Canucks: 3 takeaways from Vancouver’s 4-3 shootout loss to Hurricanes

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24 hours after an overtime win versus the New York Islanders, the Vancouver Canucks challenged the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh trying to win six straight.

Everything is going the right way for the Vancouver Canucks on the road. They manhandled the San Jose Sharks 5-2 before flooding the island of New York with a 4-3 overtime win. Five straight wins, lots of goals and a ton of confidence from up and down the Vancouver line-up.

A quick stop in Carolina to try and teach the jerks a lesson or two about winning hockey games. A win for the Canucks would cushion the Pacific Division lead, stretch the winning streak to six and guarantee a road trip with a winning record.

Heading into Sunday’s matinee there were a couple of questions: Would Quinn Hughes add to his rookie scoring lead? Can Elias Pettersson break the six-game goal drought? Would Brock Boeser see first line minutes with the lotto line?

With the last meeting of these two clubs at Rogers Arena ending in a 1-0 overtime decision, it was bound to be a hard-fought, very defensive battle. Although Jacob Markstrom stood on his head and turned down all 43 shots in the shutout win on December 12th, Travis Green elected Thatcher Demko as his starter. Let’s dive into Sunday’s results.

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Elias Pettersson scores 50th career goal in 2 goal game

It took him seven games to get from 49 to 50. It took him 124 NHL games to get to 50, but Pettersson did it. 53 games into his sophomore season and he’s halfway to the big 100. Already, it’s a huge accomplishment for the 21-year-old Swede, but because he holds himself to such high standards, he probably thinks he could have completed sooner as he was without a goal in his last six games. Nonetheless, a breath of fresh air for Petey as he continues to rack up the points in a very productive season.

It was a pretty little goal, Pettersson’s 22nd of his 2019-20 campaign and also the first of the game. 4:25 into the first period and Pettersson bulged the twine on a nifty shot past James Reimer. Pettersson failed to register a shot on goal against the Islanders, something he wasn’t going to let happen again. He pulled off his goal with a bit of a spinning move in front that took some quick but effective skill and the goal was assisted by Chris Tanev and his defensive partner, Hughes.

Petey, as his teammates like to call him, went on to have quite a positive game. He was relentless on the puck and showed growing chemistry with Boeser as he came back to the top of the lineup to join J.T. Miller and Pettersson to reforge the offensively gifted lotto line. Pettersson potted his second goal of the contest in the third period to tie the game. Petey’s goal was dialled in on a very sharp angle and was a fitting answer from Vancouver’s elite after Andrei Svechnikov scored a beauty goal just moments before Pettersson’s response.

Pettersson added a very smooth shootout goal, a cherry on top of a terrific performance, just not the two points he was hoping for. All the same, Pettersson would have to settle for his efforts in grabbing the team an overtime point.

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Power play struggles

Thank goodness the Canucks managed to score during five-on-five play against the Hurricanes. The power play for Vancouver wasn’t pretty, to say the least. You can blame it on whatever you like, the fact that the Canucks were playing their second game in 24 hours or the fact that heading into Sunday’s tilt, the Hurricanes had the league’s sixth best penalty kill, sporting an 83.2 success rate according to the NHL website. Whatever it was, Vancouver wasn’t getting it done on with the man advantage.

With seven total shots while up a man, the Canucks had zero conversions on four power play chances. There wasn’t much that could penetrate the Carolina blueline. Vancouver was sloppy when trying to cross the line and the drop pass was overused and predictable.

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Pettersson often had to take matters into his own hands and cross the blue himself. The problem was once he got into the zone, he would dish it off to a teammate who would make an error and trip up any progress made in the power play. When Vancouver had opportunities, it never seemed like much of a scoring threat. Hughes and Jake Virtanen had two power play shots each, but the lotto line was held to one each.

The power play has been struggling. It’s slowly sliding down the ranks, game after game and Travis Green needs to figure something out if Vancouver wants to stay perched on top of the Pacific Division.

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Quinn Hughes adds to his rookie scoring lead

It took a while but Hughes finally found himself on top of the rookie-scoring race after an excellent game-winning, two-goal performance against the New York Islanders on Saturday. He decided to add to the lead when he tallied an assist on the games opening goal of the first period.

He was the secondary assist on Pettersson’s spinning goal, but overall Hughes had himself a good game. He inches closer to surpassing the rookie numbers of Swedish defender Rasmus Dahlin that were put out in 2018-19 and should have no problem widening the gap for the next young rookie defender to chase.

With his 32nd assist of the campaign, Hughes reaches the 39 point mark in just 52 games played. If I remember correctly, a lot of professionals had Hughes pegged to reach such a total by season’s end. Without a doubt, Hughes is performing like the best defenceman the Canucks have ever seen. Quite remarkable considering he’s just 20-years of age.

Next. Canucks: Hughes should be considered Calder favourite. dark

Final Thoughts…

The Canucks should be happy they escaped with a point. Time for the Canucks to regroup and try to improve a 2-0-1 road trip record in a battle with the forever rivalled Boston Bruins on Tuesday. Puck drops at 4 PM.

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