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The Canucks shot the puck a lot on Saturday.
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In all this, that’s a very good thing. They were trying on offence. They had their puck on their sticks a lot.
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That’s all Canucks fans can ask for. They just want to see their players going after it.
The problem was when they didn’t have the puck, they were a mess.
And that’s why we saw such a long face on Elias Pettersson. He spoke to the handful of reporters in attendance on Saturday in Calgary and the expression was one we’ve see so often this year, one that’s frustrated, perhaps even fed up.
Some nights it’s been hard to fathom that he has no answers — he controls his own fate and he has the talent to make thing happen and yet he’s been absent.
But this game, he had the answers, he knew them, but he was holding them back. We know the answer, he’s been ready to say in the past. And if he’d said so this time, he’d have been absolutely correct.
This team can’t play defence. Despite having some decent defencemen, they can’t keep things stable in their own end.
The goalies don’t have much chance if there’s no stability in front of them.
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And, in the end, who is instructing the defence?
Young guys
It is good to see that in a game that’s lacking in quality, Victor Mancini can be effective. He was pretty good on Saturday.
But we need to see him do this against tougher competition and, given what we’ve seen, that’s also hard to fathom happening.
Most players are flawed. The question becomes how can they overcome those flaws? Can they diminish the flaws and strengthen the strengths?
Or do they simply just become another guy who has come and gone?
There are plenty of faces who have been that.
This road trip
It’s hard to fathom — there’s that word again — that the Canucks will get a win before this road trip ends.
They’re in Vegas, then Denver, then St. Paul. And that Minnesota game is a back-to-back, which is a tough one to do given the airport in Denver is an hour from Ball Arena and you also lose an hour in time zones. You don’t get to your hotel in St. Paul until, like, 4 a.m.
It’s truly a schedule loss. No fun.
Vegas is a bit of a mess so maybe there’s a chance there, but Colorado is a beast, so good luck with that.
Anyway, there are 10 games left on the season. When this trip is over and the Canucks host the Mammoth at home next Saturday, there will be just seven games left.
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