3 Takeaways from Canucks 5-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers
It hasn’t been fun being a Vancouver Canucks fan the last few weeks, or the entire season for that matter. The Canucks were coming off a road trip where they dropped both games in Ottawa and both games in Toronto and have returned home for two against the Edmonton Oilers before they play the next two in Edmonton.
Unfortunately, the losing has continued as they lost 5-3 against Edmonton, who are now Stanley Cup Playoff-bound. With Tuesday’s loss, the Canucks remain at the bottom of the North Division with 41 points, which is four points back of the Ottawa Senators.
Vancouver hasn’t been mathematically eliminated yet but it is inevitable with just 10 games to go and giving the remaining schedule and the team recently coming off a major COVID outbreak, it’s going to be a long 10 games.
According to SportsClubStats.Com, the Canucks playoff odds are now at 0.1%. That’s about the same odds of me becoming a millionaire in the next five years.
While the Canucks did manage to get on the score sheet three times and even made things interesting late, the Oilers simply outclassed them and had more energy. While Vancouver did show some glimpses of excitement, it wasn’t enough.
Here are three takeaways from the 5-3 loss.
Fatigue a factor….again
This is a recurring theme for the Canucks and will continue to be. To be fair, the Canucks did show some fight in the first period and in some parts of the second but the tank ran out.
They did get some good chances on Mikko Koskinen in the first and at some points of the game did show some good zone time.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of giveaways, odd-man rushes against and were being badly outshot by the Oilers. Vancouver really wasn’t winning a lot of the battles along the boards either and it felt like Edmonton had the puck about 90% of the time.
Quinn Hughes in particular did not look good defensively and he looked tired and lost out there.
The fatigue was also a factor in some poor defensive coverage.
Coverage is for wimps #Canucks pic.twitter.com/Jmm7suKG0r
— Cody Severtson (@CodySevertson) May 4, 2021
After what the Canucks have gone through with the COVID outbreak and the schedule and the personnel on the ice, you can’t really be too hard on them.
J.T. Miller gets two points
One bright spot of this game was J.T. Miller. He managed to get two points on Tuesday.
The first was an assist on Nate Schmidt’s goal from the point that tied the game at one apiece.
Höglander with the screen, Schmidt with the shot and the #Canucks have tied it at 1! pic.twitter.com/ku4srJzd07
— Sportsnet 650 (@Sportsnet650) May 4, 2021
This Canucks season hasn’t really been full of highlight-reel moments (other than the goalies I guess.) but Miller scored a pretty nice one in this game.
About 39 seconds after the Oilers got the goal that made it 3-1, the Canucks got the puck out of their own zone and Nils Hoglander flipped it to Brock Boeser and it looked like Darnell Nurse beat him to it but the puck came to Miller skated by the Oilers defenders and made a pretty slick move and beat Koskinen on the backhand,
JT Miller answers back for the #Canucks with a gorgeous move in tight! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/faBcg7zBcx
— Sportsnet 650 (@Sportsnet650) May 4, 2021
As nice this goal and two points were, it wasn’t enough for a victory.
Connor McDavid couldn’t be stopped
Gee, that Connor McDavid guy is really good right? The best player in the NHL (No, it’s not Auston Matthews and no, it’s not Nathan McKinnon, it’s simply McDavid.) managed four points against the Canucks which brings his point total to 91 in only 50 games. That is on pace for about 102 points in 56 games and in a full 82 game season that would be on pace for 149 points. You have to admit that is incredible and there is a good chance he will reach the 100 point plateau sometime in the next three games against the Canucks.
It was like watching a player in the EA NHL video games whose attributes have been all edited to 99 overall. He assisted on Jesse Puljujarvi and Tyson Barrie’s goals and got his 30th which was a strange one that went off Travis Hamonic’s stick and went off Braden Holtby’s glove who thought he had it in his glove. The Oilers captain got his 31st in the empty net.
McDavid really was everywhere on the ice with his explosive speed and excellent playmaking and the Canucks really couldn’t contain him. Number 97 always looks dangerous on the ice and it was no different on Tuesday as he got plenty of scoring chances and made life difficult for the Canucks. He really is an exciting player to watch but one that you can love and hate if you’re a Canucks fan.
Other Notes
- The Canucks as a whole had an expected goals percentage of 39.12% according to Natural Stat Trick
- Brandon Sutter and Marc Michaelis did not play as they are out with upper-body injuries bringing the Canucks injured list to eight players and that saw Tyler Graovac drew into the lineup
- As he has done all season, Hoglander showed a lot of effort and skill. He had an assist as well as over 20 minutes of ice time.
- Jack Rathbone was also called up from the taxi squad earlier on Tuesday and Jonah Gadjovich will join the team in Winnipeg on May 10th per the Canucks Public Relations Twitter account.
- It was also the night of the Botchford Project, which is a media mentorship program that gives an aspiring writer to cover a Canucks game and write an article for the Canucks website in honour of the late Jason Botchford. This year was different due to COVID-19 but three aspiring writers, Clarissa Sabile (@quinnsedgework) of Canucks Army, Lachlan Irvine (@Lachinthecrease) of Lachinthecrease.com and the Creasecast and Arash Memarzadeh (@ArashMemarzadeh) of the Pucks on Net podcast got the privilege to sit in the press box and will each have an article on Canucks.Com sometime soon. Check out their work and if you’re on Twitter give them a follow.
The Canuck Way Mailbag Part 1: Lind, Gadjovich, Juolevi. dark. Next
The Canucks get right back at it against the Oilers on Wednesday and puck drop is at 7:00 P.M.