Alien crashes back to Earth in loss to Carolina
Canucks display plenty of pluck, but hosts expose their shortcomings
CAROLINA 5, VANCOUVER 3
RALEIGH, N.C. At some point, the reality of a what a rebuilding season really means was going to set in. Three games in, it’s fair to say we’re there.
Game 1, a 5-2 Elias Pettersson-led thrill ride to beat the Flames.
Game 2, an entertaining 7-4 loss to those same Flames.
And now Game 3, a 5-3 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night in Raleigh.
The Canucks were good and they were entertaining, but there were too many gaps in their game to beat a team that has some good young forwards, an intriguing young defence corps, and a roster that’s better than last year’s results showed.
The Canucks fell behind early, drew level just over five minutes later, then fell behind by two. Twice they pulled within a goal, but couldn’t produce the equalizer.
Vancouver got two goals from Sven Baertschi and another from Bo Horvat, while the Hurricanes’ goals came from a trio of kids in Warren Foegele, Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov, an old hand in Jordan Staal, and the underrated Brett Pesce.
Here’s what we learned:
FULLY CHARGED POWER PLAY
As we’ve said before, the Canucks will go as far as their power play can take them.
They got two goals on Tuesday with the man advantage: Horvat off of a rush and Baertschi on a deflection in front of the net that hit Carolina defender Justin Faulk.
OOPS
Giving up a goal just 47 seconds into the game isn’t the kind of start you want, but that’s what happened to Jacob Markstrom when Staal floated the puck toward the Canucks’ net from near the blueline and the shot somehow, someway, found the twine.
Markstrom said afterwards that he lost sight of the puck and then misjudged the shot.
“I thought it was going to my left, but it went to my right and it’s 1-0 after 45 seconds,” he said. “That’s a goal you want back.”
Four shots and 101/2 minutes later, Hurricanes defenceman Pesce managed a similar feat. His point shot found the twine after rattling between Markstrom’s arm and body.
Markstrom had no help on the game’s third goal. The fourth, well you know he’d like to put the rebound anywhere else if he had a chance at it again, as the puck landed right on the stick of Svechnikov, the Canes’ wunderkind, who fired the puck home.
Pettersson took the blame; he was in position until Svechnikov knocked him off the puck.
“I didn’t box out Svechnikov. I need to be better,” he said. “If I lock his stick before the shot comes, he’s not going to be able to shoot the puck in.”
Goal 5 was a difficult stop to make, as Foegele’s one-timer from the right looked to possibly wobble off Canucks blue-liner Chris Tanev. The goalie admitted he was frustrated with his performance.
“We got to have better goalies, better everything,” he said. “Today I wasn’t good.”
BIG NIGHT FOR BAERTSCHI
The Swiss winger had a big night, scoring twice, including a beautiful deke on a breakaway that left Carolina keeper Curtis McElhinney spinning.
“I thought we played a real solid game, thought we deserved better,” Baertschi said afterwards. “A few mistakes cost us.”
He gave credit to Alex Edler for the long pass that found him at the ’Canes’ blue-line to spring him on the breakaway. Baertschi said he was nervous that he might have put himself offside in collecting the puck, but there was no challenge or review of the play.
And the deke on McElhinney, which involved him leaving the puck behind his stick and then making a move with the puck-less stick, Nikita Kucherov-style, was all planned.
“That was a deke. Jeez. That’s a little rude,” he said with a laugh. “I actually worked on that all summer.”
TRYING TO MAKE MORE
There has been much talk from the Canucks about the need for their defence to get more involved and jump up into the rush more.
Did anyone have Erik Gudbranson on the list of “defencemen most likely to satisfy that need?”
A shift early in the first period saw the big defenceman lead the rush, after knocking the puck down out of mid-air.
But that was perhaps forgotten not long after, when Gudbranson got caught wandering on a Hurricanes rush, leaving the slot wide open. A scrambling Horvat tried to cover both Micheal Ferland and Aho, but it was to no avail, as Aho counted his team’s third goal.
Gudbranson and defence partner Derrick Pouliot both wound up behind Markstrom’s net as Aho scored.
LINE BLENDER
Going into the game, Canucks coach Travis Green had already shuffled things up, scratching Tyler Motte and replacing him with Tim Schaller, bumping Brendan Leipsic to the first line and moving Sven Baertschi to Brandon Sutter’s line.
Leipsic didn’t help Horvat and Brock Boeser move the meter any better than they had with Baertschi over the first two games. He was benched for about 15 minutes in the second period as Green got out the line blender.
He moved Boeser — who really appears to be less than 100 per cent — to Pettersson’s line, and tried Jake Virtanen and Loui Eriksson with Horvat for a couple shifts. He then put Baertschi back with Horvat, keeping Eriksson on the right side.
He also mixed up his defence pairings, putting Ben Hutton with Gudbranson and Pouliot with Troy Stecher.