Canucks: 3 takeaways from the 4-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers

The Vancouver Canucks are a sinking ship right now.

The team played the second half of their back-to-back on Tuesday night, once again facing off against Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and their playoff-bound Edmonton Oilers.

It’s been a rough go for the Canucks lately, having been outscored by a margin of 22-9 over their last five games. No one on the team is 100% healthy (understandably so given the circumstances of their team-wide COVID-19 outbreak last month), and the players appear to be just crawling towards the end of the season at this point.

As expected, the Canucks put up another lacklustre and disappointing performance, falling to the Oilers by a score of 4-1, for their sixth defeat in nine days.

With the loss, the team remains at the bottom of the Scotia North Division with 41 points and is even inching their way closer to the basement-dwelling Buffalo Sabres in the league standings.

With nine games still remaining in their schedule, it’d be a miracle if the team could come away with a victory at this point. Right now, however, the Canucks’ main focus should be to just muster up whatever little energy they have left in order to drag their tired, broken bodies across the finish line and into the draft lottery.

With that being said, let’s take a look at three takeaways from last night’s 4-1 loss to the Oilers:

Nothing good happens after 20 minutes

Believe it or not, it wasn’t all bad for the Canucks on Tuesday night.

The team kicked off the contest with a decently strong first period, limiting the Oilers to seven SOG and, more importantly, zero goals against. They also effectively blocked shots and forced their opponents to turn over the puck on a few different occasions.

It wasn’t the prettiest hockey by any means, with both teams showing the ill-effects of playing two games in 24 hours, but it was getting the job done, while also tempting fans with the tiniest morsels of hope.

Cue the disappointment.

Much like the past few outings, the team collapsed in the second period, allowing three goals within a five-minute span. Their gameplay was littered with turnovers, poor puck management and costly decision-making in their own zone, leading to broken sticks and visibly-frustrated reactions. Ultimately, the team wasn’t able to recover after that, conceding one more tally in the final frame to put the cherry on top of a truly disheartening game.

What’s worse? This isn’t new information. In fact, all of this was happening well before COVID-19 hit the team.

Over 49 games this season, the Canucks have been outscored by a margin of 58-36 in the middle frame, to go along with 544 shots against. In other words, the team has rarely been able to piece together 60 minutes of high-quality, winning hockey, with majority of their downfalls taking place in the second period, and their opponents have been taking full advantage.

Tuesday night marked the 23rd time this season that the Canucks weren’t able to secure a comeback victory when trailing after two periods, with the team only being able to achieve the feat on three separate occasions thus far.

Yes, we do have to consider the toll that COVID-19 takes on a person’s physical and mental exhaustion when analyzing these games, especially when said person is forced to play a brutally compressed schedule shortly after. And no, it’s not like the team effort has been completely non-existent since their second return to play.

But you can’t place all of the blame solely on the outcome/predicament of the past five weeks, and the team will, without question, need to address this issue ASAP if they want to find themselves with a winning record in the coming years.