The Vancouver Canucks have now dropped their last four games in regulation after a dismal showing in Seattle on Thursday night.
They were defeated by a Seattle Kraken team that has, for the most part, improved over the last several months. After being written off in late November, Seattle has made a comeback during the last ten weeks by playing excellent team defence and applying tight pressure. The Kraken outworked Vancouver on Thursday night, were more desperate than the Canucks, and gradually turned the tide of the game in their favour. The first period was only fifteen minutes in when the Kraken started stepping on the Canucks as a team.
Even though they wouldn’t take the lead completely until the latter part of the second period, the Kraken seemed certain after that.
The Canucks faltered in their 5-2 loss on Thursday. They performed like a worn-out squad.
Vancouver was unable to consistently provide zone time. The lowest six were desert. The Canucks had a great deal of difficulty putting anything threatening on the power play or even at even strength to challenge Philipp Grubauer.
Once again, the Canucks were lenient when they were shorthanded. They scored a few goals on extremely fortunate bounces, but they lost the match handily.
It was almost the worst performance of the season, if not the worst. The only other occasion this team looked as clueless as they did at Climate Pledge Arena was the disaster in Philadelphia during the team’s third game of the season.
After the game, Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet was incensed. He insisted repeatedly that the club’s performance was his fault, calling his team’s performance a “comedy of errors” and concurring with a reporter that his star players appeared to be unwilling to pass the puck during the power play. The group’s performance was far less competitive than that of the Kraken players.
He gave a critical assessment of his side’s performance, saying, “Too many no-shows.”
This Canucks squad hasn’t dropped many games, and when it has, it hasn’t happened frequently like this. The Canucks at least played well and were able to compete with elite Central Division teams like the Colorado Avalanche and the Winnipeg Jets, despite their current losing streak. While the Canucks were not outplayed at even strength, the Minnesota Wild game got away from them suddenly and ended with a lopsided, ugly result.
No, it was something else that we witnessed on Thursday. Something far more tenuous than the series of defeats our team has accumulated in the last week.
It’s not essential to get too worked up over one outcome in the 59th game of an incredible season. The Canucks still own the highest point percentage in the Western Conference, are in a strong position for the stretch run, and are sure to make the playoffs. It doesn’t matter if you don’t score a point this week.
But even with the stale, uninspiring performance we saw on Thursday night, Jim Rutherford’s preseason analysis projecting his team’s postseason chances kept coming to mind.
During a news conference to officially kick off the 2023–24 season, Rutherford stated, in his usual matter-of-fact manner, “To be very to the point, with the changes that we’d made, we have a playoff team if everything goes right.”
He continued, “We want to get to a position where we have enough players in our lineup that a few things may go wrong. “And get past that.”
So far, everything has gone according to plan.
This season, the team has risen to prominence thanks to a historically strong run of excellent goaltending and efficient finishing. In addition to having a number of depth players who are scoring points at rates they have never achieved before, such as Sam Lafferty, Nils Höglander, Teddy Blueger, Pius Suter, and Dakota Joshua, the Canucks are seeing career seasons out of their elite players.
Additionally, the Canucks have remained largely healthy, particularly in the upper echelons of their roster. They’ve been able to rely on a range of blueliners, including Noah Juulsen and Tyler Myers, to operate at extraordinary two-way reliability levels that surpass what we’ve been accustomed to during their Canucks careers.
But over the past few weeks, a few things have gradually stopped going as planned. Some of the standout performances from Vancouver this season have faded around the edges. Not all of their good luck has turned, but some has.
For instance, backup goalkeeper Casey DeSmith, who was a mainstay for the team throughout the first few months of the year, has not played well since the start of the year. DeSmith has compiled a 1-1-3 record with a mediocre.844 save percentage in five starts in 2024. Over that time, he has stopped many fewer shots than anticipated.
Aside from a mid-term Carson Soucy absence in November, the team was mainly immune to injury issues during the first few months of the season. However, injuries have also started to arise. Late in January, just as the team’s defensive performance appeared to be reaching new heights, Soucy suffered another injury. Joshua’s hand injury has kept him out of the starting lineup on a weekly basis, disrupting Vancouver’s one reliable play-driving line at five-on-five. And as Ilya Mikheyev approaches the 12-month mark since having surgery to replace his ruptured ACL, his shape has deteriorated dramatically and his skating power is still notably poorer.
Due to those factors, Vancouver’s rush defence is now more exposed than it has ever been this season. The efficacy of Vancouver’s forward group has been reduced over the previous few weeks as key depth forwards Suter and Höglander have been pressed into the top six for short stints. Every aspect of this has a price. For instance, the Canucks failed to score a single goal on Thursday night in Seattle when their third and fourth forward lines were playing five-on-five.
Vancouver’s bottom six scoring depth, which was unquestionably a superpower a few months ago, is now a problem.
Lastly, there’s the issue of the team’s difficulties on special teams to think about.
On Thursday night, the Kraken power play officially scored on three of its chances. Since Seattle scored a crucial goal in the second period right after Elias Lindholm’s high-sticking penalty expired and before the penalised Canucks player could rejoin the play, in all honesty, they scored two goals with the man advantage.
For the most part of the season, Vancouver’s penalty kill has been adequate, but in the ten games following the All-Star break, their shorthanded play has deteriorated. Even though the Wild’s outburst earlier this week distorted the figures, Vancouver has still allowed 10 power-play goals in the last ten games.
Compounding the issue, Vancouver’s power play isn’t responding to help offset the club’s suddenly-leaky-again penalty killing. With the man advantage, the Canucks look a bit lost at the moment. On Thursday night, they trotted out a different first unit on nearly every power-play opportunity. None of them threatened.
Vancouver’s power play was a trump card back in October and November. Now the club has scored once on the power play in the past 28 opportunities. Vancouver has only scored three power-play goals in 10 games — while permitting three shorthanded goals against, to offset even that meagre contribution — since the All-Star break.
If injuries, depth issues and special teams struggles have nibbled away at Vancouver’s overall form, then the condensed nature of the schedule has delivered the final body blow. This team has played 10 games in the past 17 days, including eight on the road. It’s been a brutal stretch. Especially when you consider that while most teams got an extended break during the All-Star weekend, the Canucks sent a quarter of their roster to be run around to various media and sponsorship obligations in Toronto.
Inescapably, on Thursday, and this isn’t an excuse so much as a reality, the Canucks looked and performed like an exhausted group.
Beneath the surface of an unfavourable run of results, however, there are still signs of the robust team we’ve seen for most of this year.
Vancouver’s improved five-on-five form has held. The club has only been outscored by one goal at five-on-five on this current four-game losing streak, despite the netminders pitching an .859 save percentage.
Individually, rookie forward Arshdeep Bains has provided a spark and a possible, partial answer to the club’s bottom-six issues. J.T. Miller has played some of his best hockey of the season. And the overall defensive commitment and ability to control games with the top pair on the ice at even strength will likely give the Canucks some margin for error down the stretch.
Vancouver is about to enter a less condensed segment of the schedule, loaded with home games and mostly free of back-to-backs between now and the end of the year. The difficulty of their opponents is high — the Canucks will battle the toughest schedule of any Western Conference team over the balance of the campaign — but the club will have a regular rest advantage as it seeks to hold off the Edmonton Oilers atop the Pacific Division.
In the present, frustration is mounting for and around this group, especially given the enhanced expectations this Canucks team has earned. Fans are getting nervous, and Tocchet was clearly frustrated with the performance on Thursday.
Now a significant challenge awaits the Canucks on the immediate horizon: a 4 p.m. home game Saturday afternoon against a Boston Bruins team that schooled them earlier this month. It’s a game the Canucks could sorely use, as they hope to pull out of this post-All-Star break skid before they meaningfully leave the door open for the Oilers in the Pacific Division race.
This is the test of the stretch run. The Canucks have shown that they’re a playoff team and then some, if everything goes their way. Now, with some challenges hitting the hockey club at the margins, the big question Rutherford posed at the outset of this season remains.
Does this team have enough in their lineup that they can have a few things go wrong, but still overcome the challenges?
With 23 games remaining before the Stanley Cup playoffs, only the Canucks players can answer that question.
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