Canucks: 3 Takeaways from the Canucks 5-3 loss to the Seattle Kraken

The Vancouver Canucks faced the 32nd NHL team, the Seattle Kraken for the first time in the league’s history.

While it was preseason, the game gave a lot of promise for this rivalry for the upcoming season as the Kraken edge out our Canucks for the 5-3 win.

The Canucks haven’t started this rivalry off in the best possible way after letting a brilliant start to the game fade away with a lot of penalties that allowed Seattle to get a grip of the game and control it for the rest of the two periods.

Canucks claimed the victory in the post-game shootout between the two teams after Jack Rathbone comes out as the king of breakaways in this one going two for two on the day.

If a fan missed the first period and tuned in for the second and third, they would think that the Canucks truly looked awful. They were struggling to keep possession of the puck, struggling to stay disciplined, and to string some passes together, but in all honesty the Canucks looked exciting in the first period even without the magic of Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes.

Silly mistakes and penalties made the Canucks play on the backfoot for the majority of the game as they lost the first-ever matchup against the Morgan Geekie led Kraken.

The ongoing debate between Olli Juolevi and Jack Rathbone has been settled.

To put it as plain and simple as one can, Rathbone affects the game in ways that Olli Juolevi can’t and won’t.

Despite Rathbone leaving his team a man short for two minutes in the first period, he came right out of the penalty box as the team survived the penalty-kill and scored.

He picked the puck up at center ice after a deflection from a shot and was off to a breakaway against Phillip Grubauer, a breakaway that just felt right for some reason, and Rathbone showed us why – as he put the Canucks up in the game and buried the first-ever Canucks preseason goal against the Kraken.

Rathbone was also a major part of the Canucks second goal, as his chemistry with Brock Boeser shone through on the power play when he dished several accurate passes onto the stick of Boeser.

One of the passes resulting in an assist for Rathbone as Boeser found the back of the net on an unfortunate bounce for the Seattle Kraken.

Rathbone finished the game with two points, while Juolevi finished the game with another highlight of him looking silly.

The narrative in the media during training camp was that Rathbone is better and that he has to be the one that gets that final spot on the roster and in this game against the Seattle team he really seemed to solidified his name in this race.

He was trusted on the power play unit as mentioned before and didn’t disappoint.

As for Juolevi, he played some penalty-kill minutes but was unfortunately at the forefront of a poor goal conceded in the third period which saw the puck trickle through his legs as well as Spencer Martin’s legs straight off a faceoff.

https://twitter.com/SeattleKraken/status/1442325380275179528

Not a good start to the preseason for the young Finnish defender, a fairly underwhelming game overall.

The team’s defence won’t improve if they keep playing shorthanded. 

With the team carrying all of the momentum into the second period after an assertive first, the Canucks poor discipline really hung the team up to dry.

Penalties from Rathbone, Juolevi, Madison Bowey, the debutant Jason Dickinson and youngster Danila Klimovich never allowed the Canucks to take control of the game as they did at the start.

The Kraken come away from this game with three powerplay goals from powerplay units that only practiced special teams the morning before the game!

Talk about giving the game away!

Watching the Canucks in the second and third periods was frustrating because they could not help themselves in any way, and despite a goal in the second period from Nils Höglander to level the game, the Kraken kept the momentum and carried it forward adding two more goals to their tally.

With a little rant out the way, we must keep in mind this was the first game this preseason, along with that the Canucks played a young line-up for the most part against a Kraken team that had all of their big names in the team.

With that being said, we all know that the Canucks defence is the weak point of this team, so, discipline has to be one of the priorities for the squad, otherwise, an already struggling defence just gets thrown under the bus and the team spends most of the game chasing instead of controlling.

One can be sure that Travis Green will address the discipline issues in tomorrow’s game against the Calgary Flames because a Canucks team is a dangerous team at full strength or on the powerplay, it’s just about eliminating silly cross-checking and tripping penalties.

Other Notes

• Will Lockwood looked solid, didn’t offer much but for a fourth-line forward, he did well forechecking.
•  Brad Hunt seemed to fit in well and his experience would add a lot to the squad.

Let us know your thoughts on the game in the comment section below!