VANCOUVER – The preseason hot take around the Vancouver Canucks was that Elias Pettersson could do this year what J.T. Miller did last season, when the latter led the team with a 99-point breakthrough. But the prediction was incomplete, not nearly bold enough.
It would have been a scalding take had you added: And Miller will start this season like Pettersson did last year.
But what nobody could have prophesied – because it had never happened in the century-old National Hockey League – is that the Canucks would build multiple-goal leads in each of their first four games and win none of them.
The Canucks added to this historic achievement Tuesday in Columbus, where the Canucks led 2-0 early – and 2-1 and 3-2 in the third period – before allowing the Blue Jackets their first win of the season, 4-3 in overtime.
Their peak leads in order have been 3-0, 2-0, 4-2 and 2-0. And from this, the Canucks have one point in the standings heading into Thursday’s road-trip finale against the Minnesota Wild.
“Nobody likes to lose … but don’t give the game away,” Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford said Wednesday. “Make the other team take it from you. We’ve had too much of giving the game back instead of the opposing team earning it back.
“But I’m not totally surprised at what’s happening. I’ve talked about this since I came to Vancouver and what I’ve seen with his team: We have good players here, but how do you become a winning team? It’s about playing the game the right way and playing with good habits.”
In this respect, Rutherford said he saw progress in Columbus, where the Canucks took better care of the puck and didn’t collapse after losing their lead. They dominated late in the third period despite playing their second road game in 24 hours.
Down 4-2, the Washington Capitals poured four straight goals into Vancouver’s net in the third period of Monday’s loss, sparking a players-only meeting after the game where several veterans spoke and implored teammates to be smarter and harder defensively.
“We need to do that on a game-to-game basis: just keep going, even if we’re losing,” Rutherford said. “And if we’re playing the right way, we’ll come out of it. And not just come out of it for a while, but come out of it and do well.
“It’s difficult to start on the road. My preference is to start with a couple of games at home and then go on the road for a little bit. But when you’re starting from scratch and you don’t have any points to show for it, the games get harder and harder (when you lose).”
By adding free-agent winger Ilya Mikheyev in July, then re-signing Miller to a seven-year, $56-million extension, while making no trades to significantly change the team, Rutherford and his management group clearly believed in these Canucks.
How long can they keep believing before making changes?
“I don’t want to put any certain time on it,” Rutherford said. “But I don’t think judging where a team is after a five-game road trip would be fair. We just have to build in the right direction.
“The way the game is played today, giving up leads in the league happens a lot because it’s harder to defend with how much tighter they call the game and how you play defence in this league. But to have it happen four games in a row, that’s not something that happens to teams. We just have to get to the point – and I saw it in Columbus – where we play with a lot better habits.”
Coach Bruce Boudreau, working on an expiring contract after Rutherford denied him an extension last spring, got Mikheyev and No. 3 defenceman Tyler Myers back in the lineup on Tuesday for the first time since they suffered undisclosed preseason injuries.
Boudreau also swapped centres again, trying to get Miller going by giving him Mikheyev and dangerous rookie Andrei Kuzmenko as wingers, leaving Pettersson to play with Vasily Podkolzin and Nils Hoglander.
Miller was slightly better, finishing with a positive shot differential (7-5) for the first time this season. But the powerful centre still has a shockingly low expected-goals-for of just 25.9 per cent through four games, according to naturalstattrick.com. Miller is a team-worst minus-4 and has only one even-strength point.
He was highly self-critical after Saturday’s 3-2 loss in Philadelphia, telling reporters: “I’m not trying to make this about me, but I’m not going to sit here talking about how bad we played when I can’t even lead by example right now. I feel like I’m a little irrelevant, and being on the ice for every goal (against) … I don’t know what to say.”
“I think he over-tries,” Rutherford said. “I think he tries to do too much sometimes. That’s kind of player he is; it’s what drives him. He wants to win, he wants to do well. And when things aren’t going right with the team, some players have that tendency to try to do too much.”
At the opposite end of the fancy stats is Pettersson, who in addition to his three goals and six points has posted a five-on-five shot share of 65.3 per cent and expected-goals of 61.2 per cent. Pettersson has been on a higher level since training camp, validating his turnaround in the second half of last season after scoring only six times (with 11 assists) in the Canucks’ first 37 games.
Vancouver’s third big centre, Bo Horvat, has noticeably elevated his play the last two games after looking passive in the first two.
But goalie Thatcher Demko, whose .847 save percentage ranked 53rd of 59 NHL goalies through Tuesday night, obviously needs to get sharper. Backup Spencer Martin made his season debut against the Blue Jackets and played well until Johnny Gaudreau’s wraparound goal tied the game in the third period.
Star defenceman Quinn Hughes has been erratic while averaging 26:58 a game after missing the end of the preseason because of non-COVID illness.
But nothing the Canucks do individually will matter unless the special teams improve. They have been outscored by five goals in four games on special teams, and the Canucks’ combined ST rating of 68.9 (11.8 per cent power play, 57.1 per cent penalty killing) is the worst in the league by 10 points.
“Over 82 games … everybody goes through this every year,” Rutherford said. “It’s just a matter of when you do it. And it’s a lot harder to do it when you don’t have any points on the board.”
