Canucks: 3 takeaways from Game 1 shutout loss to Wild

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.