After following their impressive 3-0 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs by losing 6-1 Tuesday against the Winnipeg Jets, the Vancouver Canucks’ end of the road trip could be easily summarized with: “Typical.”
But the reality check in Winnipeg was not typical for the Canucks — not entirely — because Vancouver goalie Kevin Lankinen was not typical.
The first-runner-up as the team’s first-half MVP (after captain Quinn Hughes), Lankinen looked awful on the first two Jets goals, was beaten four times on nine shots in the opening 21 minutes and for one of the few times this season gave the Canucks no chance to win.
Now, to be clear, we’re not saying Lankinen was the reason they lost. That would be absurd.
He alone was not responsible for a six-goal deficit in the third period before Canuck Nils Hoglander scored his first goal since the United States presidential election.
But at the end of a daunting five-game road trip in which superior opponents were lined up like a National Hockey League murderer’s row, it was going to take something special for the Canucks to beat the best team in the Western Conference.
And after being special for most of the season, including Saturday’s shutout win in Toronto, Lankinen was less than ordinary. And so were most of his teammates and especially Vancouver’s top players.
Kyle Connor scored a first-period hat trick, while Gabriel Vilardi had three assists and Mark Scheifele a goal and one assist as the Jets’ first line drove their team and dominated the Canucks at five-on-five. And the best goalie in the world, Connor Hellebuyck, stopped 23 of 24 shots.
Shots were actually just 12-11 for Winnipeg halfway through the game, and even after it, the analytics site naturalstattrick.com translated five-on-five scoring chances into an expected score of 2-1 for the Jets.
But what you could fault the Canucks for on Tuesday was putting one foot on the airplane after Conor Garland’s hooking penalty at 10:41 of the second period brought out the NHL’s most dangerous power play. For the rest of the second period, shots were 13-5 for the Jets, who made it 5-0 at 15:06 when Nino Neiderreiter banked a shot off Lankinen from behind the goal line.
Connor’s first goal was an open-net gift after Lankinen, behind his net, rimmed the puck directly on to Vilardi’s stick. The goalie’s massive rebound and difficulty tracking it gave Connor another easy goal at 13:01 before the lethal scorer completed his natural hat trick 36 seconds later on a slick breakaway move after Canuck defenceman Tyler Myers was caught up ice.
Thirty-nine seconds into the second period, Neal Pionk’s low-point shot clinched the game for Winnipeg – if Connor hadn’t already done so.
In a way, the Canucks’ wildly uneven road trip mirrored their season to this point. With various challenges and against formidable opponents, the Canucks went 1-2-2 to go home with four points from five difficult games. They probably could have done better, but sure as heck could have done worse.
But a six-point trip could have been a turning point in the Canucks’ season, and their failure to even make a game of it against the Jets was extremely disappointing.
The four points they harvested allowed them to survive the 11 days abroad and stay in the playoff race even if it cost them possession of the final wild-card spot in the West.
Over a season, however, just surviving is not good enough. As veteran goalie Thatcher Demko said last week, “We’ve got to start stringing some games together, for sure. I think everyone knows that.”
Everyone is still waiting.
Coach Rick Tocchet: “I didn’t actually mind our first, but the three mistakes (and) in the net. It’s a good hockey club over there, and then obviously. . . everybody on our team had a tough night. It’s hard to be consistent, right? It’s hard to do the right things all the time. It’s hard. And you can’t do it once in a while if you want to be a good team.”
At least a week ahead of projections, No. 2 Canuck defenceman Filip Hronek returned to the lineup Tuesday for the first time since appearing to injure his shoulder Nov. 27 in Pittsburgh. Hronek logged 20:50 of ice time and generated expected-goals-for of 50.6 per cent in a five-goal loss.
Key centre Elias Pettersson returned for Friday’s game in Raleigh, which was also Demko’s first start since back spasms took him out a Jan. 2 game in Seattle. And superstar Hughes played all five games after missing four contests with a hand injury.
So, the Canucks are finally close to fully healthy for the first time this season. Vancouver winger Dakota Joshua remains out week-to-week with a lower-body injury.
But being healthy and being on top of your game are, as we are seeing, very different things. The Canucks’ top players need to produce their best form. Management has been waiting to see it, but they won’t wait indefinitely.
The segment of the Canucks’ fan base outraged that spare defenceman Erik Brannstrom was placed on waivers Monday must have been utterly flabbergasted on Tuesday that the NHL’s other 31 teams are also run by idiots.
Brannstrom sailed through waivers unclaimed (for the second time this season) and will be headed back to the Canucks’ American Hockey League team in Abbotsford after spending all but the opening week on the NHL roster.
Anyone parachuting into the “debate” over Brannstrom may have thought people were arguing about Scott Niedermayer and not the undersized, 25-year-old defenceman who was cast adrift by the Ottawa Senators after last season, signed in free agency by the Colorado Avalanche and then was forced upon the Canucks as a takeback for Vancouver’s contract-dump of injured defenceman Tucker Poolman.
Yes, as you’ve probably heard from his ardent advocates, Brannstrom can pass the puck better than the bottom four defenceman on Vancouver’s blue line. But after helping the Canucks initially, Brannstrom’s game collapsed when his minutes became unsheltered and he appeared at times incapable of actually defending at the NHL level.
In the 11 games Brannstrom played from the night of Hronek’s injury, the Canucks were outscored 9-2 at five-on-five when he was on the ice and the 25-year-old was last among Vancouver defencemen by most metrics.
Asked in Toronto why Brannstrom wasn’t in the lineup, Tocchet explained: “We’ve been playing a lot of low-event games. We’re struggling to score goals. We feel we’ve got to stay in the game that way. I think when you’re a puck-moving defenceman, you’ve also got to defend. There’s a lot of different things. I just think the reward-risk part of it is something that we’d rather go this way.”
Brannstrom is actually a good-news sidebar in the Canucks season. For about a month, his passing and skating helped the team in a limited role while other players were hurt. And since he’s still part of their organization, he could help the Canucks again if circumstances align. But don’t pretend he’s more than he is.
