The Vancouver Canucks showed Monday they have a pulse. Now, they have to prove their team is actually alive.
With a 6-10-0 record and the fourth-worst winning percentage in the National Hockey League, the Canucks have already turned the Stanley Cup Playoffs into a long shot even with 40 games remaining.
But they had no chance the way they were playing before Monday, when Vancouver dominated the best team in the NHL for two periods before the Toronto Maple Leafs, held to just seven shots through 40 minutes, scored twice in 11 seconds to win 3-1.
It was the Canucks’ fifth straight loss, but really their first when they looked like the urgent, direct, motivated team that manufactured a breakthrough during the playoff tournament last summer.
After a listless 5-1 loss Saturday in Toronto followed Thursday’s 7-3 embarrassment to the Leafs, Canucks goalie Braden Holtby essentially demanded a roll-call of team character. Everyone showed up on Monday.
“I don’t know if we could have played any better in the first two periods,” Canucks coach Travis Green said. “Probably deserved to be up. I was happy with our team’s game tonight. I wasn’t happy that we lost, but it resembled a lot more the team we want to be.”
Canucks forward Elias Pettersson said: “I think we still have a lot to work on, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. I know we have a lot more in us. It’s a good game, but still not good enough.”
Pettersson’s power-play wrister in the second period was the only shot out of 32 that Toronto goalie Frederik Andersen failed to save. There was no “probably” about the Canucks deserving to be up heading into the third.
But with a win still available to them, the Maple Leafs surged like an elite team and scored more goals in 11 seconds than the Canucks did in 60 minutes. Auston Matthews was left free by Canucks centre Jay Beagle in the high slot and one-timed a shot under Holtby to break a 1-1 tie at 9:22.
From the next faceoff at centre ice, Canucks defenceman Quinn Hughes retreated with the puck in his own zone before losing it while trying to spin away from Ilya Mikheyev, who quickly centred to Alex Kerfoot for a point-blank goal at 9:33.
“Right now, I think defensively, we’re just not getting any bounces,” Hughes said. “I make that play 100 times and it pretty much always works for me. That’s just the luck of the draw right now, how it’s going right now. But for me, my confidence is really high. I think I had a really good game. I know our team thinks we had a really good game.
“We have a competitive group. Guys want to win. No one likes losing, including myself. It sucks. We have a lot of new pieces. We lost some pretty good players last year, and we’re just trying to figure it all together. And I think that we’re going to get there. Tonight, we were pretty close to that. We’re right there. I’m worried we lost five in a row but I’m not worried because I’m confident in the group we have. In the long run, we’re going to be alright.”
The 56-game run, however, is unlikely to be long enough for slow starters like the Canucks to catch up.
Seeing how physically engaged — and how connected to each other — they were Monday naturally raised a question: Where the heck was that effort and intensity in most of the Canucks’ first 15 games?
Did it really take Holtby, a newcomer who has done nothing but win games with the Washington Capitals in his career, confronting teammate J.T. Miller on the ice Saturday and calling afterward on teammates to respond for the Canucks to find the level needed just to compete against good teams?
“I was just thinking accountability as a team,” Holtby explained Monday after allowing three goals on 19 Toronto shots – 12 of those in the third period. “We had the right mindset going in. The season is strange. You don’t have a lot of time to fix things and it can kind of snowball out of your hands pretty quick. We turn it around this game, especially mentally, for preparation. We still didn’t win, which is still the main goal, but I think there’s a lot of positives that can come out of this game for us.”
Now they need to prove it.
After playing poorly in far more games this season than they’ve played well, the Canucks have to prove that Monday was a eureka moment and they can sustain their rediscovered intensity and drive when they open a three-game homestand against the Calgary Flames on Thursday.
Importantly, they’ll get both rest (Tuesday) and practice (Wednesday) before then, after playing more games than anyone in the first four weeks of the season.
“A lot of good teaching moments, not just in the game but over the last few days with our group,” Green said. “You definitely don’t ever feel good about [losing]. But when you’ve been in a rut and played the way we have, you’ve got to hang your hat on something. And we took a step tonight in playing the way we want to, and we need to take another step again.”
“I thought Vancouver played an outstanding game here today,” Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “They certainly came with a renewed focus and energy level. I thought they played with a lot of urgency. It felt like a desperate team over there. They played hard, they deserved more than they got today.”
