Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

I Watched This Game: Shorthanded Canucks have no answer for high-flying Jets

Canucks 1, Jets 5
I Watched This Game - IWTG Banner

I was expecting Nikolay Goldobin to play in this game.

I’m sure that I’m not alone: I think everyone was expecting Goldobin to play. With no Bo Horvat and no Sven Baertschi, the Canucks needed someone who might be able to provide some offence. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for Goldobin and his silky mitts.

Instead, Goldobin sat in the press box and used his silky mitts to eat popcorn with great finesse and panache. Meanwhile, the players actually on the ice scored a grand total of one goal.

“Part of Goldy not playing is maturing,” said Travis Green in the post-game press scrum. “There’s little things within Goldy’s game and his practice habits and stuff that we’re trying to teach him.”

To a certain extent, I get it: Green is thinking long-term with Goldobin and trying to instill the habits and work ethic that will give him a long, successful career. On the other hand, there are all sorts of little things wrong within everyone else’s games too, and those little things, along with a few big things, led to the Canucks getting crushed 5-1.

The Canucks couldn’t have been much worse with Goldobin in the lineup when I watched this game.

  • Jacob Markstrom provided the bad goaltender bookends for this game, allowing bad goals on the first and final shots of the game. That would be an impressive feat, except that literally anyone could do it. They would just allow a lot more goals in between the first and final shots.
  • Markstrom owned up to his bad game and it would have been pretty hard to avoid doing so. You can’t claim bad luck like Matt Murray when the very first shot of the game is a weak wrist shot from the point that slips by you.
  • With both his linemates on the injured reserve, Brock Boeser joined with the Sedins and it immediately paid dividends, as the trio possessed the puck like their name was Legion. The Sedins dialed up the Wizardry on their Sedinery and set up Boeser between the hashmarks and he cast it into the pigs, er...net for the tying goal.
  • Boeser now has 11 goals in his last 13 games and is basically irreplaceable in the Canucks’ lineup. That made it terrifying for Canucks fans when he blocked a Blake Wheeler shot with his right knee late in the first period and left the ice in agony.
  • Speaking of Wheeler, he ran into Jacob Markstrom early in the second period, making no effort to stop as Markstrom covered up the puck. John Garrett was upset and I’m on his side. If that’s not goaltender interference, what is? It’s frustrating to see soft calls get made when things like this that could actually hurt a player get ignored.
  • The Canucks’ penalty kill had no answer for the Jets in this game. Michael Chaput struggled in particular, giving up the most scoring chances when he was on the ice shorthanded. He went 1-for-7 on shorthanded faceoffs and had a bad giveaway that led to the 2-1 goal, which was technically at even-strength, but only by a matter of milliseconds. To be fair, the Jets have one of the best power plays in the NHL, but the Canucks’ kill needed just a pinch more “kill” to it.
  • The game nearly turned on a dime on a delayed penalty call on the Canucks. A pass back to the blue line eluded the Jets’ defencemen and the puck was on a line towards their own empty net, but Connor Hellebuyck alertly halted his trip to the bench to stop the puck. That would have tied the game 2-2, changing absolutely everything, in that the game likely would have ended 5-2 instead of 5-1. TSN Turning Point, right there.
  • Nic Dowd can’t be this bad. The Canucks’ newly-acquired centre played 70 games for the Kings last season and was a solid, defensively-responsible fourth-line forward. But his first two games with the Canucks have been disastrous, taking an undisciplined penalty in each game and getting crushed by the opposition in corsi and scoring chances.
  • The penalty call on Dowd was Downy soft, but it was simultaneously a bad penalty. He has to know by now that if you get your stick in the hands of an opponent, you’re going to get called for either a slash or a hook. This time, it was a hook.
  • The Jets made it 3-1 on Dowd’s penalty on a bit of a weird play. Bryan Little knocked Chris Tanev’s stick out of his hands away from the puck and Michael Chaput alertly handed his stick to Tanev. Less alertly, he bent down to pick up and use Tanev’s stick right as Tyler Myers took a shot on goal, so Chaput was way out of position when Nikolaj Ehlers one-timed the rebound over Alex Edlers’ attempted windmill save. Someone is to blame, but it’s hard to say who, just like it’s hard to know who to blame for the Transformers movies: Michael Bay? The audience who keeps paying to see them? The big-name actors signing up for those schlock fests? Who?
  • The only defence pair that was not on the ice for a goal against was Ben Hutton and Derrick Pouliot, but they also allowed the highest number of high-danger chances according to Natural Stat Trick. The defence was a bit of a mess all-around and it really seems like something needs to change in the defence pairings.
  • Henrik Sedin was great in this game, with an uncharacteristic game-high five shots on goal, but he bears much of the blame for the Jets’ fourth goal. He turned a 3-on-2 rush for the Jets into a 3-on-1 when he made the poor decision to step up in the neutral zone. He stopped moving his feet, and as soon as he did, the Canucks were done for. Come on Henrik: move your feet and feel united.
  • I’m not sure what Markstrom was thinking when he passed the puck straight up the middle of the ice from behind his own net, but it might have been something like, “Matt Hendricks seems like a nice guy. I’d bet he’d be really happy if he scored a goal. I’m going to help him out.”