Sometimes when you’re sick, you forget what it was like to feel healthy. You lose your frame of reference for what normal — or whatever normal is for you — feels like. It seems like you’ve always felt this way and you’re always going to feel this way and nothing will ever get better.
It’s like that in sports sometimes too.
When your team is winning, it feels like it’s just the natural state of things. This is how good they’ve been all along and this is how good they really are and they will always be this good forever and ever. Any previous losses were just bad luck or your team “figuring things out” but now that they’re winning, everything is okay.
But when your team is losing, it also feels like it’s just the natural state of things. Your team is a bunch of bums, who don’t deserve their contracts and should be embarrassed to wear your team’s beloved jersey. Thus it has always been and thus it shall always be. Time to light your jersey on fire and call for everyone to be fired/traded.
It’s not true, of course. At least, it’s usually not true. Some people do get sick and never get better and some teams lose and never stop losing. But, as I continue to deal with a fever, cough, and headache from a mystery ailment, it helps to remember that this too shall pass.
Likewise, after the Vancouver Canucks got utterly destroyed 6-0 by the New Jersey Devils, it helps to remember that this too shall also pass as well.
It doesn’t help that the Canucks have managed just one win on home ice this season against the hapless 3-7-1 Pittsburgh Penguins. It also doesn’t help that they just lost to the Carolina Hurricanes, making this a second-straight loss against a potential contender after beating mostly teams destined for the NHL’s basement.
But it’s still early in the season. The Canucks haven’t even played ten games yet. Arguably, this is the best time of the year for a wake-up call.
“It was embarrassing. We should be embarrassed,” said Tyler Myers. “Even through some wins the last couple of weeks, there are some things within our game that we’ve got to clean up. We’ve got to find our identity. Right now, we’re not there yet and we know it. As tough as tonight was, we just have to keep working and come out next game and be ready to respond.”
Speaking of wake-up calls, no wake-up call for me tomorrow morning, thanks. I’m still sick and it was a 7:40 p.m. start when I watched this game.
Let’s be honest: this game doesn’t deserve a full-fledged breakdown of what went wrong, so let’s keep it succinct, like the Canucks’ captain, when describing how the Canucks performed.“Not good enough,” said Quinn Hughes, “in pretty much every way.”
Hughes is 100% correct and it has to be especially frustrating that he and his team weren’t up to the challenge when they were facing his brothers, Jack and Luke. Honestly, this was one of the games where, as a brother, you couldn’t even razz Quinn about it. It would just be too hurtful.
This is one of those “everybody sucked” games where it’s easier to list the players who weren’t terrible. Conor Garland, Quinn Hughes, Kiefer Sherwood, and Teddy Blueger: you’re safe. You may join the other girls.
Tyler Myers had a godawful game and it started less than a minute in. He made a brutal read off an offensive zone faceoff and swooped in after a loose puck, then got neither the puck nor the body of Dawson Mercer, who beat him to the puck. Then he made it worse by cutting back into the path of Elias Pettersson, preventing him from backchecking. That led to a clear 2-on-1 that Nico Hischer easily finished on the Devils’ first shot of the game.
“Obviously, on the first one, I would have liked to just pull out on that one,” said Myers.
Look, I’m not going to be the one to question Myers’ pull-out game. Not my place.
The Canucks had a great chance to turn things around early in the first after Quinn Hughes drew a double minor. Then they managed just one shot on goal — off the stick of Conor Garland — in the entire four-minute power play. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s brutal.
“We make it way too easy on the other team,” said J.T. Miller. “Not enough ‘F you’ in our game.”
In the dying seconds of the first period, the Canucks had one last chance to tie things up heading into the intermission. The puck came back to Pettersson after a scrambled faceoff with all kinds of room to shoot. He took his time, seemingly waiting for traffic that was never going to get there, then fired a shot that Jacob Markstrom squeezed between his right arm and chest. It feels like the old Pettersson would have gone bardown in an instant with that kind of opportunity. Trying to sneak a shot under the arm feels like overthinking things. Sometimes, you’ve got to be as dumb as the hockey players from Letterkenny and always go bardownski.
The power play made things worse early in the second period. Like terrible electricians, Miller and Hughes got their wires crossed at the top of the zone, with Hughes running a pick play to give Miller more room with the puck right as Miller tried to give him the puck with a drop pass. The turnover led to another 2-on-1 for Hischier and Mercer, this time with Mercer getting the goal off a rebound.
This was a tough night for Arturs Silovs to return to the lineup. It’s not like was particularly to blame for any of the goals but 6 goals against on 22 shots is tough to swallow. Still, what was he supposed to do on the third goal when Myers perfectly screened his view of the shot on a 3-on-2 but did nothing to try to block the puck. Myers just stood there, legs wide open like he was the doorway in the lighthouse on a minigolf course: shoot here for a hole-in-one.
“It wasn’t Arty’s fault,” said Myers. “We hung Arty out to dry tonight.”
Seemingly out of nowhere, Conor Garland fought Erik Haula midway through the second period. Perhaps it was something that had been boiling under the surface or perhaps Garland was just trying to create a spark for his teammates. Whatever the cause, it was a spirited scrap for Garland, who gave up a few inches. The trouble is, it did nothing to turn the game around.
“Gars does an unbelievable job in that scrap, that was a helluva fight,” said Miller. “You’d think maybe we’d play a little better after that. That sucks. The guy gets punched in the head for you and you’d think that would maybe light the team.”
A few minutes after the fight, Danton Heinen stopped skating on a backcheck and ended up behind Ondrej Palat, who drove to the net with no resistance from Myers. Silovs made one save but an unbothered Palat was able to swat the rebound off the post. The puck then trickled in off Silovs’ leg to make it 4-0.
“Our odd-man rush coverage was probably the worst I’ve ever seen since I’ve been here,” said Tocchet. “It reminded me of when I took over the team — that’s how bad it was tonight.”
That was basically the game. The Canucks squandered every opportunity they had to shift the momentum. Tocchet tried mixing up forward lines and defence pairings in the second pairing and even completely switched up the power play, putting Jake DeBrusk and Daniel Sprong on the first unit in place of Miller and Garland. None of it helped.
The Devils added two more goals in the third period. First, Jack Hughes made it 5-0 at the backdoor on the power play when Noah Juulsen couldn’t take away the cross-crease pass. On the 6-0 goal, the Devils only looked like they were on the power play, as the Canucks’ defensive zone coverage was a mess, leaving Tomas Tatar wide open at the backdoor for the easy finish.
I have to question the decision to play Quinn Hughes over 26 minutes in a 6-0 loss. It feels like at some point you’ve got to cut your losses and give your best player a breather. Let Myer and Soucy sleep in the bed they’ve made, while you just let Hughes sleep.
In case you couldn’t tell, this game was a disaster for the Canucks from start to finish. Maybe seeing Pettersson with 7 shot attempts is mildly encouraging but when they are attempts like his shot at the end of the first period, it’s hard to be too enthused. Noah Juulsen had 7 hits in his return to the lineup. That’s good, I guess. Honestly, I’m done thinking about this game. Good riddance.
“Everything went wrong right from the beginning,” said Tocchet. “Obviously, some guys were struggling and it just rolls like that. You’re going to have games like this in an 82-game schedule. We’ve got to just flush it down the toilet right now.”
