Takeaways: Resilience no longer enough as Canucks fall out of playoff spot

The most consistent trait during an inconsistent season for the Vancouver Canucks has been their resilience. As they scuffled to cope with missing players and their missing identity, the team continued to collect enough points to maintain a playoff spot.

On Tuesday, in their final game of 2024, that resilience was still there. But not the points or the playoff spot. A 3-1 loss to the Calgary Flames means the Canucks will open the New Year below the playoff cut line in the National Hockey League’s Western Conference.

The Flames, who you wouldn’t have figured before the season would be within 10 points of the Canucks on Jan. 1, passed them in the standings and dropped Vancouver into ninth place, one point behind Calgary with a game in hand.

But it felt like a symbolic retreat for the Canucks, who for the second straight game played without injured superstar Quinn Hughes and talented centre Elias Pettersson.

Most of the game was far better for the Canucks than the end of their previous one — the ignominious three-goal collapse on Saturday in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Seattle Kraken.

Vancouver played with more intensity and focus on Tuesday, but the Flames were a much tighter, sturdier opponent than the Kraken.

In Game 2 without Hughes, the Canucks generated only a single power-play goal against the Flames’ Calder Trophy-candidate goalie, Dustin Wolf. And despite the Canucks’ impressive combativeness in the second period of an old-school rivalry game, they managed only five shots in the final frame.

The Canucks were tied for three minutes and two seconds of the third period until Nazem Kadri broke a 1-1 tie for Calgary on a three-on-two at 9:18 after Vancouver winger Dakota Joshua guessed wrong the entry pass and defencemen Erik Brannstrom and Vincent Desharnais couldn't defend the rush.

Brock Boeser had scored for the Canucks at 6:15, redirecting J.T. Miller’s slap-pass on the power play. But after blowing a 4-1 lead in the final five minutes of regulation time against the Kraken, Vancouver’s hope of erasing a late one-goal deficit in Calgary ended with Jonathan Huberdeau’s empty-netter from Carson Soucy’s giveaway with 1:02 remaining.

The Canucks stagger out of December after going 5-4-5 in a home-heavy schedule. With Pettersson out day-to-day and Hughes week-to-week, Vancouver’s playlist is going to get difficult quickly. After back-to-back games Thursday in Seattle and Friday in Vancouver against the Nashville Predators, the Canucks leave for a five-game road trip to Montreal, Washington, Carolina, Toronto and Winnipeg.

It will be an accomplishment if they are still only one point out of a playoff spot when that tour ends.

IS THAT IDENTITY, WE SEE?

Everyone understands the Canucks are going to be monumentally challenged to create offence without Hughes. They finished with 24 shots on Tuesday and high-danger scoring chances were 11-7 for the Flames at five-on-five, according to naturalstattrick.com.

But Vancouver was harder to play against in Calgary. The Canucks were more direct than they’ve been in many games, and after all of December’s drama and speculation about team dynamics, Vancouver players stood up for each other.

Miller, who has struggled to stay fully engaged in some games since returning from his leave of absence, fought Kevin Bahl from a faceoff at 7:12 of the second period, immediately after Calgary fourth-liner Ryan Lomberg picked a mismatched fight against Brannstrom. Vancouver defenceman Derek Forbort later fought Lomberg, who made himself accountable.

At one point, there were five Canucks, three of them defencemen, in the penalty box. That’s rarely a good thing, but it was indicative of the team’s combativeness.

MAKE THAT 1-B?

Canuck coach Rick Tocchet’s decision to start Kevin Lankinen in goal was a revealing one because with back-to-back games to follow, the “backup” goalie will be playing two out of three games this week ahead of Thatcher Demko.

Trying to rebuild his form after missing nearly eight months with a knee injury, Demko allowed five goals on 29 shots against Seattle. Although Tocchet said the next day that goaltending was the least of his worries, Demko needed to make another save somewhere on Saturday.

After missing a couple of starts due to illness and then having one of his poorer games this season in a 5-4 loss to the Ottawa Senators on Dec. 21, Lankinen appears to have recalibrated and looked dialled in against the Flames, stopping 26 of 28 shots.

Besides Kadri’s goal on a three-on-two, the only other shot that beat Lankinen was a first-period tap-in for Connor Zary — after the goalie stuffed Jakob Pelletier on a breakaway but got no help cleaning up the puck from defencemen Soucy and Noah Juulsen.

QUOTEBOOK

Tocchet: “A hard-working game. A lot of emotion. Guys stuck together. A couple of self-inflicted goals that are preventable. But for the most part, I thought the guys worked hard. A lot of guys gave effort tonight.”

BEST AND WORST

With a mountain of scoring burden on their shoulders, the Canucks’ top line of Boeser, Miller and Jake DeBrusk was able to generate 13 of the team’s 21 shots while playing most of their five-on-five shifts against Mikael Backlund’s shutdown line.

But the Canucks’ second line, and especially winger Conor Garland, had a miserable night. Five-on-five shots were 10-2 for the Flames against Garland, 11-2 when Pius Suter was on the ice.