Canucks player grades: Rough defending in 7-4 loss to playoff-bound Utah

Article content

The Utah Mammoth provide many lessons for the rebuilding Vancouver Canucks.

Article content

They’re a team that was a mess off the ice and struggled to assemble consistency on the ice: Now, they have stability off ice and they’ve made sharp choices in their games.

Article content

Article content

And that showed in Saturday’s 7-4 loss for the Canucks.

Perhaps the finest point to all this was Dylan Guenther scoring his 38th goal of the season, a beautiful piece of work for the fourth Utah goal of the game.

He should have been a Canuck, everyone will remind you.

His goal was also one of many where the Canucks were a defensive mess, ruining an actually pretty good offensive night. The Canucks scored on the power play and also moved the puck well at five-on-five.

They just gave Utah too many chances and poor Nikita Tolopilo, forced into a start becaue of a sudden scratch for Kevin Lankinen, never stood a chance.

A tough night all around.

Showing some fight

There’s little doubt Zeev Buium cares. His punch of Liam O’Brien was good to see. He plays hard.

You’d like to see some more aggressive instincts from his teammates, too.

Article content

Article content

O’Brien is a known agitator. Why wouldn’t Victor Mancini get in his face in the first period?

One of the worst ever

Here are the nine worst home seasons in NHL history. The Canucks are in a class almost of their own. As Daily Hive’s Rob Williams pointed out to me, all the other squads in here are what you’d consider teams in their expansion phase. (Ottawa’s 95-96 team should have been better, but was just year four back in the NHL.)

Pittsburgh was tanking for Mario Lemieux. What are the Canucks tanking for?

San Jose 1992-93 (.202)

Pittsburgh 1983-84 (.225)

Washington 1974-75 (.238)

Ottawa 1993-94 (.238)

Washington 1975-76 (.250)

Ottawa 1995-96 (.256)

Ottawa 1992-93 (.262)

Vancouver 2025-26 (.269)

Player grades

This time around, let’s consider how these lines played as trios, rather than going player by player.

Evander Kane. Elias Pettersson. Jake DeBrusk. C

Kane hit a post early on. Had a decent one-time from the top of the slot too. His game slowed from there though. Pettersson kept going to the net. DeBrusk never really found his way though, but  did score a very nice power play goal.

Article content

Drew O’Connor. Marco Rossi. Brock Boeser. C-

Not great five on five. Three goals against. Nice power play goal by Boeser.

Max Sasson. Teddy Blueger. Linus Karlsson. B-

In a game with little spark, Sasson got into it with Sean Durzi. And he’s generally been effective as a winger. Karlsson meanwhile has a case for most exciting player

Liam Ohgren. Ty Mueller. Aatu Räty. C+

What a bizarre night for Öhgren. He’s been the most effective forward in the second half for the Canucks, offering stability to whichever line he’s been on. But he got bumped down the lines for Evander Kane at the start, though he landed with the Pettersson line in the second period. Mueller did get a little chance in the first. He was fine. Not clear why he’s playing over Hoglander other than the coach isn’t a fan of Hoglander.

Defence

Zeev Buium. Filip Hronek. C-

Brutal night for the duo. Second goal hit Buium before flying past Tolopilo. And got overwhelmed on the sixth goal against too.

Marcus Pettersson. Tom Willander. C

Article content

Pettersson caught out on the fourth goal. His only real mistake of the game though. Willander was his usual self. Pretty aggressive on the puck, but defensive struggles too.

P-O Joseph. Victor Mancini. C-

The Canucks have really struggled this season taking sticks away from attackers in front and Kailer Yamamoto’s first goal of the game was a great example: Joseph should have done something to the forward’s stick as he came into the slot but he didn’t. In the first period Liam O’Brien was running around like the clown he is, slashed Mancini’s stick away and you’d like to have seen the big blueliner do something in response. The Canucks may be out of it but you want to know they’re still alive.

GOAL

Nikita Tolopilo C+

You feel bad for the kid. He gave up four goals on the first 15 shots by Utah and none of them were his fault. There were two tips, one deflection off his own defenceman and one goal that was a complete collapse of the defenders in front of him, leaving Dylan Guenther wide open. (And that was the third time in about two minutes such a thing had happened, it’s just that Utah hit the post and missed the net.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

Article content