The Vancouver Canucks played their first game in five months last night and failed to score in a 3-0 loss to the Minnesota Wild. Here are three takeaways.
The Vancouver Canucks showed up for half of the game last night, getting dominated in Expected Goals and Corsi for the entire first half of the game, less the first five minutes. Travis Green has not coached a playoff game before and after this performance, I wouldn’t be shocked if you told me that this was his first season as an NHL bench boss.
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The Canucks looked like a team that was putting in all the effort but wasn’t given the right tools at the right time to succeed. At many times through the game, the team looked slow and had a difficult time breaking the game open. This was a game where the Vancouver Canucks needed Jake Virtanen, there I said it; Brandon Sutter played less on the Penalty Kill than J.T. Miller did. Why is Sutter in the lineup?
The Canucks had last change last night as the designated home team, but by looking at a shift chart you definitely wouldn’t know.
Travis Green failed to adapt
Much was talked about how Dean Evason is a rookie coach in the NHL and how Green could catch him sleeping on matchups. With the Canucks having last change it allows Green to make his matchups on the face-offs that he wants to. It didn’t happen that way. Elias Pettersson played less than three minutes matched against the third pairing of the Wild. Evason managed to get Kevin Fiala matched up with Oscar Fantenberg for four minutes of ice time; nearly a third of Fantenberg’s ice time was attempting to defend Fiala.
Green is sleeping on the Lotto Line. Pettersson makes everyone around him better so he can play with anyone, but when your second line is struggling as much as Bo Horvat‘s line struggled last night there needs to be a change. Horvat’s line had a 41% Corsi for and while they managed to get a high danger chance for, they had a lower Expected Goals for than the Jay Beagle line.
Brock Boeser played a minuscule two minutes with Pettersson five-on-five, and when they were on the ice together they generated four scoring chances for and allowed none against, as per natural stat trick. Green played Pettersson with bottom-six players for five minutes at five-on-five last night, whether that be on line changes or in his magic blender, if the Canucks want to win they need to utilize Pettersson’s minutes with the best wingers at his sides.
Against a team that clogs the neutral zone and makes high danger chances hard to come by you need a player that can score dirty or fluky goals. There have been many times when Virtanen scores a goal out of nowhere off the rush on a nothing shot and that’s what this game needed. Sutter is redundant, old, and slow; he does not deserve a spot in the lineup over Virtanen. This is a hill I will die on.