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I Watched This Game: 27th-place Canucks lose to 28th-place Canadiens

Canucks 2, Canadiens 5
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The Canucks have now lost 12-of-14 games since Bo Horvat fractured his foot. He’s not expected to return until after the All-Star break, which comes at the end of the month.

Before that, the Canucks still have seven games. Based on how the last 14 have gone, the Canucks might win just one of those games and pick up one more point by losing in overtime.

That will bring the Canucks up to 41 points, at which point they’ll likely be in 29th place in the NHL, ahead of only the Buffalo Sabres and Arizona Coyotes. With 32 games left to play and Horvat in the lineup, they would basically need to win out in order to make the playoffs.

I saw the Canadiens leapfrog the Canucks in the standings when I watched this game.

  • Maybe the Canucks will be better over the next seven games and be in a better position once Horvat returns, but I’m not betting on it. The more likely result at this point is that the Canucks finish in between 27th and 29th, giving them another top-10 pick to build towards the future. Ultimately, Horvat’s injury might have been the best thing for the Canucks long term.
  • Apart from the goals he allowed, Anders Nilsson was really quite good, which is a bit like saying, “Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
  • The Canadiens first goal shouldn’t have happened. Karl Alzner’s shot hit Troy Stecher’s stick up high, but it only beat Nilsson because he was cheating towards the middle of the ice. The only time you should cheat towards the middle is when you’re trying to win an election. Still, the deflection was some pretty bad luck, so it’s not like the soft goals he’s given up in the past.
  • Likewise, the Canadiens’ second goal wasn’t a soft one, as it came from a bullet of a one-timer from Alex Galchenyuk on the power play. At the same time, Nilsson didn’t get square to the shooter coming across, leaving too much room on his blocker side for the puck to find the net. It’s not so much that Nilsson was terrible, but that he could have been better, which is basically me every day. Nilsson is so relatable.
  • I caused a minor (very minor) uproar on Twitter when I suggested that maybe the whole obsession with Alex Edler passing to Brock Boeser on the power play is a little overblown and that passing the puck to Boeser not always the right play and certainly not the magic panacea to all the Canucks’ power play woes. This was not a popular take in a city where Boeser is one of the few sources of excitement. Since I’m more interested in talking about what happened on the ice than what happened on Twitter, I’ll just leave my concluding, exceedingly lukewarm take here.

 

 

  • In any case, my answer to, “Should Edler pass it to Boeser more often on the power play?” is “No, Ben Hutton should, because Hutton should be on the first power play unit,” but that take won’t win me any friends either.
  • Edler came through at 5-on-5, however, by doing the same thing that he does on the power play: take a wrist shot from the point looking for a tip in front. Like the estranged wife of Al Gore, Daniel Sedin was the tipper, redirecting the puck past Carey Price from the slot. It helped that Brock Boeser was setting a screen, as Price never seemed to pick up the initial shot.
  • Boeser was the Canucks’ best player in this game, while the Sedins were on their game, but not clicking with Sven Baertschi in his return to the lineup. Travis Green loaded up the top line like Dagwood making a sandwich, and it paid off. Unfortunately, that line was the only one that created any offence.
  • The other line that got a bunch of ice time was the checking line of Loui Eriksson, Nic Dowd, and Markus Granlund. They played well in a shutdown role matching up against Montreal’s top line, but seeing them get so much ice time is frustrating, as you’re basically committing to not scoring when those three are on the ice. That’s a problem with Eriksson and Granlund are both supposed to be guys that can provide offence.
  • Boeser is praised for his shot, but his well-rounded game is what will make him a superstar long-term. Not only can he provide a great screen in front of the net, but he can also dish some sauce, setting up Michael Del Zotto for the tying goal with a lovely saucer pass after a nice cross-ice feed by Daniel Sedin. Like Spartacus’s fellow slaves, Del Zotto picked the right time to jump up, and then tucked the puck through Price’s legs on the backhand.
  • The Canucks struggled to get the puck out of the defensive zone all game, with Edler and Del Zotto particularly struggling to move the puck up ice. That’s concerning, because, well, the Canadiens aren’t very good. As a result of the repeated turnovers, the Canadiens possessed the puck like The Man Who Can’t Breathe.
  • It was nice to see Sven Baertschi back in the lineup. It wasn’t so nice to see him constantly in the defensive zone. Here’s hoping he shakes off the rust pretty quickly.
  • When Sam Gagner plays in the offensive zone, he has great vision and poise with the puck. When he enters the defensive zone, he becomes a completely different player, with no sense of his surroundings and a tendency to make panicked decisions with the puck. That was the case on the game-winning goal, as he blindly banked the puck up the boards, where Karl Alzner picked it off, instead of taking the time he had available to make a better pass. He’s like James McAvoy in Split, but gets the opposite of super powers when he changes personalities.
  • Gagner’s turnover wouldn’t have resulted in a goal, however, without Nilsson giving up an uglier rebound than Scarlett Johansson rebounding with Sean Penn. Alzner’s shot was going wide, but Nilsson kicked the puck right back into the slot, where Brendan Gallagher was waiting. Gallagher treated the puck like a watermelon and smashed it into the net.
  • The Canadiens made it 4-2 with less than two minutes left after Daniel Sedin gave the puck away in the neutral zone after his brother won the faceoff. Derrick Pouliot gambled and missed the puck, giving the Canadiens a 2-on-1 the other way, and Gallagher fed Paul Byron for the backhand finish.
  • That killed the Canucks’ chance at a comeback, but they pulled Nilsson anyway and, after a weak dump-in by Boeser and an overly optimistic attempted check at the blue line by Edler, Max Pacioretty scored into the empty net.
  • While the Canucks lost, Boeser got a point, which is about the best Canucks fans can hope for right now. Boeser now has 40 points in 39 games and continues to lead all rookies in scoring. If the team can’t win, hopefully Boeser can bring home the Calder Trophy to give fans something to cheer about this season.