Vancouver Canucks: 3 takeaways from 4-1 loss to Golden Knights

What happens in Vancouver also stayed in Vegas for the Canucks, who continued their sloppy play on defence while generating very little offence. Here’s what we learned from their 3-1 loss.

The Vancouver Canucks may have lost 4-1 to the Pacific Division-leading Vegas Golden Knights Tuesday, but the biggest story is that they’ve now fallen to 30th-overall in the NHL standings.

Both the Canucks and Arizona Coyotes have 59 points, but the latter has played one less game, so they win the tie-breaker. Arizona visits the last-place Buffalo Sabres (58 points), on Wednesday — so Vancouver will be bottom-two by the end of tonight no matter what.

But let’s move away from the draft lottery stuff for a bit. The Canucks were flatfooted in this game, with Brandon Sutter scoring the only goal. Jacob Markstrom was leaky once again, but the Golden Knights could have easily scored more goals. Amazingly, he’s a reason why it wasn’t 5-1 or worse.

Vancouver has now lost seven consecutive games, and 10 of their last 11. Of course, many fans will applaud the team for “tanking,” and ensuring they finish with higher draft lottery odds. But head coach Travis Green and general manager Jim Benning can’t be the least bit pleased with these consistently bad outings.

Here are three things we learned from the 4-1 blowout loss in Vegas.

About Brendan Leipsic…

Brendan Leipsic was acquired by the Canucks at the trade deadline, and he had a chance to get back at his former team for trading him away. Instead, he was held pointless for the sixth-straight game, and hasn’t scored since Mar. 5 against the New York Islanders.

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Many were getting a little too excited about Leipsic’s hot start in Vancouver, which saw two goals and six points over a four-game span.

But Leipsic has played like the guy Vegas knew they were trading away — a speedy forward who works hard, but probably won’t cut it as a natural goal-scorer in this NHL.

Green has been giving Leipsic his ice time, but he hasn’t been able to recapture that early magic.

The Canucks can at least feel blessed that they have his nice set of wheels, but they can’t get too caught up on Leipsic.

For all we know, he’s just another bottom-six player who will eat up some minutes and get his 20 points. We’ll see if he can bounce back over these next few games, or if his hot start in a Canucks uniform was simply a mirage.

Sedins need a rest

Wasn’t the whole point of 2017-18 for the Canucks to rebuild and provide some breaks for Daniel and Henrik Sedin? Nope. Ever since Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi went down with season-ending injuries, the Canucks have relied on the 37-year-old twins to carry the offence. Things like this are why they’re behind in the rebuild.

Daniel has played over 16 minutes in five of his last six games. As for Henrik, he’s played at least 17:30 in three of his last four contests. As good as the Sedins are, 37-year-olds aren’t built for that much of a workload in today’s NHL.

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The twins are competitive spirits who would never take a day off. But you can’t help but think they should get a game or two off. If not, Green should be giving them 10 to 12 minutes a night per game max.

The Sedins have yet to announe their plans for 2018-19. You can’t help but wonder if they’re leaning more towards retirement with every blow out loss — even though Hank and Dan are doing all they can to keep this team in games.

Boeser needs support next year

So this is what the Canucks offence is? That over-reliant on rookie Brock Boeser, whose season ended after suffering a back injury in the Mar. 5 game against the Islanders? That was over two weeks ago, and it’s the last time Vancouver won a game.

During the seven-game losing skid, they’ve scored…seven goals. Yeah, they’re averaging one goal a game, though it’s more sad in the fact they were shut out three games in a row.

Fans understand this team is rebuilding, but we don’t understand how they can get worse and worse. It’s clear that this team can’t score without Boeser, which means he’ll need lots of support if progress is to be made next season.

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Horvat is going to have to find ways to score without his top linemate. Baertschi has to stay healthy. Elias Pettersson and Jonathan Dahlen need to be on this team next year. Otherwise, you’re making Boeser too much of the scoring — and that’s just not fair to him.