What a frustrating night of hockey. Not only did the Canucks lose -- they played their most lifeless, ineffective game of the early season. The breakout looked limper than a Bizkit. The defensive coverage was ugly and without alibi. And the powerplay, like Ivan IV Vasilyevich, was terrible.
But it's worse than that. Right around the time I'd accepted the impending loss and found the silver lining -- I only had to write about one Vancouver goal -- they scored twice more in the final minutes, just to make me work harder. Ridiculous. I don't want to be writing or thinking about this game for a second longer than I have to, because I watched this game.
- Since being paired with Dan Hamhuis, Matt Bartkowski has accomplished a truly remarkable feat: he's replaced Luca Sbisa as the fans' whipping boy on the Canucks blueline. That takes some doing, and boy, has Bartkowski been working hard at this. He was on the ice for two of the Blues' goals, but my least favourite moment from him came in the third, when he let an airborne puck drop in front of him, then stood dumbly still while Steve Ott skated onto it, then around him, and nearly scored the dagger goal. Unfortunate decision-making there, and elsewhere. Enough that I'm of the mind that Willie Desjardins should pluck him from the lineup. There's someone else who might be able to help resurrect that pairing, not to mention inject some life into the powerplay's first unit. I'm speaking, of course, about Derek Dorsett.
- I don't have much to say about Dorsett being bumped up to the second line for this game. I think it's a terrible decision that neuters a promising offensive line. But I know Willie Desjardins would counter by saying that a) Derek Dorsett makes everything better, he's like sriracha, and b) he doesn't really consider any of his lines to be the second, third, or fourth lines. I do, and I even have a helpful rhyme to help me remember which line is which: If Derek Dorsett's on your right, your line is the fourth line tonight.
- Tell me which fact you would have had a harder time believing this summer: that Jared McCann has scored two NHL goals before Radim Vrbata has scored once this season, or that, five games into the season, the second unit powerplay is outscoring the first, 1-0. They're both pretty unbelievable, and I do think they're connected. The first unit is built mostly around setting up shots for Vrbata, and right now, Vrbata is proving that one can also miss 100% of the shots one does take. The powerplay went 0-for-5 tonight, wasting invaluable opportunities to get back into the game, like a four-minute high-sticking minor to Vladimir Tarasenko that would have been the turning point if Vancouver's special teams were clicking. Like many, I think adding Yannick Weber to the unit as another shooting option might make sense, especially since the Canucks are telegraphing all their passes to Vrbata. Literally. All their passes are being made via flag semaphore.
- Not long after the Canucks went down by three goals, Derek Dorsett fought with Robert Bortuzzo. The fight ended, as many do, with the players giving each other little pats on the head, to let us know they were never really mad, they were only wasting our time. Anyway, shortly after this fight, Daniel Sedin took a holding penalty, and it seemed to spark the team, because Brandon Sutter scored a shorthanded goal immediately after. On his second odd-man rush of the night, Sutter did what he should have done the first time, when he flubbed a pass to Derek Dorsett to kill a 4-on-1, and he shot the puck himself. A smart play. Having watched Sutter for five games now, I can say with certainty that he should never pass. If you're in a car, stay in the slow lane. Smoking the dutchie with friends? Stay to the far left.
- With Sutter's goal came the debut of his new, personalized goal song: Tim McGraw's "I Like It, I Love it", which I neither like nor love, since it's the Predators' goal song, and my fear going into this experiment was that all the players would just pick lame country songs. But apparently only two have. Who else do you think picked a lame country song? My money's on Derek Dorsett.
- If you've been watching this team for any amount of time, you know by now that Alex Burrows no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. In fact, at this point, if anything goes wrong, an official assumes Alex Burrows did it. ("Shoot! I just stepped in dog crud. Alex Burrows!") So it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise when Burrows was sent to the box for a phantom high stick on Scottie Upshall. (This means there was no high stick. It doesn't mean he high-sticked The Rogers Arena phantom.) It was a pretty bad flop by Upshall. Not the worst flop, mind you. That award goes to animated film Mars Needs Moms, which was a true commercial failure.
- Jared McCann had an up-and-down night. His worst moment probably came on Robert Bortuzzo's goal, when he got sucked in by Vladimir Tarasenko and forgot that Bortuzzo, headed to the back door, was his man. By the time he realized it, Bortuzzo had scored. But on the bright side, McCann scored also, his second of the year, swatting a puck out of mid-air late in the third to cut the Blues' lead to just two. It didn't change the outcome of the game any, but it was a very impressive show of hands, like the shadow puppetry of Australia's Richard Bradshaw.
- I liked Jake Virtanen tonight. He had some great chances, and he was running around, racking up hits and antagonizing the opposition. I especially enjoyed watching him work as the net-front presence on a second period Canucks powerplay, where he battled with Jay Bouwmeester in front. Basically, he crosschecked the veteran defender in the back, like, fifty times. That takes a lot of guts and nerve. Bouwmeester is no slouch, as he proved when the puck went to the boards, where he threw all of his old man strength into a retaliatory crosscheck. Virtanen hit the ice like a ton of bricks. Welcome to the NHL, kid. You only used to be big.
- Bo Horvat had a rough night, finishing minus-4 in corsi and minus-3 in plus/minus. This was the first time all season that he's looked like anything less than the Canucks' best skater. Hopefully it's an anomaly, because if this is what Bo Horvat is going to look like this season, I think we should all be upset at Daniel for causing this.
- The Canucks would add another inside the final minute. Daniel Sedin scored the goal, finding a rebound on a Ben Hutton shot after a won faceoff by Brandon Sutter. It cut the lead to 4-3 with 29 seconds to go, injecting just enough hope into the building for the Canucks to disappoint the fans a second time. Sports are cruel.
