Monday August 17 - St. Louis Blues 3 - Vancouver Canucks 1
Series Tied 2-2
Right up till Brayden Schenn's overtime goal on Sunday gave the St. Louis Blues their first win inside the bubble, I was hopeful that the Vancouver Canucks might be able to sneak out of their first-round playoff series before the defending champions rounded into form.
Now — like everybody else — I'm worried.
The Blues made themselves much harder to play against over the last two days, and now the Canucks have to win two out of three if they're going to record their first playoff series win since 2011.
Here are your highlights from both games:
Don't look now, but the Canucks miss Tyler Myers, who suffered a shoulder injury after going awkwardly into the boards early in the third period of Game 2.
Fresh from quarantine after re-joining the team following the birth of his daughter Billie, Jordie Benn drew in for games 3 and 4, playing on his off side.
Myers averaged 18:57 of ice time per game through the Canucks' first five games in Edmonton — a pretty big number for a third-pairing guy, especially considering he'd spent 20 minutes in the penalty box, and missed most of third period, plus overtime, in Game 2.
By contrast, Benn played 18:42 in Sunday's overtime game, which lasted 75 minutes and six seconds, and just 12:04 on Monday, when the Canucks never led and were tied for just 6:12 early in the second period.
Where do those minutes go?
Alex Edler averaged 22:37 in the regular season and is now up to 24:15 in the playoffs. He ended up playing 29:22 in Game 2 and 28:35 in Game 3 while easing back to 20:24 in Game 4.
Edler took the second-period shot that J.T. Miller deftly tipped for Vancouver's only goal of the game on Monday, but also tipped the puck past Jacob Markstrom for an own-goal in the third period.
Chris Tanev averaged 19:37 in the regular season and is now up to 22:57 in the playoffs. He played 28:38 in Game 2, then 25:51 in Game 3 and 18:15 in Game 4.
Tanev also had his four-game point streak snapped in Game 3. The Blues are winning now that they've figured out how to contain the offensive juggernaut that is the Tan-man!
Let's keep this going:
Quinn Hughes played 21:53 in the regular season and is now up to 24:23 in the playoffs. He played 20:31 in Game 2 but has seen his ice time spike to 27:31 in Game 3 and an incredible 28:50 in Game 4. He played nearly half of a non-overtime game that was his third game in four nights.
That's a career high for Hughes, but he has been in that ballpark before. He broke the 27-minute mark a few times during the regular season, and played 28:04 against Montreal back on December 17.
Hughes had his six-game point streak snapped on Monday. Even with that, he has put himself in some pretty incredible company.
Tonight Quinn Hughes has tied a #Canucks post-season record for longest assist streak.
Now with an 🍎 in 6 straight games, Hughes joins former @Canucks captain Henrik Sedin for the team record, set in 2011.
Troy Stecher is the guy whose deployment has changed the least. He averaged 15:21 in the regular season and is at 15:33 in the playoffs. He was at 18:55 in Game 2 — not crazy, considering he was another righty who could have been asked to pick up the slack after Myers was injured. But Stecher played 25:20 in Game 3 before dropping back to 15:39 in Game 4, right on his average.
At the other end of the spectrum, Oscar Fantenberg averaged 15:55 a game during the regular season, and has seen that drop to 14:37 during the playoffs. He played 16:23 in Game 2, then a big 20:45 in Game 3 before being cut back to just 11:24 on Monday.
Of course, those ice-time numbers are dramatically affected by special-teams time. We saw the Canucks parade to the penalty box in Game 2, with eight penalties called on Vancouver and five on St. Louis. In Game 3, the officials put their whistles in their pockets, calling just three infractions on each team. And in Game 4, the Blues were called for nine penalties while the Canucks took seven.
If Vancouver's power play had clicked like it had been doing earlier in the playoffs, the Canucks would have gotten the win. But they spent a lot of time passing around the perimeter and managed a total of just eight shots on goal on seven man-advantage opportunities in 12:13 of total power-play time. For their part, the Blues went 2-for-5. And, of course, Myers is a key penalty killing defenseman.
It's interesting to see that Myers' penalty total has now been eclipsed by two of his teammates. I was surprised to see the Canucks occupy three of the top four slots in the league in that category — Antoine Roussel in the top spot with 22 minutes and Jake Virtanen tied for second with Tom Wilson, with 21. Myers is next, with 20.
Roussel has been more of an agitator during his time in Vancouver, and he's such an amiable guy off the ice. I forgot that he used to drop the gloves with regularity when he played for Dallas.
Roussel's 209 penalty minutes ranked him third in the NHL in the 2013-14 season — four minutes behind league leader Tom Sestito of Vancouver (easy to remember what season that was, isn't it?) And he certainly showed his pugilistic skills on Monday when he quickly punished Sammy Blais for coming to the defense of a teammate after the whistle.
The pair were each only given double minors for roughing. In addition to showing his toughness, I thought Roussel's timing was also excellent here. The incident happened less than a minute after the Blues scored their first goal of the game.
Of course, the Canucks aren't the only team dealing with injury issues. I certainly noticed how Vladimir Tarasenko was not looking like his usual self in the first two games of the series, so I wasn't overly surprised to see him out of the lineup for Games 3 and 4, or to hear on Tuesday that he is now leaving the bubble.
The Blues say Tarasenko will meet with team doctors regarding his surgically repaired shoulder and his status will be updated Monday. #stlblues
For the moment, Blues coach Craig Berube is not ruling out Tarasenko long term.
More Berube on Tarasenko: "It's concerning, you know, but again, like we don't know a lot yet, so I'm not going to jump to conclusions on anything. Listen, he's not feeling right, so that's why he's going to get it looked at." #stlblues
Of course, the Blues also made several other lineup changes before Game 3 that have worked well for them. Veterans Troy Brouwer and Alex Steen came out and as one of the younger players who drew in, 22-year-old Jordan Kyrou had a strong performance in Game 3 before playing just 6:59 in Game 4.
But the most important change came in net, where Jake Allen has steadied the ship after a couple of less-than-impressive outings by Jordan Binnington. I saw Allen play well in the round-robin against Dallas, so this turn of events didn't surprise me, either. Allen was a difference-maker in Game 3, making 39 saves, but had a pretty easy outing in Game 4 — a 23-shot outing for the Canucks, who managed just five shots in the second period and seven in the third as they tried to play catch-up.
I'm sure both teams will be grateful for the day off on Tuesday. We'll see if Vancouver can come up with a way to re-ignite the power play and get more pucks on net in another late-night game on Wednesday, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. PT.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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