck in front that deflected in off Hughes’ skate as he tied up Brennan Othmann in front. Incredibly, it actually went off both of Hughes’ skates: if the puck had only hit his left skate, it likely would have hit the post; the second deflection off the top of his right skate is what sent it into the net. It was the biggest fluke since Captain Nappi’s.
- “The one off the skate is really, really lucky,” said Hughes. “He just chucks one in front — I mean, I’ve done that plenty of times, good play. Throw it to the net, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
- Brock Boeser, coming off an extremely clutch goal against the St. Louis Blues, clutched up again 30 seconds after Miller’s goal. He shook free of Miller behind the net, curled to the front of the net, and fooled Shesterkin, faking like he was going to go roof on the glove side only to slide it under the goaltender when he lifted his pad.
- Boeser was clutch; the rest of the Canucks were not, as they couldn’t keep the game tied for long. 37 seconds later, Mancini got caught way too deep against a Rangers rush, giving far too much of a gap to Brodzinski, who fired the puck past Lankinen. It’s the only one of the Rangers goals that it felt like Lankinen should have stopped.
- “Some guys were banged up. I thought we played a hell of a game,” said Tocchet. “Lanks, we almost pulled him, he wasn’t feeling great himself.”
- Look, if Lankinen was banged up, WHY ON EARTH WAS HE GETTING HIS 10TH START IN 11 GAMES?! Maybe him giving up four goals on 11 shots was a sign that he shouldn’t have been in net in the first place.
- The Canucks created a flurry of chances, largely due to the tireless efforts of Quinn Hughes, who skated miles in the final few minutes. Hughes tried to set up a net-crashing Jake DeBrusk in the final seconds but his centring pass was blocked by Adam Fox. J.T. Miller jumped on the loose puck and fired it the length of the ice into the empty net. Game over, man, game over.
- What a kick in the teeth.
- “I thought we shot ourselves in the foot at the end, which is too bad, because I thought we probably played one of our better games we’ve played all year,” said Hughes. “We’ve got Petey and Chytil out, our one and two, and then Högs goes down. We’ve got guys stepping up, we’ve got guys playing with heart, can’t really complain too much about any of that. But it’s hockey. Sometimes you’re going to lose some that you probably feel like you should win. We’ve been on the other side of that this year as well.”
