The Canucks can’t afford to lose games they’re dominating. They did that on Saturday.
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That’s the simple truth about the Vancouver Canucks’ loss to the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon.
The Canucks were without question the better team. They were all over the Rangers.
But they couldn’t put the game away early and then didn’t bear down quite enough as the Rangers never went away.
The Canucks were up 1-0 after one but couldn’t find a second goal and ended up losing because they gave up four goals in the third, including an empty-netter.
Four goals on six shots to be clear.
And of course the empty netter was scored by ex-Canuck J.T. Miller, the ultimate salt in the wound. Not only is he a player the Canucks desperately miss, but the Canucks also lost Pettersson to an injury.
Listen Igor Shesterkin is a great goalie. But he’s become fallible. He’s not having a great season.
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The Canucks should have had more than three goals in this game. They probably should have led 2-0 after two.
Shesterkin is some of the story, but shooting luck is surely some of it too.
At the other end of the rink, Kevin Lankinen wasn’t bad and he had little chance on a couple shots, but did he give himself the best chance to stop any of those?
This is a rough shot chart, either way: the Rangers generated little and still scored four goals.
Basically all the prediction models saw this game as a 20-point swing in the Canucks’ playoff hopes: a win would boost their chances 10 percentage points or so, a loss would drop them 10 percentage points or so.
This was a bad loss.
Realistically the Canucks need to win the remaining three games on their road trip.
It’s hard to win when your No. 1 centre only plays 6:43 at five on five.
Elias Pettersson suffered some kind of arm or shoulder injury in the second period Saturday and barely played after.
On a team that’s now very thin in the middle, losing any centre would be bad enough. But to lose your best centre, who has been highly impactful of late, was a brutal blow.
Brock Boeser’s value has been very evident the last week.
Sure, he was in a brutal slump, but now that he seems to have found his game again and his ability to score huge goals at gut-check time is once again highly evident.
He has five goals in three games and they’ve all been key.
pjohnston@postmedia.com
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