If you had asked me prior to last night’s game against the Kings what the tone of my blog would be like if the Canucks were to lose to LA for the third time this year I would have said it would have been extremely critical of the team and that losing to the worst team in the Conference was completely unacceptable.
Losing to the worst team in the Conference is, once again, and now X3, absolutely unacceptable. However, the team that lost last night 4-3 was so deserving of a better fate it was almost comical.
How can you be overly critical after witnessing one of the Canuck’s best performances in the last year and a half? Yes, there were too many giveaways in the defensive end that ended up behind Roberto Luongo, but the Kings were about as opportunistic as one team could ever be while the Canucks were dominant in puck possession and scoring chances only to be stoned by BC boy Jason Labarbera.
The boys in blue had enough scoring chances in this game to last them 2 weeks under normal circumstances … last night was anything but normal.
The score could easily have been 2-0 for the home side less than 1 ½ minutes into this game. Henrik Sedin and Taylor Pyatt had golden opportunities on the first shift and Alex Burrows, coming off the bench to replace Pyatt, found himself with the puck on a breakaway only to be denied by a very patient Labarbera.
The final tallies in shots showed an almost 2-1 advantage: Canucks 46 -24. The Canucks directed another 33 towards the net that were either blocked or just missed the target. I had the scoring chances at a ridiculous 27 to 9, and 14 of those as high quality ones.
It was just one of those games where you have to shrug your shoulders and move on … excrement happens and it definitely did last night at GM Place. Not only could the Canuck’s have scored a ton of goals and didn’t, but the Kings were able to score on almost half of their opportunities, getting their 3-0 lead on only 9 shots against Roberto Luongo.
Luongo certainly wasn’t at his best, especially in the rebound-control department, but you certainly can’t lay the blame at his feet. The kings capitalized on a few defensive breakdowns and the Canucks failed to do so with a plethora of them. Lui was as surprised as the rest of us at how the LA players managed to find themselves at the right place at the right time to bang in some fairly easy looking goals.
Mattias Ohlund returned to the lineup after missing 11 games with a concussion and continued right where he left off before Christmas with some more excellent play, especially in the offensive end however he was no slouch in his own end either. So far, in my estimation, this has really been a solid bounce-back for the veteran Dman after it looked like the game may have been starting to pass him by the previous two years.
While the return of Ohlund was much needed, it ended up being in exchange for shut-down guy extraordinaire Willie Mitchell, who had to sit out the game with back spasms. Supposedly he has been very sore for the last 9 games or so and had to have someone tie up his skates prior to the Detroit game on Thursday before he went out and logged over 27 minutes of ice time.
Every team goes through injury problems, but it sure would be nice to have our full compliment of defenseman in the lineup. I believe there is yet to be a single game this year that we have seen the top 4 all in a game together and our man-games-lost stats are way up there … hopefully we’ll get some pay-back once the playoffs roll around.
The Kris Beech experiment seems to be in the waning moments as he was moved to the 4th line after two shifts of centering Markus Naslund and Mason Raymond. He did set up Brad Isbister for the Canucks first goal of the night that closed the deficit to 3-1 in the second, but overall, the waiver-wire pick up from Columbus has been far less than what this team needs in the second-line role.
Trevor Linden was given Beech’s spot, and for the second straight game really showed some good jump with a lot of smart decisions. There actually seemed to be a little bit of chemistry on that line and I thought they ended up being the Canuck’s best trio on the night. I would be shocked if Vigneault doesn’t keep Linden with Naslund and Raymond tomorrow against Minnesota.
The evening was kicked off with a tribute recognizing Naslund’s 1000th game. These things are usually pretty stale and same-old, same-old, but I thought it was pretty good as they just had quotes from his team mates, versus the usual highlight packages of great plays. The best quote went to Brendan Morrison who said that his back was still sore after carrying him and Bertuzzi for all those West Coast Express years and it got a good laugh out of Naslund.
As mentioned, losing 3 in a row to the worst team in the league is nothing short of unacceptable, but this game was no where near as disappointing as the first two losses to LA were. Having said that, every point is so important and no rocket scientist degree is required to understand what 4 or 6 more points in the standings would look like for this team right now.
Two years ago the Canucks lost all 4 games against the last place St Louis Blues and ended up losing their post season invitation because of those losses. This is looking eerily similar. LA has won 19 games all year and almost 15% of those have come against us. They have won 8 road games, and 25% of those have been here in Vancouver.
Currently the Canucks are only one point out of the division lead and the much needed 3rd seed in the conference, but look down and you see that they are only 3 points out of being in 9th place on the outside looking in. I truly believe that this team is not in any real danger of missing the playoffs, but these games could be the difference in having home ice once April rolls around.
The Grades …
A Ohlund, Kesler
B Krajicek, Weaver, Naslund, Raymond, Linden, Burrows
C+ Luongo, Salo, Edler, Miller, Henrik, Daniel, Pyatt, Cooke
C Beech, Cowan, Isbister
Minnesota arrives in town tomorrow to resume the division rivalry and bring the battle for first back to a face-to-face encounter versus scoreboard watching. Always an important match-up, this one will see the Canucks trying to snap out of some disturbing trends.
They have now lost 5 of their last 6 games, have lost 3 in a row for the first time all year, and have not had a regulation win since Jan 3rd against the Rangers; and even that game was a less than spectacular performance. This team needs wins if they are going to remain where they should be in the standings … only so much mediocrity can be tolerated before things get out of hand. Hopefully the importance of the battle with the Wild will lead to be better results and get them back to their winning ways.
.
.
.
Join the Discussion:
»