Canucks: 2 takeaways from the 5-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs

Tiredness, turnovers and tough breaks

These three factors were on full display during Saturday night’s contest, and, as briefly alluded to above, should be expected to stick around for the remainder of the season.

Fortunately, unlike their previous sluggish and unprepared opening shifts throughout the road trip, the Canucks appeared to have found some energy and speed to start this game, much to the surprise of everyone watching at home.

They were making smart, simple plays in the neutral zone, and were able to limit the Maple Leafs to no high-danger chances in the first seven minutes as a result. They even opened the scoring, with Tanner Pearson finding the back of the net after a clean offensive zone face-off win from captain Bo Horvat.

As you can guess, that was short-lived.

The Canucks started to slow down after 20 minutes of play, with the physical and mental exhaustion rising to the forefront as expected. They were unable to complete simple tape-to-tape passes and looked to be one step behind on every play.

The Canucks continued to make the game more difficult for themselves, allowing too much open ice for the Maple Leafs’ to complete numerous stretch passes, as well as blindly throwing the puck up the middle of the ice to be easily picked off.

They were able to control most of the damage in the second frame, only surrendering one goal, but it was evident that the team didn’t have enough steam for the third period. They gave up three more goals in the final 20 minutes, and were only able to record four shots on goal.

Like we’ve seen so many times before, even the hockey gods didn’t allow the Canucks to catch any sort of much-needed lucky break.

From a few grade-A chances from recent waiver-claim Jimmy Vesey to Horvat’s disappearing puck trick in front of the net in the third period, it seemed that nothing was going in the team’s favour, essentially just adding more salt to the wounds of players, coaches and fans.

Yes, it was cringe-worthy and difficult hockey to endure overall, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t a complete trainwreck for the Canucks.

Whatever life they had come across in the first period seemed to have disappeared in the blink of an eye, forcing them to just hold onto dear life for the remaining 40 minutes until the final whistle.