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The Vancouver Canucks’ longest road trip of the National Hockey League season got a little longer Thursday when their seven-game odyssey began with a 2-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues.
Robert Thomas won the game for the home team at 8:03 of the third period when he was left alone in the slot and wristed a shot past Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko. Thomas found space in front of Nils Aman after Canuck Nils Hoglander veered to the wing to join linemate Linus Karlsson in pressuring the Blues’ Scott Perunovich, who dished to Thomas.
The Life Line had opened scoring for Vancouver just 1:57 into the game when Teddy Blueger took a pass from Dakota Joshua and teed up a one-timer from the right-wing circle for Conor Garland.
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In the last nine games, the third-line trio has generated 10 goals and 27 points. With 10 points, Blueger leads Vancouver in scoring during that three-week stretch, one point ahead of Joshua and two ahead of Garland, whose eight points ties him for third on the team with J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson over the nine games.
Joshua, Blueger and Garland were easily the Canucks’ best line on Thursday, but they were not enough. The Pettersson line, especially, had a quiet night, getting outshot 10-4 at five-on-five as it played without Andrei Kuzmenko (see below).
St. Louis defenceman Colton Parayko tied the game 1-1 at 4:22 of the second period by scoring post-and-in from a right-wing overlap after Garland drifted to the middle, then blew a tie, leaving the Blue open.
The Canucks made some mistakes, but there was nothing “wrong” with their effort. The Blues scored on their best chances and the Canucks didn’t.
A few minutes before Thomas’ winner, Hoglander and Brock Boeser each missed the St. Louis net from point-blank range. And in the first period, Canuck defenceman Nikita Zadorov had a similar chance to the one Parayko converted but couldn’t beat Blues goalie Jordan Binnington.
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Still, a Canuck team that has been resourceful at harvesting points this season came away with nothing from a game they led and in which they were tied going into the final period.
Now the schedule gets harder: three games in four nights in the New York area, starting Saturday against the New Jersey Devils, who have eight straight regulation wins against the Canucks at the Prudential Center and haven’t lost on home ice to Vancouver since 2013.
NOT-SO-SPECIAL K
For the fifth time in the last 18 games, Andrei Kuzmenko was a healthy scratch for coach Rick Tocchet. Despite Kuzmenko’s popularity with fans and reporters, the issue seems as much about the player as his coach because last year’s 39-goal scorer has failed to alter his game despite Tocchet’s demands to get more engaged and, say, participate in the forecheck.
Other Canucks, including Joshua and Hoglander, changed the narrative of their seasons after being sat out early on by Tocchet. Kuzmenko is an entirely different style of player, but his game has not improved.
The problem isn’t that he has eight goals in 32 games while registering only 45 shots; everyone understood regression was coming after Kuzmenko posted an unearthly shooting percentage of 27.3 during his first year in the league. The problem is that Kuzmenko is doing so little else besides trying to score that Tocchet obviously feels he can’t use the Russian in Vancouver’s bottom six.
That said, Kuzmenko is one of the most talented players on the team, which is 2-3-1 without him in the lineup, including the Nov. 16 game in Calgary that the 27-year-old missed due to a facial injury. But Thursday was the first time the Canucks have failed to score at least three goals when Kuzmenko was a healthy scratch.
The Canucks scored 16 goals during Kuzmenko’s first four scratches, so it’s a dubious argument that the offence struggled in St. Louis because he didn’t play. Naturalstattrick.com had the Canucks as the slightly better team at five-on-five.
REPLACEMENTS
With Kuzmenko in the press box and Phil Di Giuseppe injured in Tuesday’s win against Ottawa, Nils Aman returned to the lineup on the fourth line and was joined by minor-league callup Linus Karlsson.
Centre Pius Suter played up the lineup with J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser and was noticeable, co-leading the Canucks with five shots on net while logging 18:17 of ice time. Sam Lafferty played up the lineup with Pettersson and Ilya Mikheyev and was as quiet as his linemates. The trio combined for one shot on target.
There are better candidates for short-term promotion to the top six, but Tocchet has been unwilling to break up Joshua, Garland and Blueger because they’ve been so effective as the third line.
Imagine how much more Pettersson might have the puck if he had Joshua to win it for him on the forecheck, or what someone as quick, physical and smart as Blueger might do short-term playing on the wing with Miller.
Kuzmenko will almost certainly be back in the lineup in New Jersey – and back in a prime top-six spot.
QUOTEBOOK
Rick Tocchet: “I thought we missed a glorious chance (to win) in the third. We had about four or five missed nets. We’ve got to hit the net on those shots. We had some guys going, some guys weren’t, but we had some chances we didn’t bury.”
HUGHES-A-PALOOZA
Just in time for Saturday’s Hughes Family Reunion in New Jersey, Quinn Hughes was named the Canucks’ representative for next month’s All-Star Game in Toronto when the league announced the first 32 players – one from each team – for the February 3 showcase. Hughes’ younger brother, Jack, was named the Devils’ representative.
With Miller, Pettersson, Demko and Boeser, the Canucks have other worthy candidates, but the 12 players still to be named to the All-Star Game will be decided by a fan vote.
“It’s a great honour; it’s hard to get in there,” Hughes said after the St. Louis game. “I believe we’ve got four or five guys that should be in there. It is what it is with the league doing one guy from every team, but hopefully we get another guy or two in there.”
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