The Vancouver Canucks ought to have worn their reverse retro jerseys on Tuesday at Enterprise Center in St. Louis. Not only was their effort a step back from recent performances it was a throwback to the way they stumbled out of the gate in October. Here are some thoughts and observations about the overtime setback:
- One night doesn't necessarily undo all of the work Rick Tocchet and his coaching staff have done to implement structure in the Vancouver Canucks game, but it will be worth monitoring moving forward whether Tuesday was a one-off or a sign of pending slippage. The Canucks played their most-complete game under Tocchet on Saturday in Dallas and three nights later all of the structure on display in Big D went out the window. Look at the St. Louis goals: a bad giveaway, an inability to clear the zone, a porous penalty kill, a disastrous in-zone turnover, a bad pinch in the neutral zone and defensive confusion in overtime. These were all on full display in the first two months of the season, but the Canucks had done a solid job of ridding the self-inflicted wounds from their game since the coaching change. Unfortunately, they all came back on the same night in St. Louis and it was simply too much for the Canucks to overcome.
- Some of the sloppiness can likely be attributed to the gruelling schedule the Canucks have dealt with of late. Not only was Tuesday the end of a quick three-game in four night road trip that took them to Dallas, Chicago and St. Louis, the game also marked the end of nine contests in a 15-night span. That surely took a toll on a number of players physically, but last night looked like a handful of players were fighting the mental battle every bit as much. Every team deals with tough stretches of the schedule, but given the geography involved, teams on the West Coast have to factor the rigours of travel into their compressed schedules. It looked like some of that caught up to the hockey club at times against the Blues. Credit to them for sticking with it in the third period to force the game to overtime.
- Despite giving up six goals for just the second time this season, it's fair to suggest the Canucks wouldn't have pushed last night's game to overtime without Thatcher Demko. Sure, when a goalie gives up six, there needs to be more saves. But with the Blues leading in the third period, Demko made a terrific glove stop off Pavel Buchnevich and then stared down Kasperi Kapanen on a point blank chance in the slot. If either of those gets past Demko, it's highly unlikely the Canucks would have had the chance to mount a comeback. Last night marked the first time since a 6-4 loss in Washington in the Canucks third game of the season that Demko surrendered six goals in a game.
- Brock Boeser is making a late-season surge for a career-high in points. Boeser scored once and set up two others on Tuesday giving him three points on the night and six points on the three-game road trip. He has now scored in three straight games and bumped his goal total to 16 on the season giving him an outside shot at reaching the 20-goal threshold with a big finish. In addition to that though, Boeser is up to 52 points with eight games to go and needs just four points to match his career-best of 56 points established in his second season in the NHL when he recorded 26+30=56 in 69 games.
- After settling in nicely following the blockbuster trade that brought him to Vancouver, Anthony Beauvillier has gone ice cold offensively. The winger has now gone 8 games without a goal and has just a single point to show for his last seven outings. Take it back even further and Beauvillier has just one goal in his last 14 games (a March 14th goal against Dallas) after contributing 6+5=11 in his first 11 games with the Canucks. The 25-year-old has lost his spot riding shotgun with Elias Pettersson and has been bumped off the team's top power play unit. Where Beauvillier once logged a career-high 22:45 in Nashville not that long ago, last night in St. Louis he saw just 12:51 of ice -- a low for him since joining his new hockey club.