'A learning lesson': Humbling loss reminds Canucks of work ahead

VANCOUVER — Breaking news: losing still sucks.

Of course, everyone on the West Coast knows this, as there has been too much losing generally from the Vancouver Canucks over the last five decades and specifically over the last three years, for which many fans are still in therapy.

But if there was any chance that Canuck players might have lost touch with the Earth, floated off mentally in a victory parade for leading the National Hockey League at Christmastime, Thursday’s 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers was a halting reality check.

Winning is hard. Losing sucks. Even at 23-10-3, the Canucks have a long way to go.

“There’s been a lot of noise around the team with where we are in the standings,” Vancouver centre Teddy Blueger said. “In the room, we have done a good a pretty job of ignoring that. I’m not saying that (noise) is the reason we lost tonight, but, yeah, this is a reminder that every game is tough. It’s tough to win in this league. The longer you go in the season, the harder points are to come by.”

“Listen, we’re all disappointed in the loss,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet, certainly more disappointed than most, told reporters. “We’ve just got to make sure this doesn’t fester. That’s all.

“We talked about it; it’s going to get harder and harder. This is a learning lesson. We’ve just got to be more invested in the game. We weren’t invested.”

And that was the problem, among many. 

The Canucks were outworked and outskated by a Flyers team whose success has been every bit as surprising — perhaps more surprising given Philadelphia’s lack of game-breakers — as Vancouver’s sprint to the top of the standings.

On a nine-game point streak (7-0-2), the Canucks hadn’t lost a game in regulation since Dec. 5. But the Flyers were equally hot, 7-1-2 in their last 10, and played with more determination and discipline on Thursday.

They outwaited the Canucks, finally getting the home team to crack late in the second period when the Flyers scored three times in 126 seconds — all of the goals on Vancouver mistakes.

Tyler Myers’ unnecessary interference penalty on a holdup led to Egor Zamula’s seeing-eye point shot on the power play that dipped unseen past Canuck goalie Casey DeSmith to make it 1-0 at 15:03.

Two shifts later, the Canucks were caught on a three-on-two, didn’t backcheck crisply and Sean Walker scored from Owen Tippett’s brilliant relay at 16:24.

And when Vancouver defenceman Nikita Zadorov skated the puck into a neutral-zone turnover — with defence partner Myers also dashing up ice — Joel Farabee finished his breakaway with flair at 17:09.

These were the kind of mistakes the Canucks have forced upon other teams while building the NHL’s most potent attack. They have embraced under Tocchet the idea of becoming harder to play against, but that starts with taking care of the puck and forcing the other team to work for scoring chances.

You don’t splash those chances upon opponents as if throwing tinsel over the Christmas tree.

As Tocchet noted: “Five-minute explosion, those three goals. Huge mistakes.”

“We made a mistake on their second goal, a clear three-on-two,” Zadorov said. “And then I turned it over on the third goal. It can't happen, especially two goals in a row. It was on me for sure. It's hard to get back in the game when you're down three.”

When Blueger scored from Dakota Joshua’s pass just 25 seconds into the third period, giving the Canucks at least some hope of rallying from 0-3, Vancouver’s struggling power play surrendered its first shorthanded goal of the season at 5:01. Flyer Garnet Hathaway scored on his second chance all alone in front of DeSmith because Canucks Quinn Hughes and Brock Boeser, a forward, couldn’t defend a two-on-two.

“You've got to prepare yourself to win a 1-0 hockey game, you know what I mean?” Zadorov said. “There's a lot of good teams who play good defensively this year — L.A., Vegas. If we're going to play playoffs against them, that's playoff hockey. You've got to grind and grind, and if it takes 59 minutes to score a goal, it all comes from defence, for sure. The games are going to get harder as the season progresses. Teams are going to start playing harder and harder (because) there's more on the line.”

The Canucks have built themselves the luxury of being able to undergo lessons like Thursday’s without hurting themselves too much in the standings. Their playoff buffer is 14 points with 46 games to go, starting Tuesday against the Ottawa Senators at Rogers Arena. A season-long seven-game road trip follows that for Vancouver.

None of the games will be easy. They rarely are.

“As a team, obviously we're not happy with that,” Canuck star Elias Pettersson said. “I think they outworked us and Casey kept us in the game. Sure, we had a few looks, but I think they were the team that was working harder.

“We're high up in the standings, so we're going to get teams' best (against us) every game. We've got to embrace that and always bring it every night.”

Defenceman Ian Cole said: “We need to recognize what went wrong in this game, what didn't work for us — and that was pretty much everything. We need to look at it objectively and assess it and move on and be way better.”

As they have been for most of the season.