In frantic bid for playoff spot, Canucks' overtime woes have failed them

VANCOUVER — They say overtime and shootouts are a coin toss. The Vancouver Canucks need should try rock-paper-scissors instead.

In their frantic but fading bid for a National Hockey League playoff spot, the Canucks have gone to overtime four times in the last four weeks, and four times they have lost.

Sunday’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights followed a familiar pattern. A terrible start by the Canucks earned an early 2-0 deficit that could have been worse, the team worked relentlessly the rest of regulation time to catch up, but collected only one point from OT when two were imperative. Vegas won 3-2 at Rogers Arena.

Even the Golden Knights’ winning goal was familiar. Canuck Elias Pettersson lost a puck battle in the offensive zone against Jonathan Marchessault, failing to get on the defensive side of the puck. Canucks captain Bo Horvat drifted forward before the battle was decided and got trapped, leaving defenceman Tyler Myers to fend off a two-on-one.

Marchessault passed it by Myers to Shea Theodore, who scored at 2:05 of the tie-breaker – nearly two minutes after Horvat was stopped on a breakaway by Vegas goalie Robin Lehner.

In case the standings aren’t obvious enough proof, these points add up.

Sunday’s bonus point moved the Golden Knights back into the final wildcard spot in the Western Conference, eight points clear of the Canucks, who are 3-7 in OT this season and 1-6 the last 2 ½ months.

The team Vegas just passed — and one the Canucks have also been trying to catch — is the Dallas Stars, and they are 10-1 in OT.

So much of what the Canucks have shown since Bruce Boudreau became coach in December is positive, but their poor starts and poor endings in overtime have become depressingly familiar.

“It's like a broken record; I was already thinking it before you asked,” centre J.T. Miller said after his 29^th goal of the season started the Canucks’ third-period comeback. “I don't know what else you want me to say about it, to be honest. (We) weren't ready to play and lost in overtime. Obviously, we played our butts off for the second and third, but it's too late. Like I said a million times, you can't do that every night in the league.”

Horvat said: “Obviously it's frustrating. We need every point we can get at this point in the season, and our start let us down again.”

Miller said overtime is about luck and getting a bounce. But it sure looks like more than that.

Three of Vancouver’s four OT losses since March 11 have been decided on outnumbered rushes after the Canucks lost the puck in the offensive zone.

Players are getting caught on the wrong side of the puck.

“Evidently,” Boudreau said. “And we talked about it before the overtime — we talked about it all the time  — to stay on the right side of the puck. And there was no reason for 53 (Horvat) to go on that side of the puck; we didn't have control of it. And even Petey could have checked from the other (side). And you know in overtime, you can't go beat guys one on one when you're not going 100 miles an hour, and we still try that, too. So I don't know, I'm at a loss on that.”

Marchessault had fallen to the ice when the puck came to him along the boards in the Vegas zone, which may be why Pettersson picked at it from the offensive side of the puck instead of getting his body between Marchessault and Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko.

But off the puck, Horvat drifted forward, hoping Pettersson would emerge with it. When he didn’t, Horvat was caught on the two-on-one.

Marchessault said he “got lucky that he cheated on the other side and we had a two-on-one.”

“I saw Petey and Marchessault in the battle there, and maybe a little bit of a hope play (by me),” Horvat said. “But at the end of the day, like Millsy said, it's all about the bounces, all about capitalizing on your opportunities. (None of that) would have happened if I scored right there on the opening draw.”

Horvat poked the puck past Theodore from the opening faceoff of overtime to create a breakaway for himself, but was stopped on a deke by Lehner, who started his first game since sustaining an undisclosed injury on March 8. An even bigger miss for the Canucks was Myers shooting over the Knights’ net from about 10 feet away and with one second remaining in regulation.

A goal there and the Canucks would be five points behind Vegas instead of eight.

Horvat was credited with the tying goal at 9:42 of the third period when he lost a power-play draw to William Karlsson but saw Knights defenceman Alec Martinez accidently deflect the puck through Lehner.

The teams play again Wednesday in Nevada.

With 12 games remaining, the Canucks need at least 10 wins to give themselves a chance at making the playoffs.

Vancouver was down to five defencemen for the final two periods Sunday after Tucker Poolman, playing his first game since migraine complications took him out of the lineup on Jan. 27, suffered a recurrence of his neurological issues.

“I don't know why we don't start on time,” Boudreau lamented of the slow start. “They had us 10-1 in shots in the first period. I think teams know this (about us) and they come out flying, and we should be able to know that, ‘Hey, we've got to. . .  hold off and play hard for the first period.’ Usually when we're in the lead or tied, we usually end up winning the game.

“On the other hand, I give the guys an awful lot of credit. I mean, the second and third period, I thought we played really good. And with five defenceman in the third period, I thought we played an almost perfect game defensively. And, you know, we had chances to win it many times. We just didn't do it.”