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Vancouver Canucks serve up lump of coal in 4-1 pre-Christmas loss to Flames

December 24, 2016, 2:20 PM ET [89 Comments]
Carol Schram
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Friday December 23 - Calgary Flames 4 - Vancouver Canucks 1

The Vancouver Canucks directed a season-low 14 shots on goal and were dominated all over the ice as they went into the Christmas break with a 4-1 loss to the Calgary Flames on Friday at the Saddledome.

Here are your highlights:



In the first period, it looked like the Hockey Gods were gifting the Canucks with an early Christmas present in the form of a win. Despite being outshot 16-5, Vancouver went to the dressing room with a 1-0 lead thanks to this flukey knuckler off the stick of Nikita Tryamkin.




It was a busy night for Tryamkin with 18:44 of ice time. That included a team-leading 5:21 on the penalty kill, thanks to three penalties on the night assessed to defensemen.

As I watched the Canucks run out of gas in the second half of their game against Winnipeg on Thursday, I was concerned that they would be lacking in energy against the Flames. After the game, Willie Desjardins concurred.




Jacob Markstrom was strong in the loss, dealing with 37 Calgary shots. The Flames' goals ran the gamut—Mark Giordano scored on the power play and shorthanded, Mikael Backlund made it 3-1 at even strength late in the second, then Matthew Tkachuk delivered his seventh of the season into the empty net with 46 seconds left to play.

You don't have to be a fancy stats expert to understand how Calgary dominated possession and scoring chances based on this graph of the night's shot attempts.




Not only are there a lot more red boxes, representing shots by the Flames, they're also a lot closer to the crease. Brian Elliott appears to have engaged a protective force field last night that extended well beyond the blue paint.

As for Anton Rodin, his solo warmup might have been the highlight of his night.




Rodin played just 7:18, including 1:28 on the power play. He had three shot attempts, none of which reached the net, and blocked one shot himself.

Rodin was drafted in the second round in 2009, which means he has waited longer than any player in Canucks history to make his NHL debut. That's the draft where John Tavares went first overall—and the Canucks took Jordan Schroeder in the first round with the 23rd-overall pick.

Recalled from Utica on Thursday and rushed into the lineup after Jannik Hansen suffered a knee injury, "I was rusty, a bit nervous and all that," Rodin told Ben Kuzma of The Province after the game.

"I got my on-ice fitness up and it’s just timing. I’ve got to keep playing and get better, but I was really excited to play and get the first game under the belt."

It'll be interesting to see if Rodin can help fire up the offense after Christmas. The Canucks are trending in the wrong direction in that department: they have now been outshot in their last nine straight games and have generated less than 25 shots in six of those games.

One other thing I'm going to be keeping an eye on—will we see more of these lackluster efforts now that Erik Gudbranson is out of the lineup? All season, we've been saying that even when Vancouver's on-ice results have been poor, the 'try' has been there. The players hadn't quit on coach Willie Desjardins and were doing a good job of playing for each other.

Gudbranson is known to be a strong leader in the room. I wonder if the team is missing his character and presence, now that he's on the shelf for awhile after wrist surgery?

It's an intangible quality, but something to watch when the team comes back from its Christmas break.

News1130 is reporting that Gudbranson had his surgery in New York on Friday.




No word yet on the results of Jannik Hansen's MRI, which was also scheduled for Friday. I don't expect we'll hear anything about his status until the Canucks reconvene for practice on December 27th, one day ahead of their next game, at home against Los Angeles next Wednesday.

The Canucks still have a lot of games to be played against Pacific Division opponents—including six of their next seven. So far, they're 3-4-1 in eight games against division rivals, with two of those wins coming against Arizona.

I'll wrap up today with a quick overview of the Canucks' ranking in the league standings:

With a record of 14-18-3, the Canucks head into the holiday break in 28th place, exactly where they finished up last season. They're currently on pace for 73 points—two points less than last year.

The Canucks are currently sixth in the Pacific Division and 12th in the Western Conference. After their two most recent losses, they're now seven points out of the wild-card spots held by Los Angeles and Calgary, with Nashville, Dallas and Winnipeg all in their way.

We're not quite halfway through the season yet, but once the gap to a playoff spot grows to 10 points, it's all-but-insurmountable.

The Canucks have scored 86 goals, which pro-rates to 201—a little better than the 191 goals they scored last year. At 2.47 goals per game, the team has climbed to 23rd overall .

The bad news? The Canucks' 109 goals against is now worst in the entire league. They've played more games than many teams, so their average of 3.09 goals against per game is actually 28th, ahead of Arizona and Colorado. But with all the injuries on the blue line this season, defense and goaltending haven't exactly proven to be strong suits. The Canucks are on pace to give up 255 goals this season—12 more than last season and their highest total since the post-lockout season in 2005-06, when Alex Auld was the No. 1 with 67 games played. The Canucks missed the playoffs, then started their climb back to respectability by shoring up the back end with the offseason acquisitions of Willie Mitchell and Roberto Luongo.

On special teams, the Canucks are currently 29th on the power play with a conversion rate of 13.5 percent. They were 27th at 15.8 percent last year.

The penalty kill is now 21st, with a 79.8 percent success rate. Last year, it was 17th at 81.1 percent.

I'll end on a positive. Faceoffs are 51.9 percent this year, fifth in the league! Give Manny Malhotra a gold star for delivering a huge improvement in this area after Vancouver finished 30th last season at 45.4 percent. It's just too bad that all those impressive draws haven't translated to better numbers anywhere else on the ice...

I will be around through the holiday break and will continue to break down the Canucks' current situation, as well as looking ahead at the expansion draft.

I'll leave you today with the first evidence we've received that Nikita Tryamkin can, in fact, speak. Merry Christmas!


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