A losing streak can feel overwhelming.
The hockey version is a black hole. It is impossible to escape the gravity of regression. Over time as the losses and the pressure mount, you can almost feel the streak begin to animate itself, the vacuum’s force amplified by how downright inexcusable the run of unfavourable results seems to be for those living through it.
Vancouver is currently closed Canucks’ seven-game losing streak feels tangible. It’s a presence in the locker room and in the arena. It looms over the players and staffers and coaches on this team – and over the fans in the home building too – stalking them, draining them of energy, smiles, and confidence too.
The losing streak eventually, if left to fester and becomes the worst possible force for a professional sporting property: disinterestedness, and apathy. If we’re not there yet in Vancouver, we’re awfully close.
Monday night saw the Canucks host the Carolina Hurricanes. They lost their seventh consecutive match to start the regular season. Vancouver was delighted with the score of 3-2.
The Canucks lost to a much better, deeper, faster, and more composed opponent.
That’s not on Canucks players, who performed decently, all things considered. Elias PetterssonDespite not having the puck, they are still disruptive and highly dynamic. J.T. MillerScored twice and showed signs that life is possible at any strength. Thatcher Demko made the saves he should’ve made.
It just didn’t matter against this Hurricanes machine. Vancouver’s back end is limited at the best of times without Quinn Hughes, it’s simply not at a level compatible with winning games in the contemporary NHL.
Shift after shift, the Hurricanes’ mobile, heavy defenders were able to retrieve pucks off of Vancouver dump-ins, turn ably bypass Canucks forecheckers. Consistently and cleanly they’d exit their own zone with speed.
While attacking off of the rush, the faster Hurricanes forwards – Seth Jarvis and Andrei Svechnikov in particular – were able to cleanly beat Vancouver’s top pair of Tyler Myers and Oliver Ekman-LarssonIt is possible to score chances by getting in alone.
As Rod Brind’Amour’s contraption whirred and whizzed and ground out territorial dominance – turning things up yet another level in the third period – the Canucks had no answers.
When the Hurricanes got the puck in deep on Vancouver’s defenders, after all, they weren’t able to play the puck cleanly or exit the zone with speed. Shift after shift, the Canucks’ defenders were only able to jam the puck along the wall and into traffic – feeding the Hurricanes’ disciplined, compact forecheck.
Pettersson is a Vancouver player. Conor GarlandOder Bo HorvatYou would have to be patient and find space behind a pinching protector against the grain. These rare occasions were when the Canucks were able get north-south moving with a sense if purpose.
These stillborn attacks were rarely dangerous. Hurricanes defenders were typically able to contain the first wave and there’s rarely ever fourth-man’s ice support coming from the Vancouver back end. Those stray 2-on-2s, those precious 3-on-3s, for this Canucks team they almost never turn into odd-man opportunities – they certainly didn’t on Monday.
And so the Hurricanes were able to exert control over the entire game, with the precision and pace and work rate that’s become their calling card. It was not pretty, but it was inevitable. Carolina’s edge in the run of play increased and crescendoed, to the point where Carolina outshot Vancouver 15-3 in a third period that was as lopsided as anything you’re likely to see in a one-goal game at this level.
Contrary to the shabby Canucks team, the Hurricanes looked well-thought out and well-trained in their execution. This team has a plan, a cohesive direction and six defenders that can move the puck.
A team that understands how important cap space is, what the impact of having a war chest of draft picks and the danger of signing old players to big-money deals. An organization that doesn’t fear replacing the likes Dougie Hamilton, Vincent Trocheck, Anthony D’Angelo, Nino Niederreiter, and whatever goaltender happens be starting for them, when it comes time for those players signing risky, inefficient contracts unrestricted as free agents.
Oh, wouldn’t it be nice?
This is the part of Rogers Arena’s losing streak that haunts Rogers Arena’s leaky ceiling. It’s not a mysterious force, it’s not something magical.
Unfortunately, the Canucks’ current losing streak is not easy to overcome. Bruce Boudreau is the coach.
It’s the result of years of short-term thinking, underinvestment, and a lack of direction.
It’s the result of cutting salaries to the bone during the pandemic, neutering the upswing of a young team that seemed to be on the rise. It’s the result of always prioritizing the opinion of whoever is willing to shepherd this once proud club on the shortest and least probable path to the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
At the tail end of Boudreau’s postgame availability on Monday, the usually jovial and upbeat bench boss, one of the great regular season winners in the history of this league, seemed to struggle to muster his usual, charmingly defiant brand of positivity.
“I mean, there’s 74 games left,” Boudreau said, perhaps hopeful in his omission of a game. “What do I say? I mean, we’ll think of something.
“They’ll have a day off tomorrow and we’ll build them back up and we’ll go at it again the next game. I mean, as bad as it is, it’s only four points out of a playoff spot right now. So you can look at it either way you want to look at it, but we’re gonna get better. Once we find the way, we’ll be fine, we’ll be a good team. We’ve got good players.”
He’s right, for the most part. They do have some good players. They will be fine and they will win games, likely weeks and months’ worth of them, at some point this season.
No matter how much the market dreams on it, however, this Canucks team isn’t likely to be hoisted by their own petard for Connor Bedard, not with Demko backstopping a group of forwards this dynamic. It’s not with Chicago Arizona Montreal San JoseMix it.
This losing streak is going to end eventually. They all do. The spectre of it will soon fade from our minds.
It is possible that it will fade so completely that this organization will just hold on to any hope it can find when it turns. This ignores the larger trend of the past decade as well as the stark contrast in quality between this organization’s Hurricanes team and this one.
It would be the normal course for this club. However, it would be far more shameful than the Canucks losing another game to begin this miserable season.
(Photo by J.T. Canucks forward) Miller: Bob Frid/USA Today
