Casualties in common as Canucks and Ducks clash
World of hurt unites teams, but don’t expect Carlyle to show much sympathy
Before Tuesday’s meeting with the Vancouver Canucks, Randy Carlyle was asked about facing a team with a lineup that’s been decimated by injuries.
In hindsight, the Anaheim Ducks’ coach might not have been the best person for this question.
The Ducks started this NHL season with Ryan Kesler, Hampus Lindholm and Sami Vatanen on the shelf which, until recently, represented the healthiest they’ve been in 2017-18.
In no particular order, they lost captain and team leader Ryan Getzlaf for two months, top blueliner Cam Fowler for a month, top-six forward Patrick Eaves to something called Guillain-Barre syndrome for all but two games and sniper Corey Perry for the last three weeks.
Kesler, meanwhile, returned to the lineup Dec. 27 after missing 37 games recovering from off-season hip surgery.
Carlyle isn’t the most sympathetic soul at the best of times. But given the last three months — the Ducks’ top two centres should be Getzlaf and Kesler; for much of the first half of their season it was Chris Wagner and Derek Grant — you can understand if he wasn’t overcome with concern for the Canucks’ plight.
“I don’t think they felt sorry for us when we had seven regulars out of the lineup, so I don’t think we’re in a position to feel sorry for anybody,” he said.
Maybe not. But when the Canucks and Ducks collided Tuesday night at Rogers Arena, the surprise was no one ended up on long-term injury reserve.
According to the website ManGames Lost, the Ducks lead the NHL in man-games lost to injury by a healthy margin over Las Vegas.
As of Dec. 21, the Canucks were actually eighth in the league in that category but, in a more revealing metric, they lead the NHL in something called ITT, Injury Impact to the Team. This formula is calculated on injuries, the amount of ice time the injured players log, pi and Harold Druken’s astrology chart.
In this category, the Canucks lead the Ducks and all other teams. So there you go sports fans. Travis Green’s team leads the NHL in something.
Injuries, in fact, have been the main theme in the Canucks’ story for the last three seasons but this year they’ve taken on a dark dimension. We’ll spare you a full listing of the casualties.
Suffice to say since Bo Horvat went down Dec. 5, they’ve been without their No. 1 centre in Horvat, their top-minute defenceman in Chris Tanev, a first-line winger in Sven Baertschi and their best defensive centre in Brandon Sutter.
Throw in the career-ending injury to Derek Dorsett and, maybe, it’s understandable the Canucks have gone 2-8-1 since Horvat went down. The problem there is the NHL doesn’t work that way. Everyone connected to the game will tell you injuries are part of the drill and somehow, someway, they must be overcome.
The Ducks went 6-7-5 in the two months Getzlaf and Kesler were out of the lineup. True they weren’t world beaters but they managed to stay relevant and now, with the exception of Perry, everyone is back. Western Conference, take note.
“We took it to a different level as far as players getting hurt and not being available,” said Carlyle. “But we found a way to dig deep and get points.
“Now that we have our group back together our expectation is to take the next step.”
As it happened, Tanev returned to the Canucks’ lineup Tuesday. Horvat and Baertschi should be back by mid-January while Sutter’s nagging groin injury is less certain.
The next question is can the Canucks get back to where they were in early December — four games over .500 and competitive virtually every night — before the bodies started to pile up?
“There are no excuses,” said Henrik Sedin. “Anaheim went though the same thing. But they know who they are. We’re trying to build something here and when we go through a stretch where we lose guys who play heavy minutes for us, it’s tough.”
That’s true on a couple of fronts. When all hands were on deck, Green could play Horvat’s line against the other’s team best or throw together a shutdown line with Sutter. That left the Sedins with a softer matchup and reduced the pressure on Thomas Vanek to produce offence on a nightly basis.
There was balance and order in the Canucks’ lineup in those heady days, which was reflected in their record. But since the injury bug took a bite out of the locals, the team’s supporting cast has been exposed.
“Right now we’re going through a tough stretch with injuries,” Green said. “That’s part of the NHL but when you’re a Stanley Cup team you can go through some injuries. No one’s saying we’re a Stanley Cup contender.”
Still, the Canucks should be used to this injury thing by now. Last year, they led the NHL in mangames lost and finished third in 2015-16. That’s an alarming trend but the organization points out they track what they consider to be preventable injuries, mostly of the soft-tissue variety, and Sutter is the only one who falls into that category this season.
The rest is just buzzard’s luck. If you believe these things revert to the mean, then the Canucks should be looking forward to a run of good health. That, at least, would allow them to determine where they are in this cycle: a young team on the rise or a thin, fragile group that falls apart at the first sign of adversity.
Either way, don’t expect the Ducks to be too worried about the Canucks’ fate. It seems they’ve had their own problems this season.