Husso hard to solve as Canucks fall 4-1 to St.Louis Blues

The Vancouver Canucks end their four-game road trip by singing the Blues.

After impressive wins in Colorado and Dallas and a deserved point in Minnesota, the Canucks looked to end the trip on a high note with a win over the St.Louis Blues and make up some more ground in the playoff race. Unfortunately, the Blues were on-key as they beat Vancouver 4-1.

With the Canucks loss, they still sit three points behind the Vegas Golden Knights for the final wild-card spot. They are also four points behind the Edmonton Oilers for third in the Pacific Division. The Oilers are leading the Arizona Coyotes 4-1 at the time of this writing. Vegas doesn’t play until Wednesday as they take on the Seattle Kraken.

Other teams in the mix along with the Canucks include the Dallas Stars and Winnipeg Jets. The Stars don’t play until Tuesday when they take on the Anaheim Ducks and the Jets take on the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday.

Vancouver gets five out of a possible eight points on the road trip and that is good but it doesn’t push them closer to a playoff spot but does keep them in the race.

The Canucks had an opportunity to grab two more valuable points since a lot of the teams they were chasing were off Monday night but end up with nothing. It wasn’t a bad game by Vancouver but they were denied by some solid goaltending, bad luck and some mistakes of their own.

Thoughts on the game

Ville Husso was on his game from when the puck dropped and the Blues had a better start.

The Canucks were firing plenty of shots at the Blues goaltender but it seemed like nothing would get passed him. Husso was also the goalie in the first meeting between these two meetings in a 3-1 St. Louis win on January 23 in Vancouver. He was good in that game and good on Monday night. Canucks fans should miss Jordan Binnington.

Brock Boeser had a couple of chances in front of Husso but the Blues goalie denied him. Tanner Pearson, J.T. Miller and Conor Garland each had five shots on goal but Husso stopped them all. Husso was making good saves with his pads in particular. Vancouver was pressing for a goal in the second period but Husso stood tall stopping all 11 shots.

Brad Hunt denied Husso the shutout in the third as he roofed it on a three-on-one.

The power play didn’t look good either. There were only two attempts but the second one kind of killed the momentum for the Canucks. There was hardly any movement and it looked very sloppy as Jaroslav Halak had two make two good saves to prevent a shorthanded goal. You know the power play needs work when the goalie is doing all the work on it.

Speaking of Halak, he didn’t look bad. He made some key saves to keep the Canucks in it and there was some bad luck on two of the three goals that went past him. Marco Scandella’s opening goal went off Will Lockwood’s stick and off Halak’s shoulder and into the net. Tarasenko’s third period goal was off a rebound that took a strange bounce.

Those two goals give you the same feeling as when you lose a 1-0 FIFA game after you manage over 10 shots on target and your opponent scores a lucky goal with their only shot on target.

The Canucks had some more good looks late in the third and Bruce Boudreau even put the Lotto Line back together but it all proved to be futile.

The Canucks did not have the same energy and intensity as the last three games. They weren’t winning a lot of the puck battles and I just couldn’t see the same spark. There were also some mistakes which included plenty of turnovers from the blue line.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad game from the Canucks but it wasn’t good enough. Vancouver couldn’t match the speed and pace of the Blues and they took advantage of the Canucks mistakes and some luck. This game also would have been different if Husso wasn’t standing on his head.