With so much of the micro-view ugly for the Vancouver Canucks on Monday, the struggling National Hockey League team can encourage itself with the bigger picture.
As their injury wave crests again, the depleted Canucks managed to collect three points from a daunting three-game Atlantic road trip in which going 0-for was a real possibility and would have seriously damaged their playoff chances even this early in the season.
So, the Canucks survived to fight another week.
Thatâ€s the good part.
The bad part on Monday was that with a chance to use the tour of Stanley Cup contenders as a turning point in their season, and up two goals early and somehow still tied early in the third period, the Canucks†disaster on defence was too much to outscore and they lost 8-5 to the two-time champion Florida Panthers.
Yes, the Canucks scored five times on 15 shots on the road… and lost by three goals.
Vancouver was playing its second game in just over 24 hours, and head coach Adam Foote made the safe (and conservative) choice in net by giving minor-league goalie Jiri Patera his first NHL start in 601 days. But the Canucks were not remotely close to the Panthers, who also have some serious injuries, in any sense except their finishing.
After getting outshot 19-7 in the first two periods Sunday in Tampa, where the Canucks scored five third-period goals for the fourth time in franchise history to win 6-2, Vancouver was outshot 27-9 through 40 minutes by Florida.Â
In the Canucks†road trip opener Friday in Carolina, where goalie Kevin Lankinen earned them a point with a 4-3 overtime loss to the Hurricanes, Vancouver was outshot 26-12 through two periods.
For the three games, Natural Stat Trick had high-danger scoring chances at five-on-five 51-11 against the Canucks, whose expected-goals were just 24 per cent. Vancouver was outshot 109-50 on the trip.
Yet, against this territorial landslide, the Canucks managed to dig in and score enough times to go 1-1-1 and pass the quarter-mark of their regular season at 9-10-2, two raw points out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference, although considerably farther back on points percentage.
The Canucks have admirably adapted to the daily task of surviving the month-long injury crisis, which currently has six players out, but just alternating wins and losses is slowly but steadily flattening their playoff odds.
Vancouver has not won consecutive games since Oct. 19, when their lineup crisis accelerated with injuries that same afternoon to centres Filip Chytil and Teddy Blueger. The Canucks are 5-8-2 since then.
If they really want to survive and stay in the race, theyâ€re simply going to have to play better and plug the gaping holes in their defensive game. No team has allowed more goals than the 77 surrendered by the Canucks, whose goals-against average of 3.67 is 30th among 32 teams, and whose 67.1 per cent penalty kill is the worst in hockey.
As Sportsnet analytics correspondent Adam Vingan reported last week, the Canucks†defensive deterioration can be traced to the front of their net, where the share of shots coming from Vancouver’s slot had plummeted from 11th-best last season to 28th this year, and the team’s defence of slot passes had collapsed to 30th from fifth.
With their paper-thin depth at centre and lack of offensive game-breakers up front, the Canucks were expected to be a team that had trouble scoring, but one whose goaltending and strong defence would make Vancouver stingy and force opponents to work for their goals.
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More or less, the opposites have been true, exemplified by this road trip. Including an empty-netter, the Canucks scored 14 goals in the three games. And the most encouraging aspect of this is that their two franchise skaters, defenceman Quinn Hughes and centre Elias Pettersson, have rediscovered their world-class offensive levels.
Hughes helped set up the first three Vancouver goals in Florida, making him the first player in franchise history to collect 10 assists over three games. (Hughes had one game off during that streak due to an upper-body injury.) And Pettersson clinically scored the third and fourth Canuck goals on Monday as Vancouver rallied from a 5-2 deficit to tie it on defenceman Filip Hronekâ€s power-play finish off the rush at 3:14 of the third period.
Pettersson has eight points in his last four games, after being blanked in five of the previous seven.
The best part about this road trip for the Canucks is having both Hughes and Pettersson simultaneously playing again at an elite level. That hasnâ€t happened in a while.
Besides Lankinen and Hughes, what enabled the Canucks to win in Tampa was their special teams. Their power play went 2-for-3 while the barely-functioning penalty kill blanked the Lightning during two disadvantages.
In Florida, each power play scored twice. But timing is often as important as totals, and when the game was still there for Vancouver in the middle of the third period, its power play generated almost nothing during advantages when it was 6-5 and 7-5 for Florida. Canuck penalty-killing, meanwhile, didnâ€t survive Marcus Petterssonâ€s interference penalty at 7:11 as Panthers defenceman Seth Jones skated unchecked to the slot to convert Sam Reinhartâ€s pass and restore his teamâ€s two-goal lead at 8:19.
Nobody outside the team knows what conversations took place between Foote, goaltending coach Marko Torenius and Lankinen between the back-to-back games. But the head coach made the call to give minor-league backup Patera his first NHL start since March 26, 2024.
With starting goalie Thatcher Demko on his fifth injury in less than two years, Foote rested Lankinen, who was brilliant in Tampa and Carolina and would have been playing his third game in four nights in Florida. Lankinen faced “only†30 shots against the Lightning and handled back-to-back starts last weekend at home.
Patera is a 26-year-old with nine NHL games in his career. He was signed as a free agent by the Canucks in the summer of â€24 due to uncertainty about Demkoâ€s health and the organizationâ€s desire to have at least one experienced professional in the minors to play alongside Vancouverâ€s talented prospects.
Patera made several strong saves on Monday, but by the end of the night had allowed seven goals on 40 shots.
Demkoâ€s reported groin injury is week-to-week. With the Canucks finally getting a slight breather this week, with home games Thursday against Dallas and Sunday against Calgary before they open another four-game trip in Anaheim on Nov. 26, it may be a while before Patera gets another NHL game.
Weâ€re not going to judge newest Canuck David Kampf on one game when his team was outshot 41-15, but his debut as Vancouverâ€s checking centre after his contract termination in Toronto did free up Pettersson for more offensive starts. Kampf also went 11-4 on faceoffs, but finished minus-three and was on the ice for one of the Panthers†power-play goals.
Adam Foote: “We were right there and we made a couple of mistakes at the wrong time. We have to find a way to take some of the good stuff that happened out of that, too.â€
Oâ€Connor-Sasson-Boeser
E. Pettersson Jr.-Willander
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