It’s astonishing just how bad the Pacific Division has been this season.
Just one team in the Pacific has more wins than losses: the Anaheim Ducks, who have 41 wins and 37 losses, including overtime losses. The Edmonton Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights are tied for first in the Pacific: the Oilers have 39 wins and 39 losses, while the Golden Knights have 36 wins and 42 losses.
The Oilers and Golden Knights both have 88 points after 78 games. They’d both be sitting outside of the playoffs in the Eastern Conference. And these are the division leaders?
The playoff bar in the Western Conference last season was 96 points. In fact, the Calgary Flames finished with 96 points and missed the playoffs because the St. Louis Blues had the advantage in the tiebreaker.
The Oilers and Golden Knights are on pace to finish the season with 92.5 points. Again, these are the leaders of the Pacific Division.
Heck, even if the Golden Knights win all of their remaining four games and finish the season with 96 points, that point total still would have resulted in them missing the playoffs last season. That’s because the most regulation and overtime wins they can reach is 39, falling short in that tiebreaker to the Blues, who had 40.
Let’s not forget the Los Angeles Kings, who are barely hanging on to the West’s second Wild Card spot by points percentage with only 19 wins in regulation. 19! Just one team has fewer than 19 regulation wins this season: the last-place Vancouver Canucks.
That’s what is truly remarkable: the Pacific has had the worst team in the NHL to beat up on all season, and they’re still putting up paltry point totals. It’s pathetic, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say so.
I couldn’t help but think of how terrible the Pacific is when the Golden Knights barely beat the Canucks as I watched this game.
Okay, okay, so the Golden Knights barely got by the Canucks on the scoreboard, but they absolutely dominated the game. The score was 2-1, but the shots on goal were 28-to-11 (26-to-8 at 5-on-5), which honestly felt charitable towards the Canucks. It was almost literally charitable, as the NHL gifted the Canucks an extra shot after the game was over — it was 28-to-10 when the game ended.
Elias Pettersson had a chance to shoot the puck on the opening shift as he broke out 2-on-1 with Drew O’Connor. Instead, he tried to feather a pass across, which was broken up. The Canucks didn’t put a puck on net until 14:30 into the first. Elias. Just shoot the dang puck. You’ve scored in just one of your last 31 games. Shoot.
That said, both Eliases Pettersson — the Petterssonae, if fancy-sounding but gramatically-incorrect pluralization is your bag — deserve some credit. In a game where the canucks were brutally outshot at 5-on-5, the Eliases were not. Shots on goal were 4-2 for the Canucks when the defenceman Elias was on the ice and tied 2-2 when the forward Elias was on the ice. Also, Tom Willander broke even on shots, but his name isn’t Elias Pettersson.
By the time the Canucks got a single shot, the Golden Knights already had seven shots (originally eight, but the NHL was again retroactively charitable to the Canucks, removing one of the Golden Knights’ shots). And yet, the Canucks came closest to scoring the opening goal, with Aatu Räty redirecting a Victor Mancini slap-pass off the post just before they got their first shot on net.
The only reason the game remained knotted at zeroes as long as it did is that Nikita Tolopilo stood on his head. Not literally, as that’s not a great way to stop the puck, but figuratively. He stopped the first 19 shots he faced, including some fantastic stops off of chances created by passes from below the goal line, which are notoriously difficult for goaltenders to track.
“Without Tolo, I don’t know how close it would be,” said Max Sasson. “Everyone, including myself, can probably give a better effort in front of our home fans. Only a couple games left and only getting ten shots or whatever, it’s just not good enough.”
Eventually, the Canucks did open the scoring, thanks to a fantastic shot by Sasson. Midway through thes econd period, Linus Karlsson won a battle in the neutral zone, sending Teddy Blueger into the offensive zone. Blueger fed Sasson on the right wing, then Blueger drove the middle lane, providing a potential passing option. But there was no pass from Sass, as he zipped a wristshot under the goaltender’s blocker.
That was just the fifth shot of the game for the Canucks, nearly 33 minutes into the game.
“As I touched on, we didn’t have many shots,” said Sasson. “I probably fooled him a little bit just with how little action he was seeing.”
The Golden Knights responded just three minutes later. Colton Sissons knocked Marcus Pettersson off the puck down low to win possession on the forecheck, then the puck came around to Brayden McNabb. Tolopilo couldn’t see his shot coming, as Mancini, unlike a mankini, covered up too much, preventing his own goaltender from viewing the puck.
I was perhaps a little unfair to Pettersson above when I called on him to shoot. It’s pretty understandable that his confidence is shot. He has an open net off a Drew O’Connor rebound in the final minute of the second period, but got absurdly robbed and saw the puck ricochet off a Vegas defender and go just wide. Call him The Ouroboros, because he’s eternally snakebitten.
Eventually, the Golden Knights got a second goal. Liam Öhgren lost a battle in the neutral zone to Cole Smith, allowing Nic Dowd to gain the Canucks’ blue line on a sudden 3-on-2. As the defence pair of Mancini and Marcus backed in deep, Dowd dropped the puck to Smith, who snapped an offspeed pitch past Tolopilo.
Smith had some inadvertent help from the backchecking Brock Boeser, who checked Smith’s stick just as he shot, changing the trajectory of the puck enough to fool Tolopilo.
The Golden Knights played a smothering third period. They not only smothered the Canucks, preventing them from creating any dangerous chances, but also smothered my interest in this game. Once Vegas got a one-goal lead, they sat on it like an Emperor Penguin on an egg.
The Canucks didn’t get their first shot of the third period until there was six minutes left in the game. It really can’t be emphasized enough how much the Canucks were not in this game at all if not for Tolopilo.
Even after all of that, the Canucks had a legitimate chance to tie the game, as Marco Rossi drew an interference penalty on Rasmus Andersson that had the former Flame hot under the collar and completely crashing out. Andersson was apoplectic at the call, repeatedly signalling — and screaming — that it was a dive. That’s the kind of full-on freak out that Daniel Day Lewis will study for hours in minute detail for a future role.
(It was kind of maybe a little bit of a dive)
It didn’t matter. The Canucks didn’t score, losing their 32nd game on home ice. They’re now 8-27-5 on home ice, and officially can’t reach double digits in home wins this season — the first team in the salary cap era to manage that feat in a full season. One more regulation loss and they’ll match the 1995-96 Ottawa Senators for the worst home record in an 82-game season in NHL history.
“We’ve got to figure that out going into next year,” said Sasson. “Everyone’s a little more tense at home. I have no clue why or what it is. I’m sure that will be talked about in summer meetings and going into training camp…Even in the locker room, it feels looser on the road for whatever reason. We’ve got to be good at home if we’re going to be a good team in this league.”
Just five games remaining. We’re almost there.
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