OTTAWA – There are a couple of extraordinary numbers, almost incomprehensible, that Brock Boeser is struggling to understand. They are crazy numbers, and would be comical if they weren’t so painful.
The Vancouver Canucks, who finished a 50-win season less than two years ago, lost their eighth straight National Hockey League game on Tuesday, 2-1 to the Ottawa Senators. And Boeser, the longest-tenured player on the Canucks, an alternate captain who scored 40 goals two seasons ago, extended his goalless streak to 21 games.
He hasn’t scored since Nov. 28. You can find the goal on a DVD somewhere.
The Canucks’ unfathomably fast and deep freefall to the bottom of the standings was reflected in Boeser’s helpless look Tuesday night when he was asked about the two numbers crushing him like gravity on Jupiter.
“I don’t … ” he began, then stopped for about 10 seconds. “I don’t even know what to say. Honestly, it’s just, it’s crazy. Where we were a couple years ago … obviously some big moves (since then) and we’re a super young team, but I mean, I don’t know.
“I just get frustrated when I think about it because, you know, I haven’t scored. I haven’t been leading in that regard, putting the puck in the net. And it’s really, it’s eating at me a lot, and so I don’t even know. I don’t have the words to describe it right now.”
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Badly outplayed through two periods by the Senators — carrying its own four-game losing streak but at least had rested since Saturday while Vancouver played Monday in Montreal — the Canucks managed to stage a third-period push on Tuesday.
Elias Pettersson cut a 2-0 deficit in half by sniping a goal from Dylan Cozens’ turnover at 1:17 of the final period, and the Canucks had chances to tie it. Boeser opened up in front for a point-blank look from Filip Hronek’s pass but shot wide with about 15 minutes to go.
He has taken 37 shots since his last goal. With a career shooting percentage of 13.8 per cent, he should have five more goals but is stuck at nine.
“Even last night, I thought I had a couple of decent looks right in the slot,” Boeser said. “I don’t know, it’s testing me mentally. It’s been hard. It’s hard to have confidence. I definitely feel like I should have five or six more goals. But it hasn’t been going in, and it’s making it very hard.”
So, too, for veterans like Boeser who expected to be returning to the Stanley Cup playoffs this season, is confirmation Sunday from Canucks president Jim Rutherford that everything (or more accurately, everyone) is on the trade table and the organization is open to listening to offers on any of its players.
“Whatever they say, you’ve got to be mature about it,” Boeser said. “But it’s definitely hard if that’s the direction that they’re going and everything’s on the table. We obviously thought we’d be in a different spot this year. And I really believe in this group. We got a lot of injuries, and it’s hurt us big time down the middle. But I still give credit to our team, though. I feel like we have been showing up, working hard, but we’ve just been on the wrong side of way too many games.”
“I mean, we’re losing, we’re the last-place team in the league,” Jake DeBrusk, another senior winger on a long-term contract, said. “We’ve lost (eight) in a row; there’s going to be some talk. I think that just becomes the business side of it. Honestly, I don’t know if guys are thinking about it; we haven’t talked about it.”
Is he thinking about it?
“Am I thinking about it? No, I’m thinking about what we need to do to win a game. You only control so much, right? So no, I’m not thinking about it. It’s hard not to when you just look at the standings, (but) I’m learning through this. Obviously, it doesn’t affect me the best. It doesn’t affect anyone the best. We all want to get out of this together.
“For me personally, I’ve never gone through this before. I feel like I keep saying that, but yeah, we’ve got to figure it out quick. We got back in the win column and feel good about something. I’ve never lost this many games in a row in my life. You feel it.”
The Canucks have lost five straight games in regulation on the same road trip for the first time in a non-COVID year since John Tortorella was coaching the team in 2014.
The trip ends Thursday against the Columbus Blue Jackets, who just hired former Canucks’ assistant Rick Bowness as their head coach.
The Canucks were outshot 32-11 in the first two periods on Tuesday, but Vancouver goalie Kevin Lankinen was sensational and kept his team in it after allowing Senators defencemen Artem Zub and Jordan Spence to score 15 seconds apart on unscreened shots from distance after Ottawa won a pair of offensive-zone faceoffs.
“I think the competitive part was there,” Lankinen said. “Of course, at the back end of a back-to-back, you’ve got to play smart. I think we tried to do that. We had a good push (in the third period), but unfortunately, we couldn’t get a couple of bounces.”
The Canucks did get elite prospect Zeev Buium back in their lineup. He played 21:38 one night after coach Adam Foote scratched him in Montreal for a one-game reset.
“I mean, it sucks,” the 20-year-old rookie said of sitting out. “Obviously, you don’t want to ever miss a game, but, you know, I think you’ve got to be ready to just kind of put it behind you. You know, it’s frustrating to lose. It’s never good to be taken out of the lineup, either, but we’re going to get through it. I’ll get through it.”
Buium was one of the three young players whose arrival from Minnesota in the Quinn Hughes trade a month ago gave the Canucks an initial boost of pace and enthusiasm as Vancouver went on a four-game road winning streak.
He is the defenceman who won under-18, world junior and senior world championship gold medals for Team USA, as well as a national championship in college with the University of Denver.
“I don’t think I’ve ever lost eight in a row,” he said. “But I think life; you’re going to go through different experiences every year. There’s going to be highs, you’re going to have lows. And obviously, right now, it is a low. Losing sucks. Like, that’s the whole point — why you play to win the game. I think for us, it’s to figure it out as a group. And we have the players, we have the guys in here to do that. It’s just up to us to do it.”
