BURSTVANCOUVER – It was like a terrible dare.
The Vancouver Canucks gave the Tampa Bay Lightning’s stars the chance to win Sunday’s National Hockey League game at Rogers Arena. And they did.
Brayden Point was involved in each goal of the Lightning’s 4-2 win, and Nikita Kucherov had three points and was on the ice for every second of advantage time as Tampa’s power play went 2-for-4 and decided the game — with the help of a lucky bounce and favourable review — with 3:56 remaining in the third period.
Lightning coach Jon Cooper allocated his team’s 7:16 of power-play ice time this way: Kucherov, 7:16; Jake Guentzel, 7:13; Brandon Hagel, 7:11; Point, 7:06; and Victor Hedman, 6:09.
We can only guess that Hedman, still one of the best defencemen in hockey at soon-to-be 34 years old, was a little tired.
The Lightning load up their top players like a dare to the opposition. And the Canucks fell for it. A lot of teams lose to Kucherov and Point.
But what made it worse for the Canucks is that the four penalties that allowed the Fab Five to win the game for the Lightning were: tripping, tripping, hooking and too many players on the ice. That last penalty came with 5:51 remaining and the score 2-2.
“I liked our five-on-five play,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said. “You know, special teams won the game for them. And their best players. You can’t have that too many men. And then that’s it — the Kucherov show. There you go.
“We’re close. But like I said, it’s a special-teams game. Their best players won the game for them. That’s it. We’ve just got to learn from that.”
On the game-deciding goal, the Canucks were nearly out of the penalty kill when Kucherov was left open on the weak side. The 144-point scorer from last season took Point’s cross-ice pass and centred quickly for Guentzel. The puck ramped up off Canuck goalie Kevin Lankinen’s stick and pad, hit Guentzel, was whacked by Vancouver defenceman Noah Juulsen, then bounced off Guentzel a second time and fell over the goal-line.
The magic bullet in the Zapruder film didn’t bounce like that.
“I had the guy pretty well,” Juulsen said. “I bat the puck, it hits his glove, and it ends up in the net. Obviously, it’s a sh–ty bounce, for sure. But I think we’ve got to avoid too many penalties. We were killing too much.”
But not killing well enough.
On the game-deciding penalty, the Canucks were trying to change when the puck was reversed back from the neutral zone, forcing defenceman Tyler Myers to make a U-turn after Carson Soucy had jumped on to the ice.
“It looks like we can go, and then the puck pops into the middle of the ice and now I don’t think I can change there,” Myers explained. “Then we got caught. Just one of those plays.”
“We got into penalty trouble (in the second period). I think that creates some momentum for them. I like how we came back out in the third and took the momentum back. And it was just unfortunate there at the end.”
It would have hurt less had the Canucks’ power play not gone 0-for-3. To be fair, the first four minutes of those advantages were played without Vancouver lynchpin Quinn Hughes, who needed stitches and a full shield attached to his helmet after getting high-sticked by Hagel just 55 seconds into the game.
Hughes went 12 minutes between shifts. On his third shift back, he stickhandled to the middle of the ice, after Pius Suter won an offensive-zone faceoff, and beat Tampa goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy with a sneaky backhand through traffic.
But the Lightning seized the game in the second period, aided by the first three Canuck penalties. Kucherov had mostly an open net to tie it at 4:40 from Ryan McDonagh’s outstanding cross-ice feed, before Tampa carved open Vancouver penalty killers and generated a goal for Point at 6:29 from Kucherov’s seam pass.
Myers beautifully set up Sherwood at the top of the crease to tie it 2-2 at 4:52 of the final period. And after Guentzel’s lucky go-ahead goal, Vasilevskiy had to make strong saves off Juulsen, Suter and Jake DeBrusk before Point skated the puck down the ice and scored into an empty net with 18 seconds to go.
It was a good effort by the Canucks. But they were a distant second-best in the second period when they were outshot 18-5.
They won 5-2 Friday against the Columbus Blue Jackets by playing one good period. They lost on Sunday to the Lightning while playing two good ones. Nearly one-third of the way through this season, the Canucks are still trying to play three good periods – and then stack those games together.
“As a group, it’s been frustrating, especially at home,” Juulsen said. “I think on the road, we’ve found games where we’ve played pretty solid road games. At home, we’ve almost got to treat it like a road game right now. Just be a little more simple and just execute the little plays, and maybe even just work a little harder.”
Sherwood said: “We’re still. . . I think our goal is obviously 60-minute efforts, and there’s going to be ebbs and flows of every game and momentum shifts. But I thought our five-on-five play. . . was a lot better tonight. I think our defensive detail was a lot better. I mean, their power play is just so good for so many years, and you saw. They just capitalized.”
When given the chance.
