Canucks drop 4-1 decision to visiting Sharks
Thursday’s win by San Jose was team’s 11th straight over Vancouver
It’s been a long while since the Canucks were dominated to the degree they were Thursday night, the San Jose Sharks seemingly so much better than this team, it was shocking at times.
Vancouver spent so much time in its own zone in the first two periods that it was actually shocking to see at the end of 40 minutes that the shots on goal were actually even at 20, despite the fact San Jose had a 3-1 lead that looked as comfortable as a lounge chair on the sundeck at the Fairmont Monte Carlo.
Vancouver had the territorial advantage in the final period, but the Sharks never appeared threatened in any way. At times in the first period the Canucks looked like toddlers trying to get a basketball from Yao Ming who was holding it over his head. To be sure, the visitors certainly gave the Canucks something to shoot for once they get Alex Burrows and Zack Kassian back and proceed to work on their new, more aggressive system the coaching staff hopes will make them a better team than last year.
The Sharks also demonstrated in moving easily to 4-0 that with their new wave of rookies and youngsters — which includes the league’s leading goal-scorer, Tomas Hertl — Matt Nieto, Logan Couture, Matt Irwin and others, that they need to be included on the list of teams capable of winning a Stanley Cup.
Where the Canucks are still very much led by the Sedin twins at 33 years of age when it comes to generating offence, Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton, still solid players, find themselves slipping into a secondary role as the younger stars emerge. Up the middle with Joe Pavelski joining Thornton and Couture, a matchup against Vancouver must seem like something of a holiday to San Jose as their nine consecutive wins against the Canucks in games that matter (11 including pre-season) would certainly indicate.
The Sharks, of course, have been in this position many times over the years and for some reason they just haven’t been able to even make the Cup final much less win one. And that mental baggage probably still affects some of the veterans on this team who will have to lean on the kids to help them overcome what has become learned behaviour by now if they are to get where coach Todd McLellan and GM Doug Wilson would like them to go.
Their rebuild really began with the acquisition of and eventual resigning of Brent Burns to a longterm commitment in the Dany Heatley move and it’s been a solid rise since.
“At the trading deadline last year we changed our team considerably and we changed the way we played, and that’s had a very positive effect on our group,” said Wilson, who has completely re-tooled this team for another run at the big prize. “We still have guys out right now who are going to help us like Raffi (Torres) and Marty (Havlat), so we’ll see what happens.”
“It’s still early and a lot can happen, but last year in the first seven or eight games we relied on our power play a lot,” said Thornton. “This year it’s fiveon-five, four lines and six ‘D,’ and right now we’re winning by community.”
“We like what we see so far,” said Marleau, who restored the San Jose lead with a goal less than two minutes after Vancouver got on the board. “It’s a long season and we have a long road ahead of us, but there’s a lot of good things we can build off of. Obviously everybody in this room feels we can do that (win a Cup), but there’s still a lot of hockey left.”
As if to underline their dominance Thursday night, the Sharks scored a goal on what amounted to Vancouver’s fourth line and then watched their own fourth line score late in the first period for a 2-0 lead when Matt Pelech knocked a centring pass by Roberto Luongo for his first NHL goal.
The Canucks pulled Lu with a little over three minutes left for a sixth skater in hopes of mounting an attack, but they scarcely got the puck into the San Jose zone before the Sharks broke out with Burns knocking the final goal into an empty net.