Canucks: 3 takeaways from the 2-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators

2. Too many high-risk plays, not enough high-danger scoring chances

In just a matter of 48 hours, Canucks hockey went from smart and simple to messy and over-complicated.

Was this expected from a team who hadn’t played or practiced in over three weeks as a result of a highly infectious and symptomatic respiratory disease that is most likely still causing lingering problems for many players and coaches? You bet.

But when you’re playing the same team for the third consecutive time, and when you’re coming off of a convincing win against said team just two nights prior, you would hope that everyone on the roster would make a committed effort to replicate their previous two-point success.

Unfortunately, the Canucks weren’t able to deliver.

Travel fatigue and COVID aftermath aside, the team appeared to always make the wrong decisions with the puck. Whether it was passing up the middle when trying to leave the defensive zone, ignoring the simple plays in the neutral zone, or just carelessly icing the puck with tired bodies on the ice, the Canucks seemed to find numerous ways to shoot themselves in the foot on Monday night.

Most notably, defencemen Nate Schmidt, Travis Hamonic and Tyler Myers seemed to have consistent trouble with the puck on their stick.

On numerous occasions, these three veteran blueliners, with minor error contributions from sophomore Quinn Hughes, made high-risk decisions that, quite frankly, had very little hope of succeeding. Most of these mistakes resulted in high-quality puck possession and pressure from the Senators for much of the night, with one of those Schmidt flubs even finding the back of the net for the game’s opening goal.

Of course, it’s hard to throw all of the blame onto a defensive core that still continues to go to battle on a nightly basis with so much heart and soul, especially when a handful of them bounced back a bit in the third period. But if the team wants to give themselves even the smallest chance at a postseason appearance, they’ll need to clean up their defensive fundamentals quickly.