It was another tough night in Tampa
Skilled and speedy Lightning manhandle their visitors, writes Jason Botchford.
TAMPA BAY 5, VANCOUVER 2
The Tampa Bay Lightning are one of the best hockey teams in the world and the Canucks are not.
Thatwasnevermoreevident than Thursday. The Lightning danced their way to a four-goal lead and cruised to what looked to be an easy 5-2 NHL victory against the Canucks, who dropped their third straight game and went 0-for-Florida on this four-game road trip. This is what we learned:
CANUCKS SOFT, AGAIN
It’s not just that the Canucks have no pushback. It’s they don’t have anyone who seems regularly interested in physical hockey. At least, that was the case Thursday.
Tampa is the team that has drafted a string of highly skilled players. They’ve been willing to take chances on small forwards and Russians. They’re not really known as one of the big, bad Western Conference teams.
They still dummied the Canucks. Daniel Sedin got pushed around. Brock Boeser got steamrolled. And Tampa scored each of its first two goals like they were skipping through a meadow in the middle of the ice.
It’s not so much the Canucks needed to respond to something. It was the stark contrast between a team willing to play the body and another that was not.
BOESER SCORED
It doesn’t have the same cachet it did two months ago, but just in case you forgot, Boeser is still really good at hockey.
He scored on a third-period power play, using a one-time slapper on an Alex Edler feed. The puck hit a Tampa player and was redirected into the net, but that hardly matters.
The Calder Trophy race is still on and now Boeser has 26 goals. Man, just where would the Canucks be without this rookie?
VANEK GOING QUIET
PlayingThomasVanekwith the Sedins at even strength hasn’t been a source of great success for the Canucks. But head coach Travis Green keeps going back to that well.
The three of them failed to generateanyoffenceinTampa.
CANUCKS DIDN’T ROLL OVER IN THE THIRD
Outgunned at just about every position, it would have been easy for the Canucks to check out after an excruciatingly bad end to the second period.
They did rise, a little, in the third period, scoring a couple of goals and nearly turning a 4-0 deficit into a game.
Bo Horvat just missed on a breakaway, which could have changed the dynamic. After Boeser scored, Horvat set up Sven Baertschi to make it 4-2.
CANUCKS HAVE AN ISSUE WITH NILSSON
The backup goalie was put in an impossible situation at Amalie Arena. Anders Nilsson’s last start was a good one, a 1-0 loss in Winnipeg. He went 17 days without starting again. And then he got the Lightning assignment.
Playing here is no easy task for any goalie. The Lightning may
be the fastest, most skilled team in hockey. Nilsson made it out of the first having surrendered only one goal, but the wheels fell off in the second. Part of that was the way the Canucks struggled to defend and keep up with the Tampa forwards. But the Canucks desperately need big saves and they didn’t get enough.
THIS IS STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A DESJARDINS TEAM
Tampa has big, imposing defencemen and they kept the Canucks to the outside all game. But the way the Canucks tried to play safe and conservative looked more like the way they played last year than they did in October.
Loui Eriksson missed an open net. And stud goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy had to make a couple nice saves, including one on Jake Virtanen. It wasn’t close to being enough and the Canucks played like they had no interest in pushing the tempo.
ARCHIBALD MAY HELP
Darren Archibald is expected to play today against the Hurricanes. He can add something to this group. Maybe he can even inspire some of the larger guys in the lineup to do more.
Virtanen peeled off when he had a couple of opportunities to hit and none of the defencemen did a good job clearing the front of the net. Lightning rookie Yanni Gourde scored the second goal, working the puck directly in front of Nilsson. Erik Gudbranson was close enough to breathe on him, but couldn’t, or didn’t, move him. Gourde is 5-9.
INJURIES ARE CATCHING UPTOTHEMAGAIN
Brendan Gaunce has a fractured foot. Sam Gagner, a sprained ankle. At different times Thursday, Chris Tanev and Edler left the game. For Tanev, it was a blocked shot and for Edler it looked like a head injury after his face was bounced off the glass.
Both returned, but Markus Granlund did not. Along the boards, he had his left knee and ankle bent over like cardboard.