Oh Carolina!
Vancouver’s disastrous defensive effort in miserable second stanza too much to overcome
The Hurricanes blew through Rogers Arena on Wednesday night, handing the Canucks a demoralizing loss heading into the all-star break.
The Canucks are off for a week.
That’s either a blessing — long enough that they can forget about how things went Wednesday night at Rogers Arena, a 5-2 loss to the visiting Carolina Hurricanes — or a nightmare, since they’ll have to think about this game, one against a team that had played the night before, until they play next, a week Friday in Denver.
After another quiet first period for the Canucks, it all went wrong for the home team, who conceded five goals to the Hurricanes and none of them were about bad luck: they were all cases of bad, bad defending.
The Canucks did manage to pot two goals of their own in the middle frame — they led 2-1 after 5:14 of the second — but the Hurricanes made mincemeat of the Canucks after that.
Both Canucks goals, by Josh Leivo and Sven Baertschi, were lovely pieces of work, but their memories had faded by the time the second period was over. The Hurricanes opened the scoring on the power play, with new acquisition Nino Niederreiter whacking home a rebound, his first of two on the night, less than two minutes in the second.
The Canucks got their two. Then the floodgates opened. Carolina scored four unanswered goals, seizing control of the game.
Grant McKegg tied it up after the Canucks failed repeatedly to clear, a minute and a half after Baertschi put the Canucks in front. Niederreiter got the visitors in front, as he found himself all alone on top of Jacob Markstrom’s crease and fired the puck home.
Dougie Hamilton got the visitors’ fourth goal as a turnover on the boards saw Teuvo Teravainen whip the puck into the slot for the unchecked Hamilton, who roofed another shot past Markstrom.
The fifth goal of the miserable period was picked up by Teravainen, who wired it home off a 4-on-2.
Here’s what we learned:
BREAKDOWNS
The four even-strength goals for Carolina all came as a result of bad reads or poor clearances.
It was an especially rough period for the Derrick Pouliot-Erik Gudbranson defence pair, who couldn’t clear the puck on both the Hamilton and McKegg goals. The second Niederreiter goal saw the Swiss winger elude Alex Edler.
The fourth goal came off an odd-numbered rush, one that developed as three Canucks forwards were caught deep in the Carolina end.
Remarkably, the pairing of Ben Hutton and Troy Stecher came away from the period with a plus-2 goal rating, despite the Hurricanes getting 12 more shot attempts on the Canucks goal than Vancouver had on the Hurricanes’ cage through two periods.
TOTAL REVERSAL
After a four-shot first period that fit right in with the Canucks’ recent stretch of slow starts, the second period was a total reversal.
The Canucks bagged two goals in the frame’s first five minutes. First there was the Leivo goal, a deflection of a shot-pass by Stecher.
Then there was the ticktack-toe go-ahead goal by Baertschi, finishing off a passing play that started with Brock Boeser shifting the puck to Elias Pettersson, who was to the right of the goal.
Pettersson then calmly directed the puck across the top of the crease to an unchecked Baertschi, who fired the puck into the back of the net. (Baertschi had a similar chance on a previous shift, but goalie Alex Nedeljkovic made a strong kick save.)
SCREEN
Nedeljkovic never saw Leivo’s deflection. Antoine Roussel’s screen was so wellplaced that the rookie netminder never really had a chance.
Nedeljkovic leaned to his left, looking around Roussel to catch Stecher with the puck. Stecher waited long enough that, when he released the shot-pass towards Leivo, the goalie couldn’t track the puck and only realized it was goalbound as it fluttered past his ear.
ROOKIE GOALIE
Nedeljkovic started his first NHL game against the Canucks. The Hurricanes had the young Ohio resident in the lineup because Petr Mrazek played Tuesday night in Calgary and Curtis McElhinney stayed home in Raleigh, N.C. with a knee issue.
FIRST NATIONS NIGHT
The Canucks recognized local Indigenous peoples before the game on Wednesday and had former Canuck Gino Odjick on hand, along with Fred Sasakamoose, the first Indigenous person to appear in an NHL game.
“It was amazing, nice to see the support, I’m really happy the Canucks honoured the First Nations community around Vancouver,” Odjick said.
Leaders and ceremonial drummers from the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations joined Odjick and Sasakamoose for a ceremonial pre-game faceoff, while the Canucks formal; ly recognized the land that Rogers Arena sits upon as unceded territory of the three nations.
“Tonight we play hockey upon the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations,” PA announcer Al Murdoch said. “The three nations happy to share the land in the belief of the spirit of sport. The drums welcome bless and cleanse the ice, creating good spirits.”
EMBELLISHMENT
You don’t see it called often on its own, but ’Canes captain Justin Williams was whistled in the second period for embellishment after the referees ruled he feigned being fouled by Stecher.
The Canucks defenceman was checking Williams closely, and Williams obviously felt it was too close, but Stecher spread his arms, claiming innocence and the referee agreed.
Williams pleaded his case, but the referee wasn’t interested.