The Vancouver Canucks are absolutely dreadful in 3-on-3 overtime, but they can take some solace in one fact: there’s no 3-on-3 overtime in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Of course, their ineptitude in overtime might mean they never get to the playoffs but let’s focus on the positive. Sure, with an 18-12-10 record, the Canucks have lost four more games than they’ve won this season but look on the bright side: they’ve earned a point in nearly half of their losses.
What, that doesn’t make you feel any better? Well, it shouldn’t.
The Canucks raised the bar last season by winning the Pacific Division and coming a game away from the Western Conference Final. As much as the Canucks have been able to hang onto a playoff spot with a league-leading ten overtime/shootout losses, the expectations are higher than that now.
It’s not enough for the Canucks to earn a single point, even if it’s against one of the best teams in the league in the Washington Capitals — not when two points were there to be grasped.
In the media scrum after the game, Canucks captain Quinn Hughes seemed to take some offence at the suggestion that the Canucks were “able to grind out a result against a good team.”
“Yeah, well, I think we’re a good team,” said Hughes. “They’re a good team but we’re a good team too. We’ve battled through a lot of adversity this year. I don’t think we’ve had our full lineup yet this year. But guys are playing really hard right now. We’re a good team too, so we expect to get two points against any team.”
That’s the expectation the Canucks should have and it’s good to hear that from the captain. They can’t be content with getting “a result.” They need to start winning more games.
There are more positives to take from Wednesday’s game against the Capitals. They held one of the highest-scoring teams in the NHL to just 18 shots and two goals. Most nights, that kind of defensive performance would lead to a win.
“We played a good hockey game,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “It’s a top team in the league and I thought we did a nice job. The guys worked hard.”
“I think everybody did something, contributed tonight, which is big for our team,” he added.
The Canucks also managed to prevent Alex Ovechkin from notching another goal in his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky. A lot of teams have struggled to do that this season.
Those are all positive things. Perhaps this game, with the team shutting down a tough opponent on defence, is a sign that the Canucks are finally finding their identity and, perhaps from that — and the imminent return of Elias Pettersson — the offence will come too.
The trouble is, it’s starting to look like the team has already found their identity: finding a way to lose.
That’s an identity that can stick to a team unless they nip it in the bud in a hurry. An awful lot of buds went unnipped when I watched this game.
- This game got off to a fervid start. On a delayed penalty, Pierre-Luc Dubois appeared to target Hughes with a knee, which drew the ire of Kiefer Sherwood, who hit Dubois after the whistle. That led to a massive scrum, where Dubois went after Hughes again, dragging him out of the scrum. To top it off, Dubois gave him an extra shot after everything had seemingly died down.
- It all seemed very intentional to go after the Canucks’ best player, who also happened to have just returned from injury, so it was frustrating to see the referees fall for the chicanery, giving Hughes a minor penalty for roughing. Sure, the Canucks got a four-minute power play but Dubois essentially helped the penalty kill by taking Hughes off the ice.
- Here’s where it’s really absurd. Dubois got two penalties: the original hook that was the reason for the delayed penalty and a roughing minor, which he seemed to get when he gave Hughes the extra shot after the scrum. You can see in the replay that the official immediately pointed to Dubois and signaled to the box when that happened, which seems to mean that only Hughes was going to get a roughing minor from their previous altercation. Make it make sense.
- “Quinn tried to explain it to me — in fact, he didn’t know. He didn’t know. I honestly don’t know,” said Tocchet. “The refs just said, ‘You’re getting a four-minute power play,’ and then he said, ‘You’re going to have Quinn for the last two,’ and I said, ‘I’d rather have him for the four.’ Why take him?”
- To make it even more ridiculous, since Hughes was in the penalty box for an offsetting penalty, he couldn’t leave the box until a stoppage in play. But there wasn’t a stoppage after Hughes’ penalty expired — not for another four minutes and 22 seconds, meaning Hughes spent 6:22 in the box for a two-minute minor. In fact, Dubois, who instigated the entire fracas and got four minutes in penalties, got out of the box two minutes and 22 seconds before Hughes.
- “I don’t know,” said Hughes when asked what the explanation was for his minor penalty. “It’s obviously frustrating because I’m in the box three minutes longer than Dubois, I don’t know how that happens. But that’s just the way it played out.”
- Wait, it gets even more ridiculous than that. Since the stoppage that allowed Hughes to get out of the box was for a Canucks penalty to Vincent Desharnais and Hughes is generally kept off the penalty kill to prevent him from regularly playing 30 minutes a night, Hughes didn’t actually get back into the game for nearly nine minutes — almost half of the first period. Dubois’s targeting of Hughes paid off in spades, limiting him to just over five minutes in ice time.
- Here’s a little icing on a very dumb cake: guess who drew the penalty on Desharnais while Hughes could only watch from the penalty box? Yep: Pierre-Luc Dubois. At this point, it’s entirely possible that the Canucks are in hell and Dubois is their tormentor.
- Of course, much of this is a moot point if the Canucks had done the smart thing and caused a stoppage in play after Hughes’ penalty expired to get him out on the power play, perhaps by intentionally going offside or dumping the puck on goaltender Logan Thompson to force him to freeze the puck for a faceoff. But smart isn’t in the Canucks’ nature; .
- Without Hughes on the power play, the Canucks managed just one shot in four minutes. It was a pretty good Jake DeBrusk chance off the rush, but still, that was their one look. Without Hughes, the Canucks' power play is .
- People don’t believe me when I say Vincent Desharnais has been playing better of late. Probably it’s because he still regularly has sequences like the one below, where he gives the puck away. Actually, the below sequence is worse than normal because, after the giveaway, he gets the puck back and flubs a pass so badly that it turns into a shot on his own net. He’s awfully lucky Kevin Lankinen was in his reverse-VH against the post at the time.
- Something to keep an eye on: J.T. Miller appeared to be in some discomfort after a heavy hit by Michael Fehervary in the first period. It might be nothing, since he only missed a single shift, but he seemed to be feeling it later in the game as well. The Canucks can ill afford another injury to a star player.
- The Capitals opened the scoring in the final minute of the first period. A point shot by Matt Roy seemed to take a deflection on the way in, making it hard for Lankinen to control the rebound. The puck popped up into the air for a jump ball and none other than Pierre-Luc Dubois got the better of Brock Boeser, batting the puck to his stick to finish on the backhand.
- Hughes had an absolutely fabulous sequence off the first faceoff of the second period. He jumped on a loose puck at the blue line to create a 4-on-2 rush, with Hughes getting the shot off a Kiefer Sherwood pass. When the rebound bounced out to create a Capitals 2-on-1, Hughes buried his head and came flying back like a boomerang on the backcheck, easily picking off the pass to Ovechkin. He was .
- , the Canucks were all over Washington in the second period, outshooting the Capitals 21-to-5 in the middle frame. They just couldn’t find the finish on their chances.
- A big reason why is that Logan Thompson continued to make his argument that he’s the best Canadian goaltender in the world right now. In the midst of a wild scramble where he lost his stick, he stacked the pads on a Hughes chance, then robbed Conor Garland with his blocker on the wrong hand. To be fair, he always wears his blocker on the wrong hand, as he’s one of the few NHL goaltenders who catches with his right hand.
- Of course, Thompson slightly undercut that when he coughed up a big rebound on a Hughes point shot on the power play. Instead of neatly catching the puck in his glove as he had planned, he swatted the puck to a waiting Garland at the backdoor, who scored into the open net. In his defence, the puck was slightly tipped by Kiefer Sherwood on its way in.
- That was it for scoring in regulation. The third period saw a bare handful of chances — Jonathan Lekkerimäki had the Canucks’ best chance but couldn’t beat Thompson, while Carson Soucy sprawled to the ice to block an Andrew Mangiapane shot to save a goal. That was about it.
- The best part of the third period was a Conor Garland backcheck. Off a rare Hughes turnover, Tyler Myers stumbled to the ice and somehow managed to rip Garland’s stick out of his hands in the process. With no stick available to get in the passing lane, Garland flung his whole body to the ice, to try to knock the saucer pass out of the air. It was an incredible effort and an effective one too, as he forced Brandon Duhaime to pass the puck too far out of the reach of Mangiapane.
- For the 14th time this season, the Canucks went to overtime, where Quinn Hughes was on the ice almost constantly. His first shift lasted over two minutes — 2:13 to be exact — and then he took a brief breather for 16 seconds of gametime before stepping back on the ice for a shift that lasted 1:25. Just 23 seconds after that shift ended, the Capitals scored while he was on the bench.
- “I mean, you can’t play Hughes the whole game,” said Tocchet but I would argue that’s an untested theory. I think the Canucks should give Hughes fewer shifts, specifically just one shift that happens to be 60 minutes long. It’s worth a shot.
- A dangerous miscommunication almost ended overtime a lot sooner. J.T. Miller came flying up the ice looking for a way to create a scoring chance and set up Jake DeBrusk for a good shot. The burst of speed came at the end of Miller’s shift, so he went to the bench for a line change thinking that Hughes was back defensively. Only, Hughes thought he had Miller behind him as a safety valve, so pinched on the puck, giving Jakob Chychrun a breakaway that forced Lankinen to make a tough save.
- Kiefer Sherwood is the most assertive player on the Canucks, so it was bizarre to see him pass up a chance to go to the net. He made a strong cutback after a zone entry that caused Chychrun to lose an edge, slide into the corner, and open up a massive lane to the net. Instead of attacking the opening, Sherwood deferred to Hughes and the Canucks ultimately didn’t even create a shot.
- Dubois put so many stamps on this game that he must be mailing it really, really far away. The final stamp was the overtime game-winner on a beautiful deke and finish into the top shelf. He had Tyler Myers and Jake DeBrusk to thank for being open enough to make such a beautiful deke.
- Myers rushed up the left wing and made a nice move to get around his man and create a lane to the net. But then he tried a too-cute flip pass to DeBrusk that skipped over his stick and created a rush the other way. Miller defended the 1-on-1 rush well but then the backchecking DeBrusk and Myers inexplicably both followed the puck as if mesmerized by it, leaving not just the guts of the ice wide open but the liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, gallbladder, pancreas, and spleen of the ice as well. It was really, really gross.
- Seriously. Seriously! SERIOUSLY! What on earth were the two of them thinking? How? Why? Did they suddenly think that the Capitals only had one player on the ice? This wasn't a brain fart; this was a whole-ass brain shart.
- “It’s unfortunate what happened at the end,” said Tocchet. “We were 40 seconds away from the shootout.”
- “It’s frustrating but you can’t sulk about it,” said Hughes. “It is what it is. That’s how it went. Three games left to salvage and make it a good road trip.”
