Ladies and gentlemen, we just witnessed history. For the first time ever, an NHL team lost four-straight games by an identical 5-2 score. It’s a dumb, useless, embarrassing NHL record, but it’s ours, dammit. No one can take that from us.
It’s legitimately incredible: the last time a team had four identical scores in a row, it was the Pittsburgh Penguins back in 1979. This just doesn’t happen. And for it to be an somewhat unusual score like 5-2? Ridiculous.
This is something we’ll never see again in our lifetimes. Our children and grandchildren will never see this happen. Our great-grandchildren and great-great-great grandchildren will be too busy fighting the cyborg-spider uprising to play or watch hockey, but when our surviving great-great-great-great-grandchildren rediscover the game of hockey via ancient Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em VHS tapes, even they won’t see a team lose four straight games by a score of 5-2.
What a clustercuss. I watched this game.
- This four-game losing streak wouldn’t be nearly as embarrassing if it hadn’t been preceded by so much talk about making a push for the playoffs and Jim Benning insisting he thought the Canucks might be buyers at the trade deadline. I’m just waiting for him to backtrack on that one: I meant buying...draft picks. Using pending free agents as currency, yeah, that’s the ticket.
- Less than two minutes in, the Flames opened the scoring thanks to some atrocious defending from Radim Vrbata, who got caught chasing the puck carrier instead of finding his check, the trailing Joe Colborne. Colborne is 6’5” and was wearing a jersey the colour of Ronald McDonald’s hair: he’s a little hard to miss.
- The Canucks looked dispirited all game, like the Ghostbusters had just visited their locker room with a bunch of muon traps and drank all their liquor, but they did manage to reply in the first period with a couple goals of their own. For a brief moment, approximately as long as the first intermission, it seemed like they actually had a chance to win this game. Then the hockey gods punched them right in the kidney.
- Adam Cracknell tied the game on an impressive effort by Jannik “Honninggrævling” Hansen. T.J. Brodie slashed Hansen, Hansen held Brodie, and the refs elected to call neither infraction, so Hansen fought off the check and one-handed the puck to Cracknell, who made like the more famous Adam and took a big bite of the apple.
- That last joke only works if you call assists “apples,” which you should never do because it’s dumb. That joke was dumb. This game was dumb. This whole courtroom is dumb! Just don’t say “apples” when you mean assists! Don’t do it!
- Jake Virtanen gave the Canucks the lead with a solo effort, picking off an ill-conceived pass from Dougie Hamilton before stepping into the high slot and wiring a wristshot over Jonas Hiller’s shoulder. It was a nice goal and it made me happy. It made me reminisce for happier times. I felt good about the Canucks. And then the rest of the game squashed me like a giant Monty Python foot.
- What’s particularly frustrating is that Virtanen was back on a line with Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi and once again looked effective. And then he barely got any ice time. Only Emerson Etem and Derek Dorsett had less at even-strength. In the second period, as the Flames scored three straight goals and took over the game, Virtanen played less than three minutes. Yes, there were penalties to kill, but only two of them and they overlapped. Look, we don’t have much to get excited about right now: we’re down to Baertschi, Horvat, and Virtanen. Don’t deprive us of them, please.
- The secon period collapse was partly bad luck—two goals deflected in off Canucks—and partly terrible play, as the Canucks gave up 19 shots in the middle frame. When you spend that much time in your own end of the ice, you invite bad things to happen. It’s like splitting up in a horror movie or having sex in a horror movie or running upstairs in a horror movie or just, like, buying a house in a horror movie. Man, just don’t be in a horror movie, but the Canucks this season don’t really have a choice.
- Jacob Markstrom deserved far better in this game. He made some outstanding saves, but with the lacklustre play in front of him giving the Flames chance after chance like a Chicago hip-hop playlist, there was only so much he could do.
- The Flames’ fifth goal was ugly and I felt so bad for Dan Hamhuis. He didn’t really do anything wrong, but when Derek Dorsett gambled in the neutral zone trying to pick off a stretch pass, Hamhuis had to scramble to check the puck carrier. He had to assume that the other defenceman would take the other Flames’ forward heading towards the net, but that other defenceman was Matt Bartkowski, so he didn’t, and Josh Jooris scored. There’s no defending Bartkowski this season, which is appropriate, because there’s been no defending by Bartkowski this season.
- By this point, all the Canucks could do was spend the rest of the third period trying to break the 5-2 streak. Sven Baertschi had a breakaway and made a great move and hit the post. Daniel Sedin had an open net and shot the rolling puck back through the crease. No, said the hockey gods, This is what you deserve.
