Minnesota Wild @ Vancouver Canucks Recap

Minnesota Wild (1) @ Vancouver Canucks (2)

Fresh off a disappointing 1-7 loss in Calgary, the Canucks return to an oddly quiet GM Place, improving to a 3-4 win-loss record in last night’s victory over the Minnesota Wild. To be honest, the style of play was a little sloppy on both sides. With Minnesota’s new coach Todd Richards continuing on his ambitious push to play more up-tempo style of hockey, we find the team unable to fit into their roles, and thus losing out on the few opportunities they were able to create (and they were few). This brings the down-trodden team to their sixth straight loss and a record of 6-1 thus far, making it the worst opening to any season in franchise history. They remain last in the division. Having Niklas Backstrom in the crease is great for the Wild, but that doesn’t quite solve their issues up ice, where they struggled to put anything on the scoreboard.

It’s not that easy to improve the Wild’s offensive situation, when some of their forwards have been benched. Wild GM Chuck Fletcher has already confirmed Cal Clutterbuck and Pierre-Marc Bouchard as being out indefinitely. Then there’s Petr Sykora - and as of last night, Martin Havlat, with their day-to-day injuries. who skated during yesterday’s warm-ups but didn’t return to the ice for the night due to what look to be short-term injuries.

What transpired at GM Place was hardly the fault of a benched offensive line. Instead, our focus should be placed on the improvement of the Wild’s often faulty defense. Even when they’re unable to make good on any shots on goal, there are typically the opportunities. However, Saturday’s defense saw Brent Burns, the worst player in the NHL in terms of +/- ratings come out and deliver an early, unnecessary penalty, and then adding insult to injury, by away the puck on the Wild blue line. All without expending much energy. Prior to Saturday, he took the honor of having the worst +/- rating in the league, at a -10. He’s now a -9, but is still playing very uninspired, lazy hockey.

The Canucks aren’t having the best of times this season, either. Having numerous chances in the first, whereas the Wild were only given 1, it took the Canucks until a couple minutes into the second for Kesler to find the net behind Backstrom, whom had dropped his stick to his right only moments before. It was a confident glove-side shot which made way to Samuelson‘s go-ahead goal in the third.

If there were anything the Canucks could do differently, it’s to hold the defensive zone more securely and to not allow so many opportunities around the neutral zone. Had they been less passive - in their zone especially - the score would probably be a lot higher right now. I have no complaints about Robert Luongo’s goaltending. He was on top of his game, last night.

Clip via CanucksHD.