VANCOUVER — Former Vancouver Canucks coach and general manager Harry Neale said after he was fired that his team could not win on the road and could not win at home, so his biggest failure was not finding another place to play.
The current Canucks have lots of places they can play in the National Hockey League. But it’s troubling that Rogers Arena is not one of them.
Calgary Saddledome? No problem. The Shark tank in San Jose? Canucks have won there twice already. They’ve also won in Denver, Las Vegas and Seattle against teams now far above them in the standings.
But at home, they are 5-9-1. Christmas is Sunday, and the Canucks have five wins at Rogers Arena. They have as many 5-1 losses.
Monday’s 5-1 humiliation by the St. Louis Blues was the Canucks’ sixth loss in their last eight home games, and the last five of these losses have been by three or more goals. They are not close.
In two games since Wednesday’s 4-3 road win in Calgary, where the Canucks displayed over the final 40 minutes some of their best two-way hockey this season, Vancouver has been embarrassed 10-2 at home by the Blues and Winnipeg Jets.
No wonder fans are booing them.
At least someone in a Canucks jersey beat someone in a Blues sweater on Monday. But it was only an eggnog-drinking contest during a TV timeout and we have questions about the legitimacy of the St. Louis fan and fairness of the chug-a-lug. On the ice, the Blues drank their fill, led by a Jordan Kyrou hat trick.
The 18,692 fans who showed up Monday on a snowy night were repaid with exactly 38 seconds of hope – the time between Canuck Ilya Mikheyev’s tying goal at 12:24 of the second period and sniper Nathan Walker’s game-winner for the Blues (and first goal of the season) at 13:02 after Vancouver defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson drifted out of his lane and goalie Spencer Martin was beaten cleanly from the faceoff dot.
The Canucks could use some Harry Neale humour about now.
Neale’s sharp wit and hockey experience allowed him to generate more success as a broadcaster than he did as an NHL manager. He was among the Rolodex of coaches and managers the Canucks cycled through in the 1980s until they discovered in Pat Quinn someone who would eventually succeed at both jobs.
So far this season, the current management of president Jim Rutherford and GM Patrik Allvin hasn’t cycled through anyone. Defenceman Ethan Bear was a handy pickup, but that was nearly two months ago. Coach Bruce Boudreau could use a little help because his players, back to two games under .500 and suddenly seven points out of a playoff spot, don’t know how to win at home.
“It’s terrible,” defenceman Luke Schenn said. “You’re playing in your home building and fans show up and expect to see a certain level of compete and effort. You’re not obviously going to win every game. . . but it’s got to start with an effort and playing as a team and obviously it’s nowhere close.”
Later, the two-time Stanley Cup winner told Sportsnet: “It’s like guys are afraid to play in our own building or something. I mean, it’s crazy. You can’t have success when you’re not good at home. We’re not even close right now at home. I mean, teams are coming in and doing whatever they want with us. We’re giving up five (goals) a game; we’re getting either nothing or one. We’re giving up way too much and we’re not creating anything. We don’t go to the hard areas, we don’t take care of the front of the net. We give up stuff off the rush, we turn pucks over, special teams aren’t great. That all adds up to 5-1.”
It should be noted the Canucks have played the last two games without Elias Pettersson, their best player who is home sick with a non-Covid illness. It should also be noted that no half-decent team should be entirely hollowed out by the absence of one player the way the Canucks have looked.
Boudreau said after Saturday’s 5-1 loss to Winnipeg that he can not explain how the Canucks play well one game and then look like an entirely different team the next.
So at least there was some continuity to Monday’s loss.
“You know, anytime you’re not winning on a regular basis, for coaches it’s perplexing,” Boudreau told reporters. “I guess the biggest part is you can look like champions one night, and then the next night you come back and you don’t look like champions, you look like the opposite. And that’s the most perplexing thing for me right now. Because I’ve seen the best of us (and) I’ve seen the worst of us. I know we’re going to come out of this because we have in the past all the time. But it’s hard going through it.”
Judging by the Jets game, half of Manitoba has moved to British Columbia. One benefit of this migration is that at least some fans went home happy on Saturday.
There was no counterpoint to the boos at the end of Monday’s game.
“Look at, I hate being booed,” Boudreau said. “I mean, in life you hate being booed, right? And you know they have the right to do it. . . and so that’s a hard pill to swallow. We’d love to be 41-0 at home and make it tough for teams to come into this building and win. But right now, that’s just not happening.
“As a coach, I’ve never had a losing season, so I just never think that we’re going to lose. I think every game we start, we’re going to win. I thought going into the third period (down 3-1), if we scored one goal early that we would win the game. And if you believe otherwise, then you have no chance of winning.
“A lot of times it’s not all rainbows and everything else. But I’ve got to believe I’ve got to make them think that they can win. If they don’t think they can win, then there’s no chance of us ever winning.”
All they need is a road trip. The Canucks play Friday in Edmonton. But on Thursday, the Seattle Kraken visit Rogers Arena.
