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Vancouver Canucks Game Review: Lack of Finish Dooms Canucks |
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Sunday October 18 - Edmonton Oilers 2 - Vancouver Canucks 1 (OT)
The Vancouver Canucks dominated play for much of a fast-paced game, but the Edmonton Oilers came out on top when Lauri Korpikoski squeezed a puck between Ryan Miller's pads on an overtime breakaway.
Here are your highlights:
The Canucks outshot Edmonton 34-24, but failed to bury some glorious scoring chances. Oilers netminder Anders Nilsson was very good, but if there's one play that sums up the game, it's this excruciating miss by Daniel Sedin in the third period.
The puck luck didn't go the Canucks' way on Sunday night.
I thought the line combinations, overall, looked pretty good. Though Daniel wasn't credited with a shot for that miss, he still led the team with seven shots on goal, while Radim Vrbata picked up six.
Thanks to long stretches of continuous action in both the second and third periods, I noticed that Vrbata did get a good chunk of ice time with the twins over the course of the night—but it was happening because Jannik Hansen seemed to be changing first. So, the three of them can co-exist, and looked dangerous at times. I wonder if Willie will go there on Thursday against Washington to help ignite the offense?
The Canucks unveiled a sneaky set play at the beginning of overtime that just failed to convert. After starting with his brother and Alex Edler, Henrik Sedin went to the bench immediately after winning the draw in favour of Vrbata, who straddled the blue line waiting for a breakaway pass.
This time, unfortunately, the shot went wide.
Vancouver's lone goal-scorer on the night was Matt Bartkowski, who scored not just his first as a Canuck, but the first regular-season goal of his career in his 137th NHL game.
I'm not sure anybody expected that we'd learn Bartkowski's goal song before we heard, say, Vrbata's, but the chosen track was another country song—Garth Brooks' "Callin' Baton Rouge."
Though the Kid Line was sheltered in its minutes, they were on the ice for the goal, with Bo Horvat screening Nilsson in front of the net.
Jake Virtanen finished as the low man in ice time with 9:10, but played a decent game, with three shots and four hits. I think he should have been credited with two hits on this play, which also sprung Sven Baertschi for a breakaway:
Edmonton's regulation goal came early in the first period, with Derek Dorsett in the box for a trip. This, apparently, does not have the same impact as a Brandon Prust fight.
Connor McDavid made a slick feed to Nail Yakupov to set up the goal. Otherwise, the kid was relatively unremarkable after his breakout three-point performance on Saturday.
I have to say, though—I can see the structure starting to come for the Oilers.
Instead of the whole game being a full-scale fire drill, there were moments when they got back and defended tightly, forcing the Canucks to circle in the neutral zone before finding a way to move in on offense. I think new coach Todd McLellan is having a positive impact.
The Canucks are now idle until Thursday, when the Washington Capitals come to town.
We'll have more time to lament this game as one that got away, so I'll leave it there for now. I'm working at a polling station today and need to be there well before daybreak for a long day.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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