Friday November 14 - Phoenix Coyotes 5 - Vancouver Canucks 0

On Friday night, the Vancouver Canucks had a chance to move into first place overall in the NHL with a win over the slumping Phoenix Coyotes.

But you can't win if you don't score. The Canucks were shut out for the first time this season as Martin Hanzal recorded a natural hat trick on the way to a 5-0 Coyotes win.

Here are your highlights:



Whether you call them Phoenix or Arizona, scoring against this team is proving to be a serious challenge for Vancouver: they were also shut out twice against the Coyotes last year, though both times were on the road.

On this night, the goose egg was particularly galling because the Canucks did manage to direct 35 shots on the net. Also, the Arizona netminder was backup Devan Dubnyk—a guy who got chased out of Edmonton last year and who looked like he was facing the end of his NHL career after shuffling through Nashville and Montreal.

But it was one of those nights. There weren't many quality scoring chances among those 35 shots, and as Willie Desjardins pointed out, the Coyotes are shot-blocking machines. They blocked 23 shots to Vancouver's eight over the course of the game.

Dave Tippett's coaching style hasn't changed much over the years, so I'd assume that Willie has some memories of it from his two years as an assistant coach in Dallas. To me, he sounded legitimately respectful of the Coyotes' effort in his postgame comments:



The biggest story of the game was Martin Hanzal, who has turned into the Canucks' kryptonite. As well as his three goals, he also literally drew blood when he got his stick up in Ryan Stanton's face and cut him for stitches.

Hanzal scored what proved to be the winning goal against the flow of the play in the first period. The Canucks were doing just fine, outshooting a tired Arizona club 12-3 in the frame, when he drifted a puck past Ryan Miller on a harmless-looking rush with just over five minutes left in the period—against the typically defensively-strong line of Higgins, Bonino and Burrows, no less.

Though Vancouver has been good at coming back this season after surrendering the first goal, to call Hanzal's tally deflating would be an understatement.

Vancouver might have had a chance to come back, had it not been for a controversial non-call on the second goal, where it appeared that Hanzal tippd the puck into the net with a high stick.

Ryan Miller wasn't shy about calling out the officials for that one after the game:



Apparently even Hanzal couldn't believe his good fortune:

After 2nd period interview with Hanzal he told me he didn't know how his second goal counted. #highstick #Canucks #Coyotes

— Irfaan Gaffar (@sportsnetirf) November 15, 2014

It seems the Canucks were a bit stunned that the goal stood, because they forgot to keep playing hockey. Nick Bonino lost the ensuing faceoff, then got beat by Hanzal for a loose puck that turned into his hat-trick goal. Time elapsed: nine seconds. For the first time this season, I was reminded of those days when Roberto Luongo and the team in front of him would give up goals in bunches.

Bright spots? Derek Dorsett came back from injury with a snarl in his game. He tangled twice with tough guy B.J. Crombeen: they got fighting majors the second time, but weren't really allowed to get into a full-scale scrap.

Dan Hamhuis also delivered a thunderous hip-check on Lauri Korpikoski towards the end of the third period. He has talked before about being nervous to throw those kinds of hits since injuring himself in the Milan Lucic encounter during the 2011 Stanley Cup Final, so it's great to see the play back in his repertoire.

Nick Jensen also looked pretty good on the third line with Brad Richardson and Shawn Matthias. He was noticeable for both his size and his skating and finished the night with three shots, three hits and a block. He was also even in plus/minus.

But the Canucks have just announced that both Jensen and Bobby Sanguinetti have been re-assigned to Utica. The team has four days off before its next contest, so I'll assume this means that the team is expected to keep getting healthier. Vrbata and Dorsett returned last night; seems like Kassian and Sbisa are probably close.

My biggest takeaways from Friday night:

• The Coyotes remain a frustrating team for the Canucks to play against. Willie needs to work his magic to change that mindset before the teams meet again on December 22.

• After doing a good job of bringing high emotion to most of the California road trip, Friday's game was a letdown in intensity. It's tough to get up for every game. Earlier in the season, we gave the team credit for finding ways to care about teams like Carolina but the focus wasn't really there on Friday night. Games next week against Edmonton and Anaheim should refill the team's emotional gas tank.

• Attendance last night looked pretty decent at Rogers Arena, considering the opponent. There were just splashes of empty seats here and there. It's too bad that, just as fans might have been buying into the idea that "It's a New Game," the team turned in its first real stinker of the year at home.

There won't be much scuttlebutt from Rogers Arena over the weekend. The team is conducting off-ice workouts only on Saturday, and Sunday is a team day off.

Get outside and enjoy the sunshine!

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