Jaroslav Halak struggles as Canucks get beat 7-2 by the New Jersey Devils

After beating the New York Rangers 5-2 at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, the Vancouver Canucks travelled across the Hudson River to Newark to take on the New Jersey Devils.

This was the third edition of the Hughes Bowl or Hughes Derby or whatever you want to call it. Quinn Hughes and his brother Jack were facing off and they placed a wager on the game.

Here is how the Canucks lined up. Since it was the second of a back-to-back, Jaroslav Halak got the start in the crease.

Well, after two straight performances where the Canucks were by far the better team, they were by far were second best in New Jersey on Monday night. The Canucks have not beat the Devils since November 25, 2014, at Rogers Arena. Alex Burrows and Shawn Matthias scored in that game and Ryan Miller got the shutout in a 2-0 victory. The only Canuck from that game still on the roster is Bo Horvat who was a rookie a the time. The Canucks have lost 12 straight to the Devils and they meet again on March 15 in Vancouver.

Monday night was an appalling game from the Canucks.

Thoughts on the game

The Canucks came out flat. Yes, it was a back-to-back but that shouldn’t be an excuse especially since New York City isn’t that far from Newark.

From the drop of the puck, Vancouver looked really sloppy. There were so many costly turnovers which include a giveaway at the blue line by Oliver Ekman-Larsson which led to Jack Hughes’ opening goal and Tyler Myers’ poor blind pass which led to Yegor Sharangovich’s second goal.

The Canucks did have more shots on goal but they didn’t have a lot of zone time and they weren’t going to the net for scoring chances. On the other hand, the Devils did. Luckily, Vancouver did get on the board twice in the second with a Vasily Podkolzin deflection in the first and a nice shot from Tanner Pearson. He has goals in back-to-back games and six points in his last five.

Too bad those were the only good things about the game.

The Canucks defence as a whole was horrendous and perhaps this was the worst game of the season from Hughes. He was easily getting beat by the speed of the Devils particularly on their fourth goal as Jesper Boqvist just flew by Hughes. There were 12 shots against when Hughes was on the ice and that was the most among Canucks defence per NaturalStatTrick.

As seen in the title, we have to talk about Halak. He was making his first start against February 9 where he got pulled after letting in five goals on 12 shots against the Anaheim Ducks. It was the same story in New Jersey. Halak let six goals on 14 shots. The numbers in his last three games haven’t been good either. Also, since Halak made his 10th start of the season, he receives his 1.25 million dollar bonus which counts against the cap next season.

What a way to get a bonus.

Sure the defence was bad but Halak had to do better in the net to give Thatcher Demko a night. He’s not expected to be lights out like Demko but he has to make the routine saves. Demko was like an employee getting called into work on his day off on Monday.

Not sure why he was so deep in his net on Boqvist’s goal for example. It looked like Halak wasn’t ready for New Jersey’s shots and looked slow to react to them. This also goes to show how much Demko was covering up the Canucks’ flaws.

Halak only has two wins this season and that is not enough.

After the euphoria of the two big wins over the Calgary Flames and Rangers, the Canucks did not come out with the same spark and they looked very lacklustre against the Devils with atrocious defending and questionable goaltending.