CANUCKS FALL SHORT
37 shots not enough to topple Wild.
It was a lineup that hinted of the new era coming, but it was the Vancouver Canucks’ same old problem that sunk them Sunday against the Minnesota Wild.
The National Hockey League team was unable to score for 52 minutes, and by then the Wild was far enough ahead to steer the game toward a 4-2 victory.
Even rarer than a Canuck home-ice scoring spree these days was the referees’ reversal of a Vancouver goal that was ruled good at 3:05 of the third period and would have cut a 2-0 deficit in half. Instead, Thomas Vanek blasted one past Canuck goalie Ryan Miller at 7:08 to make it 3-0, which allowed Minnesota to survive late goals by Vancouver rookie Ronalds Kenins and Daniel Sedin.
The change of mind by referees Wes McCauley and Kyle Rehman on Alex Edler’s apparent goal, deciding retroactively that Canuck forward Radim Vrbata being pushed inside the top of the crease meant Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk “couldn’t play his position,” impacted the game. It’s difficult to argue otherwise — 2-1 with 17 minutes remaining versus 3-0 with 13 to go.
But the Canucks’ inability to finish chances at home against anyone but the atrocious Buffalo Sabres, who lost 5-2 here Friday and allowed Vancouver to score at Rogers Arena for the first time in more than three hours, set them up to fail Sunday on a controversial call. Those do happen in sports, you know?
As Canuck coach Willie Desjardins said after: “You’re always frustrated when it goes against you, but the refs didn’t beat us tonight. We had our chances. We’ve got to be better.”
Still, the call made a difference. Desjardins dressed five rookies — unheard of in Vancouver in the last 10 years except during an injury crisis — but it’s one rare call and a bunch of missed Canuck scoring chances we’re left to talk about.
“I knew I was close to the crease,” Vrbata explained of the game’s pivotal moment. “I tried to get out of it. But their D was pushing me in and I think the goalie made contact with me for no reason. It wasn’t like me contacting him.
“I didn’t know there was a rule where you could call it back like that. The referee who called it a goal was the one who was down there (near the net). I don’t know what the other guys saw, but I’m not a guy who goes through the crease to hit the goalie. But if the guy is pushing you in there, what else can you do?”
It’s the kind of call that occurs when a team is struggling. The Canucks have lost four of their last five games at home, scoring only three times in the losses, and are 5-7 in Vancouver since November. Dubnyk’s 35-save victory nudged the surging Wild within five points of the Canucks in the Western Conference playoff race.
“I think it’s tough when the guy down low calls it a goal, I don’t know how any other guy can call it off,” Sedin said.
“There’s a lot of things there I don’t really understand, but they made the call and that’s the way it is.”
The way the Canucks were in the third period would have made the “the reversal” irrelevant had Vancouver played the same way for 60 minutes.
But Sedin, who finished with 10 shots on net, argued it’s not reasonable to think the Canucks should dominate another NHL team for 60 minutes. What they need to do, he said, is find a way to survive spells when the other team is better.
Even with their scoring problems at home, Sedin said “we’re good enough to win games right now. We’re talking about the power play needing to be better at certain times and our second periods haven’t been good enough, but it’s how you survive those down moments (that matter).
“There are two teams on the ice and we’re not going to be able to play 60 minutes like we did in the last 20 because they’re going to have some chances, too, when they take over the game. But good teams fall back on their system and work their way out of it. Right now, every down moment is hurting us.”
Like every goal not scored.