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Vancouver Canucks face Willie Desjardins & Kings after shut out from Sharks |
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Friday November 23 - San Jose Sharks 4 - Vancouver Canucks 0
The San Jose Sharks' top-level penalty killing was on point and their power play went 3-for-6. Aaron Dell earned his second career shutout against Vancouver as the Canucks fired blanks and their losing streak stretched to eight games on Friday in the Shark Tank.
Here are your highlights:
Dell's performance is par for the course. In 56 career NHL games, he hasn't played any team more than Vancouver. He's now 5-0-0 against the Canucks and has given up just eight goals in total, for a .946 save percentage.
As for Erik Karlsson, apparently he was just waiting for the Canucks to show up before he started showing his stuff. He was named the game's second star, with his first three-point night in teal and now eight points in his last five games.
In Friday's blog, I mentioned that the Sharks' penalty killers were ranked second in the league. They were stifling on Friday. The Canucks barely got set up during their three second-period opportunities and managed just four shots in total: one by Brendan Leipsic during Brenden Dillon's holding penalty, shots by Sam Gagner and Loui Eriksson during Evander Kane's roughing penalty and one by Nikolay Goldobin during Lukas Radil's slashing penalty.
By the time those chances came along, it may already have been too late. The Canucks successfully killed off an elbowing minor to Antoine Roussel early in the first period, but it took Logan Couture just six seconds to strike for his eighth of the year on Roussel's second penalty of the game, midway through the opening frame.
I thought the back-breaker in the game was the 2-0 goal, which came with just 10 seconds left to go in the first period. The Canucks had been doing well, killing off 3:46 of a careless high-sticking double-minor to Derrick Pouliot. They were thisclose to getting into the dressing room down by only one when Timo Meier struck for his 13th of the year. That must have felt super deflating for Nilsson and the rest of the crew.
At the end of the day, Roussel was the Canucks player who made the biggest impression on the stat sheet, with his 18 penalty minutes. He's now second in the league with 65 minutes, one behind Brad Marchand, and no one else is close—Zack Kassian's third at 44.
Roussel may be a fresh face in Vancouver, but his reputation clearly precedes him, especially with Western Conference clubs. He was in it with the Sharks all night, and proved that he really is Alex Burrows' spiritual twin when he laid the teeth on Marc-Edouard Vlasic in a third-period scrum.
Roussel received a $5,000 fine from the Department of Player Safety on Saturday, the maximum allowable for the biting offense.
Onwards...
Saturday November 24 - Vancouver Canucks vs. Los Angeles Kings - 7 p.m. - CBC, Sportsnet, Sportsnet 650
Vancouver Canucks: 25 GP, 10-13-2, 22 pts, sixth in Pacific Division
Los Angeles Kings: 21 GP, 7-13-1, 15 pts, eighth in Pacific Division
Day by day, I have been unsurprised by each of the Canucks' losses. Between the schedule and the injuries, the Canucks don't match up well against....anybody, really. But with just four points and a record of 1-7-2 in their last 10 games, the sum of their results over the last two and a half weeks is brutal.
In the National Parity League, where nobody actually has to *lose*, no team has a worse record than Vancouver over their last 10 games—and only four other teams are more than one game under .500: Chicago (2-6-2), Pittsburgh (2-6-2), Arizona (3-5-2) and Edmonton (3-6-1).
Needless to say, the Canucks' freefall down the Pacific Division standings is now in full effect. A win for the Golden Knights and an overtime loss for the Oilers on Friday moved them both ahead of Vancouver. The Coyotes lost, and are idle until Sunday, so the Canucks won't slip further down than sixth no matter what happens on Saturday night.
Looking a little more closely at their numbers since they started that Eastern road trip on November 6, here's what I found:
Nobody has spent more time on special teams. The Canucks have (of course) played more games than some teams but during that timespan, they lead the league in both power plays and times shorthanded. After their 0-for-3 performance against the Sharks on Friday, they dropped to a 17.9 percent success rate over that timespan (7-of-39), but have given up nearly twice as many special-teams goals as they've scored—13-for-40 while shorthanded, for a kill rate of 67.5 percent.
As a team, of course, faceoffs have also been an issue. The Canucks were just 14-for-42 in the circle against the Sharks on Friday, so they won just one of every three draws, and even poor Bo Horvat was only 7-of-19 in a fast-paced game that didn't see as many faceoffs as usual.
Overall, of course, Horvat has taken more faceoffs than anybody in the league during that stretch. And even after a rough outing on Friday, he's still a respectable 54.6 percent during that time. Even with his added defensive responsibilities, Horvat also impressively leads the Canucks in scoring with 4-6-10 over those 10 games and is a plus-one. Only two other Canucks have positive plus-minuses during the last 10 games: Michael Del Zotto (+4) and Troy Stecher (+1).
Jake Virtanen is even—and leads the Canucks through that 10-game window with 3.2 shots per game, which has converted to three goals and four points. Horvat's second at 2.8, followed by Nikolay Goldobin (3-6-9) and Elias Pettersson (3-1-4), each at 2.2.
Pretty amazing to see that Goldy has been more than twice as productive as Petey over the last 10 games, isn't it? And still, Pettersson's 19 points in 19 games have him six points ahead of any other rookie in the Calder Trophy race. Rasmus Dahlin's making some noise now, though—up to 2-10-12 while his Buffalo Sabres have climbed to third overall in the league while riding an eight-game winning streak.
Y'know what else is crazy? Even with his slow start this year, the Canucks' record with and without Brock Boeser in the lineup is like night and day.
With him this season, they were 8-5-0; without him, they've gone 2-8-2. He hasn't been the only missing piece of the puzzle, but when he came back for that four-game homestand while Nilsson, Edler, Tanev, Beagle and Baertschi were out, and Sutter missed the last two and a half games, Vancouver went 3-1.
So—this is a good piece of news!
With the back-to-back and the travel down to Staples Center for Saturday's game, we don't have any personnel updates for the Canucks today. I'd expect that Reid Boucher will draw in; there's a chance that Alex Edler could be back and I imagine Jacob Markstrom will return to the net.
There were 15 games on the post-Thanksgiving schedule on Friday. The one team that was off? The Kings, of course. So the Canucks are tired and the Kings are rested—how else could it possibly be?
That being said, the Canucks head home after Saturday's game and will enjoy a luxurious two days between games for the first time since the beginning of the month before they face the Kings again on Tuesday. Meanwhile, that'll be the end of a three-in-four for L.A., who will host Edmonton on Sunday before heading up to Vancouver.
This'll be our first chance to see Vancouver go up against former coach Willie Desjardins, who took the reins for the Kings just under three weeks ago. Since that time, the Kings have gone 3-5-0, most recently riding unproven 24-year-old Cal Petersen in net after both Jonathan Quick and Jack Campbell went down with injuries.
Looks like the plan is for the Kings to save Petersen for Sunday's game against the Oilers and start Peter Budaj against the Canucks. The 36-year-old has made just one other start this season and appeared in only three games in total so with a tiny sample size of only 72 minutes played, his GAA shows up as an inflated 5.02 with an .818 save percentage.
Here's how the Kings ran their lines for Saturday's morning skate:
Adrian Kempe suffered a lower-body injury in the Kings' last game against Colorado on Wednesday but may be able to draw in tonight. Jonathan Quick has also been on the ice for the last couple of days so he could be ahead of schedule in returning from the end-of-October knee surgery that was projected to put him out of action for 4-6 weeks.
That about covers it. Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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