3 Canucks to blame for embarrassing road loss to Flyers
#3. Elias Pettersson doesn’t bring the offense for the Canucks
Just days after getting some Hart Trophy plaudits, Elias Pettersson let this game fall by the wayside. For a player also trying to earn a huge contract as a pending free agent, this performance wasn’t good enough – simply put.
Based on Moneypuck’s postgame expected goals chart, Pettersson’s 0.15 expected goals falls below Conor Garland (0.19), Dakota Joshua (0.22), Brock Boeser (0.22), and Pius Suter (0.37). Nobody played particularly well, and yet Pettersson’s offensive performance still fell well short of snuff.
The 24-year-old also only managed one shot on goal in his 23:48 of ice time, and only had one shot attempt blocked. Pettersson was 2/6 on faceoffs, and his Corsi percentage of 39.3 percent was higher than only Nils Hoglander (35.1) and Carson Soucy (31.4).
Although we can be certain Pettersson, Garland, and Andrei Kuzmenko will have much better performances as a unit in the future, Pettersson needs to rise above and take over games for the Canucks. That didn’t happen on Tuesday night.
#2. Tyler Myers still isn’t good
Not much more can be said about Tyler Myers’ Canucks tenure than what has already been said, and yet the 6-foot-8 defenseman still finds more ways to impress fans with his ability to put the team in disadvantageous situations.
Myers took two penalties in a game where the Canucks were down two goals nearly the whole time, and that only added insult to injury with Suter, Juulsen, Ian Cole, and Sam Lafferty all paying visits to the sin bin themselves. The veteran defenseman also had two defensive zone giveaways, and drilled Pettersson with a slapshot at one point too.
Myers just can’t produce offense like he did very early in his career, and his decision-making and defensive work are each too poor to offset that. He’ll turn 34 on Feb. 1, and at this rate, the Canucks probably can’t wait to get his $6 million cap hit off their books this summer.
Internally, the team doesn’t have many options to replace the 33-year-old, but if the poor play continues longer than a few games, they might be forced to find an alternative one way or another.
#1. The Canucks might be replacing Noah Juulsen very shortly
On the same day the Canucks traded for right-shot defenseman Mark Friedman, Noah Juulsen compounded his previous struggles with another brutal performance away from home. Juulsen slashed Couturier on a breakaway which led to the penalty shot that gave the Flyers their second of two goals on the night, and never made up for it.
Just over five minutes into the final frame, the 26-year-old committed a roughing penalty against Marc Staal that burned another precious two minutes off the clock for the trailing Canucks. Then, Lafferty got booked for unsportsmanlike conduct and Cole hooked Bobby Brink not long after that. Juulsen provides almost zero offensively already, and his play tonight killed momentum at every turn.
This performance came just days after the former Montreal Canadien’s epic fail at clearing the puck on a crucial penalty kill allowed the Oilers to steal the puck, skate around Juulsen on the ground, drive the puck to the net, and eventually finish the play to tie the game at 2-2. Juulsen has now made multiple lazy, unforced errors at some of the most inopportune times possible, and it’s fair to wonder if the Canucks’ coaching staff is already considering sending him up to the press box, if not Abbotsford.
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Based on these performances so far, head coach Rick Tocchet and the Canucks can’t get Mark Friedman on the ice fast enough.