Saturday December 5 - Boston Bruins 4 - Vancouver Canucks 0
I'm not so sure we want to re-live this, but I guess it's better to watch the Canucks' shutout loss to Boston in five minutes than in two and a half hours. Here are the highlights from Saturday's game:
In a grim reminder of a certain Game 7 from June of 2011, the Vancouver Canucks fell behind early, then surrendered lifelessly on their way to a 4-0 shutout loss against the Boston Bruins. At least this time around, the visitors didn't claim a gleaming silver trophy—and downtown Vancouver wasn't destroyed afterwards. But that's a pretty low bar of accomplishment, isn't it?
As time passes and player personnel changes, rivalries can diminish. But from a pure hockey perspective, there wasn't much to like on Saturday night. Neither team managed more than 10 shots in any period—the Bruins held the edge at 22-17 and owned a 2-0 lead after a first period where the shots on goal were 5-5.
Not a great showing for Jacob Markstrom, who seems like he's alternating strong performances with sub-par ones—and that's not going to earn him the fans' confidence as the Canucks' next No. 1.
Also not a great showing in the intensity department. Derek Dorsett had it in for Zac Rinaldo all night—understandable—and Vancouver out-hit Boston 20-15, but when Yannick Weber's tied for your team lead in hits (3) with Dorsett and Ronald Kenins, you know it's not a ferocious night for team toughness or "playing hard," as Willie likes to say.
I know there were some cheers when Brandon Prust nailed Brad Marchand with a spear to the groin with 1:53 left in the third period, but I thought the play was beneath a guy who supposedly plays the game the "right way."
With the final score already a foregone conclusion, there was really very little point. Considering he was named the game's second star with a goal, five shots and a plus-3, Marchand didn't sound like the incident was going to leave him quaking in his skates when he told
NESN after the game "I didn’t really see who it, what happened. He just gave me a jab and got me in the fun spot."
I would much rather have seen Prust stand up Marchand and the Bruins in the first period. Let them know they're in for a long night in a back-to-back situation.
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Prust only received a 10-minute misconduct for the incident. He's a little lighter in the wallet today.
So—the Canucks carry on, status quo, with their confidence level as a group about as low as it can go.
Listen to Henrik's postgame comments. He's well past the point where he thinks the team is playing well enough to win.
"It feels like we think we're more skilled than we are. Look at our lineup. We're not the most skilled team in the league...If you don't play the right way, it's tough to win games."
That's about as close as I've ever heard the captain come to calling out his teammates.
My most troubling thought right now is that there's no clear path from this dark place out to daylight. This time next week, the Canucks will be in Chicago, of all places, kicking off yet another massive road trip—six games in 10 nights to roll into the Christmas break.
For the moment, Vancouver remains just two points out of second place in the Pacific Division, but the Ducks are now just one point back and the team's just four points ahead of the Flames and Oilers—who both have games in hand.
They're one point ahead of Buffalo—who play later today in Edmonton—so the Sabres could conceivably come into Rogers Arena for their game on Monday night sitting above the Canucks in the league standings.
I wonder if we'll see some trades next week once the NHL presents its preliminary 2016-17 salary-cap number at the Board of Governors' meetings in Pebble Beach. But even if Jim Benning is working the phones, it's going to be tough to make a deal from a position of weakness. Don't be surprised if the roster you see now is the roster that gets locked in at the Christmas trade freeze on December 19.
This tweet caught my eye last night as we prepare to welcome the West Coast Express on Monday night as part of the 20-year anniversary celebration of Rogers Arena.
That first season at the Rog was a dark one—just the second after the run to the 1994 Stanley Cup Final, and the first hint that maybe the Cup window wasn't going to stay open after all. Lots of parallels to what the team is going through now.
Last summer, Tony Gallagher published a piece in
The Province suggesting that the Canucks' problem has been bad feng shui at the arena. Sadly, it has now been scrubbed from the newspaper's website but I quoted a few choice bits at the time in
this blog.
At 3-6-3, the Canucks now sit 28th on home ice this season. I'm starting to wonder if the #20in20 celebration has somehow strengthened the arena's bad juju this year?
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