ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Vancouver Canucks’ winning streak is over but, importantly, not their points streak.
At least a couple of rungs below their best form, the highest-scoring team in the National Hockey League had to grind out a low-scoring game against the Minnesota Wild before losing 2-1 in a shootout Saturday afternoon, ending a four-game Canucks winning streak that began with a 2-0 win over the Wild nine days earlier.
Whether it was the travel day Friday, the lack of a morning skate Saturday, the time-zone change that had Vancouver playing at 11 a.m. according to their body clocks, or simply the much-improved Wild, the Canucks struggled for two periods to move their feet or the puck.
Despite their problems — and aided by goalie Casey DeSmith — the Canucks hung in the game against a Minnesota team that is 6-2-1 and has surrendered just 14 goals since John Hynes replaced Dean Evason as coach.
Eventually, the Wild left the Canucks with one point when Mats Zuccarello beat DeSmith for the only goal of the shootout – Vancouver’s first skills-contest tiebreaker this season.
“I don’t think we were sharp from the start,” Canucks defenceman Nikita Zadorov said. “They were a little bit more competitive than us. Casey kept us in the game and allowed us to take one point.
“A one o’clock game, it’s a little bit different preparation. The travel last night, a two-hour difference (travelling east), sometimes it’s hard to get your legs going. I thought we had a decent third period; the first two weren’t good enough for sure. But, I mean, the best part in this league, you know, we’ve got a chance to go tomorrow and play better hockey.”
The Canucks travelled post-game to Chicago, where they should have a good night’s sleep before playing the Blackhawks in another matinee on Sunday. Vancouver packs the first half of its four-game road trip into just 25 hours.
“I don’t know what to attribute it to, but the execution was a little bit off the first couple (of periods),” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said. “I thought the third we started to find ourselves a little bit.
“That’s the one thing, you know, we grind it out and get the point. So you like that. But, yeah, the execution, we had a tough time handling pucks. You’ve got to learn how to play these tight games when things aren’t going your way. Try not to give them much.”
The game was tied for 54 minutes. Frederick Gaudreau skated free of Canuck defenceman Filip Hronek to direct Marcus Foligno’s pass past DeSmith to make it 1-0 Minnesota at 18:05 of the first period. But Vancouver’s third line matched Minnesota’s, tying the game at 3:50 of the middle frame when Teddy Blueger scored a similar goal, converting Dakota Joshua’s goalmouth feed after getting body position on Brandon Duhaime.
The Canucks outshot the Wild 14-8 over the final 25 minutes and could have won the game in regulation had their fifth-ranked power play not gone 0-for-5 against the NHL’s 31st-ranked penalty killing. Six of Vancouver’s 10 minutes of five-on-four ice time were in the final 24 minutes of regulation time.
“Same as the five-on-five play, the execution wasn’t there,” Tocchet said of the power play. “We were static. We’d shoot it and nobody’s in front, (and) we got a lot of shots blocked. There was a lot of opportunities to make some plays and I thought we just shot in the shin pads of guys.”
The Canucks generated 11 shots on their five advantages, but forced only a single save by Wild goalie Filip Gustavsson during 3:24 of power-play time in the third period.
“We had a lot of good shots that we really liked, and a couple seeing-eye shots that just didn’t go in,” Canuck J.T. Miller said. “Before that last powerplay, we had 10 shots on goal, so it’s not all bad. But I mean, we’d like to be the difference, 100 per cent.”
As Tocchet said, the power play lacked its usual rotation and interchange of players and became more predictable than usual. It also failed to generate many Grade-A chances on cross-seam passes, although Miller teed up Brock Boeser in the low slot in the first period.
“Definitely, a difference there,” captain Quinn Hughes said of the power play. “I mean, four or five power plays, whatever we had, we got some shots on net. . . but just didn’t score.
“I don’t think we played bad by any means. Our A-game? Maybe not. But definitely our B-plus plus or B game. We did a lot of good things, they did some good things. I mean, 1-1 game, we had our looks and didn’t come up with it.”
The Wild was 0-for-2 on the power play, but had an outstanding chance to win it in regulation when DeSmith made a point-blank save against Alex Goligoski’s redirect with 10 seconds remaining.
“We found it a little bit more maybe in third period, but just kind of a gritty game,” Blueger said. “Not a lot of room out there. We had to grind. Not our best. . . but we still put ourselves in a pretty good position to win, so that’s a positive.”
“An 82-game schedule, you’re going to play games where you have to grind,” Tocchet said. “Some guys, maybe they don’t have their legs. I think our team will actually have better legs tomorrow. You could tell guys were a little bit off. But yeah, there’s games in an 82-game schedule that you win that you don’t deserve. There’s games that you have to grind it out and try to play a 1-1 game like we did.”
ICE CHIPS – After a couple of failed zone exits in the first period, Nils Hoglander was dropped from the second line to the fourth by Tocchet, who said he was trying to get Miller and Brock Boeser going by moving Pius Suter up the lineup to play with them in Hoglander’s spot. . . Hughes attempted 11 shots, but had five blocked and missed the target on three others. . . Elias Pettersson had seven shots on goal. . . Pettersson, Miller and Andrei Kuzmenko were stopped by Gustavsson in their first shootout attempts of the season.