31 Takes: Canucks in a predictable tailspin

I’ve always felt like losing 7-3 or 7-4 is worse than just getting your ticket punched 7-0.

The latter, you might as well have not even gotten off the bus. You didn’t even show up and you got throttled. It happens. With the former, though, you played like garbage but gave enough of an accounting of yourself to show that you’re at least semi-competent.

Which is to say the Canucks lost to Vegas by a lightly-lesser 6-3 final Sunday night and it kickstarted a lot of existential worry about how maybe this team isn’t as good as most people thought around the start of November. The ugly loss dropped them to sixth place in the division, 10th in the West, and 20th in the league.

Six weeks earlier, the Canucks were riding high, sixth in the league in winning percentage, second in the Pacific Division, and all that fun stuff. Jacob Markstrom was looking like Dominik Hasek, and pretty much all the talented youngsters on the team had recovered from slow starts to appear ready to fulfill every ounce of their potential in one season.

Since then, the team is 8-11-3, not even .500 by the NHL’s very liberal standard of what it takes to be .500, and they’ve been awful by just about every metric you can roll out. They’re fifth-bottom in points percentage (right there with Anaheim, Columbus, and … Nashville?). They’re fourth-worst in all-situations expected-goals, and fifth-worst in actual goals. They’ve conceded the fifth-most penalty minutes, and the fourth-most power-play goals against. They also have the 12th-worst corsi over that stretch.

The only thing working for them over the last six weeks is the power play (third-most PP minutes drawn, and third-most goals), but even that’s dried up more recently. They’re 20th in penalty minutes drawn since the start of December, and their three goals in them is tied for 17th.

So the ship very much looks like it’s taking on water, and that feels about right. This team was always likely to be, at best, a borderline playoff team. They added talent, but not enough to paper over their problems, and the honeymoon already seems to be over for Tyler Myers in particular.

There are some games in hand, but the fact that the Canucks would need to pass teams in their own division just to get back into the Wild Card makes this one a tough sell for the last four months of the season. What point is there in competing to get there, with the most likely result being they get clobbered by the top team in the Central and lose their first-round pick to Tampa?

Why not, then, just be happy with the fact that you got a nice little glimpse at the future to start the year, and you might end up with another top-10 pick? Doesn’t seem like that would be the worst thing in the world for a team that’s glaringly thin up front and on D.

People may feel like they got sold a bill of goods early in the season, but that’s hockey; sometimes you get the bounces for a month straight. And with this management group, Canucks fans should be used to it by now anyway.

31 Takes

Anaheim Ducks: Yeah but for real why are they holding onto these very tradeable guys who almost certainly don’t (or shouldn’t) figure into their long-term plans?

Arizona Coyotes: It’s amazing to me that the arena issue still hasn’t really been resolved.

Boston Bruins: I think probably the move Cassidy made was “tell Pastrnak to score again.” He hadn’t done it in a while!

Buffalo Sabres: Well hey, a point’s a point.

Calgary Flames: The Flames are using Jankowski, Rieder, and Frolik as a shutdown line under Geoff Ward. Seems… inadvisable.

Carolina Hurricanes: Yeah so about that Calgary shutdown line...

Chicago: They’re 4-8-2 with a minus-19 goal difference since being declared “for real” by local media.

Colorado Avalanche: Honestly I’ve been dubious of home/road splits in the NHL for a long time but this take might turn my opinion around.

Columbus Blue Jackets: This was their third straight game with a point but they’re 1-4-2 in their last seven and at some point someone has to do something about this, right?

Dallas Stars: This is always cool.

Detroit Red Wings: Imagine not knowing the answer to this question.

Edmonton Oilers: You truly and absolutely do not say.

Florida Panthers: The Panthers are losers of three straight and suddenly four points out of an Eastern-Conference playoff spot? Yikes.

Los Angeles Kings: The Kings are “showing progress” — which means they won two straight after losing four straight. Then they lost in overtime.

Minnesota Wild: Meanwhile the Wild are 10-1-4 in their last 15 and still not in a playoff spot. The world isn’t fair.

Montreal Canadiens: Okay folks, here me out here: What if Max Domi mega-overperformed last year?

Nashville Predators: This team needs a change real bad. You gotta wonder if David Poile has literally anything up his sleeve.

New Jersey Devils: Yup, what a mess.

New York Islanders: It is so weird that they keep playing Ross Johnston.

New York Rangers: I truly don’t get the roster management for this team. They should be trying to trade Kreider and putting him in a position to score a million points to boost the asking price. Just bizarre.

Ottawa Senators: Beautiful F.U. to Torts. Gotta love it.

Philadelphia Flyers: Why on earth are they letting Joel Farabee fight?

Pittsburgh Penguins: If there’s any team that’s gonna give you room for error in a high-scoring game...

San Jose Sharks: Brilliant move. It all works out.

St. Louis Blues: God I wish I had been watching this game live. Boy oh boy.

Tampa Bay Lightning: I guess you call this injury to insult.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Beating the Oilers is nice because they needed it but man losing Barrie is no good.

Vancouver Canucks: Man, if you can’t put more than two pucks past Aaron freaking Dell on 33 shots...

Vegas Golden Knights: Doing the “don’t make me tap the sign” bit and the sign says, “The backup situation in Vegas is really bad.”

Washington Capitals: Damn they make it look easy sometimes.

Winnipeg Jets: This report is insanely out-of-nowhere given the regulation loss right before it was only their second in the last nine games. I mean, I think you gotta look at all options, but just weird timing on this one.

Play of the Weekend

This was a nasssssty backhander from Jacob de la Rose.

Gold Star Award

As a general rule I would say you don’t want Brian Rust playing almost 24 minutes for you but when he puts up 2-1-3, has six SOG, and personally generates more xG than the next three guys on the team combined while both Crosby and Malkin are out, I guess it all ends up being fine.

Minus of the Weekend

Mikhail Sergachev was on the ice for four of Washington’s five goals on Saturday night and to me that seems bad.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User “landeskog11” is doing great.

“Leafs get Ristolainen and Vesey

Sabres get T. Barrie, Kapanen, Petan and Aberg

sounds good?”

Signoff

Cut it off but be careful.

Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.