Canucks: 3 takeaways from Game 1 shutout loss to Wild
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.
Special teams mismatch
The Vancouver Canucks have one of the most expensive penalty kills in the league, and somehow it’s mediocre. The Canucks allowed two goals on four penalties, while only getting on chance on the powerplay themselves (could have been another if it wasn’t for an ill-advised bench minor). The Canucks used Miller for just over a minute of penalty kill time as well using as Sutter and Beagle. It’s absurd that you dress Sutter to use in the role of a penalty killer to only have him skate 48 seconds in that role.
The speed and tenacity of Virtanen would create more opportunities to draw penalties. It’s harder to draw penalties if the opposition can cleanly catch you and take it off your stick. If Green doesn’t want to dress Virtanen I would still prefer Loui Eriksson in the lineup over Sutter, Eriksson is a much better penalty killer and fourth-liner than Sutter.
The Canucks will need to skate harder and draw more penalties if they want to even up this series, the Wild have shown that they are a force particularly on the blue line and clearly throwing the body isn’t enough because the Canucks got 40 hits in this game and still couldn’t break their spirits.
The “turd” line
The third line of the Canucks has been hit or miss all season, this game was definitely a miss. The line averaged a whopping 0.07 expected goals for at five-on-five last night. To put that in perspective, the next worst had over three times the xGF: Fantenberg with 0.22.
The line struggled at almost every aspect of the game last night, they were out-shot, out-blocked, out-hit, outscored, and outskated. The only thing that Gaudette did well was he won more than 50% of his face-offs which is an important part of his game that I’m glad is growing but unfortunately it didn’t make a difference.
The line was on the ice for three high danger chances against in less than ten minutes of ice time save for Micheal Ferland. Speaking of Ferland he was the one bright spot for the line tonight and one of the few on the entire team. Dropping the gloves early in the game shocked me, with Ferland just coming back from a serious head injury that has kept him out of a game since December, I was just a little bit worried.
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This was not what many fans were hoping for when the Canucks returned to play and certainly not what the Canucks wanted to happen. In a best of five series, there is even less room for error, and when you’re not dressing your best lineup you need to be held accountable. Green wasn’t on the hot seat before this series, but with him making a bold move and refusing to dress Virtanen, that could result in some seats heating up. Nevertheless, a 12.5% chance at first overall in this year’s draft is always in the back pocket.