JamesB

Disappointing to get another loss, but it is not as bad as a lot of the comments indicate. 1. Tampa was the better team, but not by a big margin. Shots were 28 to 27 for Tampa (almost even) and the Canucks were ahead in all-strength Corsi and in scoring chances. Vasilevsky was great and Silovs was so-so. I am not saying Silovs was bad, but Vasilevsky was excellent and the team with the better goalie won, as often happens. 2. The first goal was created by a dreadful sequence from Juulsen. First, he fell, giving up possession of the puck, then he lost a puck battle to Kucherov, then he abandoned Kucherov in a prime shooting position to cross-check a guy in front of the net already being checked by Suter. That left Kucherov open for the dreaded cross-seam pass and it seemed like he had half the net to shoot the puck in as Silovs was slow getting over. I like Juulsen and am happy with him as 7th man. But if he is playing every night, your D is not very good. The second goal was a shot from a bad angle that seemed to catch Silovs leaning too hard to the short side. 3. Silovs made some good saves, but I would definitely go with Lankinen. Tocc seems to like Silovs a lot even though his overall save percentage with Vancouver is below .900. 4. Pettersson had a better game and was close on several occasions. He should still shoot more, though. Sooner or later the puck has to start going in for him again. 5. Hughes and Hronek were excellent again (especially Hughes). Miller and Boeser also continue to look good and had good underlying numbers. And Garland continues to be excellent. In addition to getting the only goal, he led the team in Corsi and scoring chance percentage. Scoring chances were 11 to 4 with him on the ice. 6. Last year the team started the season with a red-hot PDO. It was unsustainable but it remained good all season. This year, after 3 games, the Canucks are among the worst in the league. To the extent that PDO measures luck, the Canucks should be able to turn things around.

Romani's broken clavicle (collar bone) is very bad luck. And it is especially disappointing as he had an outside chance to make the Canadian world junior team. (Not many Canuck prospects have been on Canada's world junior team in recent years.) Not much information yet about the severity of the injury. It is better if the fracture is "non-displaced" (just a crack in the bone but no separation) and better if there is just one fracture and not multiple fractures. For a single non-displaced or slightly displaced fracture, the normal timeline for full recovery for young adults is 8 to 12 weeks. A bad break (multiple displacements) can require surgery and take longer to heal. It is important not to rush back as re-breaking the clavicle is a definite risk. Better to give more time to let the bone strengthen. Broken clavicles are common and most are relatively straightforward, so there is a good chance he can get come back in the second half of the season, maybe sooner. Hoping for the best.

Two losses (one OT and one SO) to start the season is disappointing, especially against teams that are expected to be below average. And there are some things to be concerned about, including the Myers injury. But there are also some positives. Here are some key points, starting with positives. 1. Lankinen was very good, much better than Silovs in the first game, including stopping a short-handed break and being very solid from distance. That is a huge plus. I assume he starts the next game. If he started against Calgary and played like this the Canucks would have won easily. 2. The D played well despite losing Myers on his first shift. Hughes and Hronek were outstanding again. And Hughes played over 31 minutes. Juulsen was very good for a "7th man". He played almost 20 minutes and was the minute leader on the PK with over 5 minutes. The Flyers did not score in those minutes and their "expected goals" was only 0.38. He had a good game and deserves to stay in the line-up (which he will certainly do anyway with Myers injured). Forbert was surprisingly good. 3. Although the Flyers outshot the Canucks, the underlying stats had the Canucks ahead, both at even strength and overall. The Blueger line was very good. Each line except the Pettersson line was ahead in Corsi and expected goal differential. And once Garland joined Petey and Debrusk, that line was good. Once again, Sprong was demoted during the game and had the lowest minutes. And Toc indicated that Sprong messed up on the 5-on-5 Philly goal. I am guessing Bains or Aman plays instead of Sprong in the next game. 4. The Flyers goalie (Ersson) was very good and the Canucks were unlucky not to get another regulation goal, which would have been enough for the win. 4. Moving on to the concerns, the most obvious concern is with Myers. Not much to say. The Canucks cannot afford to lose a top-4 defenceman. Hope is better soon. 5. The other thing generating a lot of concern is Petey's play. And Tocc said he mis-played the Flyers PP goal. But his overall numbers were pretty good once he was separated from Strong and he had some good looks. His defensive play was solid and he looked dangerous in the o-zone at times. But he had only one shot on goal, and no shots at even strength. I am not sure why he won't shoot. Injury? Confidence? Trying too hard for the perfect play? He certainly had opportunities to shoot. I still think he will have a good season, but his cap hit makes me nervous. 6. And, once again, at least the Canucks got a point.

Disappointing game (obviously). I think the key points are as follows. 1. You cannot win in the NHL without high quality goaltending. With Demko injured to start the season, the goalie position is obviously the biggest concern (by far). The Silovs hype has been making me nervous for a while. He can come up some big games and go on hot streaks, but he has not shown enough consistency. Last year he played 4 regular season games and 10 playoff games and his save percentage was below .900. Fairly small sample, but a good team cannot afford a starting goalie or even a backup who posts a save percentage under .900. 2. Tonight the expected goals against for Silovs was 1.91 and the actual goals against was 6 -- more than 4 goals allowed above expected. That is a terrible number. One well known problem is that he has trouble tracking pucks from distance through traffic. That is a hard but important skill and Silovs is worse at it than most. It is some combination of peripheral vision, reading the play, anticipation, and getting quick glimpses of the puck or the shooter. If he does not improve that seems like a fatal flaw. Also, tonight he just seemed kind of lost. Yes some of the goals were on grade-A chances but goalies still stop those chances most of the time. Even short-handed breakaways score less than one-third of the time. Silovs just did not make enough big saves. To play well, players need to believe that the goalie "has their back". Instead the Canuck defenders must have been thinking that every mistake was going to end up in the back of the net. 6 goals on 26 shots is obviously nowhere near good enough. I hope we see Lankinen next game. 3. The Canucks got off to a great start but faded badly in the second and third periods. Maybe it seemed too easy after the first period. 4. Another big question mark was the Forbort-Deharnais pairing. Forbort was good on the PK but at even strength that pairing struggled. The biggest issue is that they have weak puck skills and have a hard time turning the puck the other way. 5. On the plus side, the Canucks actually won the expected goals battle, partly because Hughes and Hronek were very good. Interestingly, the line with the best expected goals differential at even strength was Raty, Garland, and Hoglander. They were good. And of course the PP looked good, especially Boeser. At least we got a point. And maybe the coaches got a good sense of what they need to work on.

I don't think is an exaggeration. I think Benning really was the worst GM in Canuck history. And probably the worst GM in the league during much of his time with the Canucks. He came up through the scouting channel and by all accounts had a good eye for talent. When player evaluation was all about "the eye test" he had some value. But after he was with a Canucks for a short time I thought it was obvious that he wasn't smart enough to be a good GM. He did not like or understand "analytics" and never really "got" cap management or anything else to do with numbers. And his strategic understanding was limited. Whenever I heard him explain his moves I groaned inwardly (or outwardly). And he was unable to build a strong organization and could not get along with anyone smart who disagreed with him (Trevor Linden, Laurence Gilman, Judd Bracket, etc.) and was increasingly isolated as time went on. If he had stuck with his relative strength (player evaluation) and tried to acquire draft picks and do a good job of drafting he might have been ok. But he saw himself as a wheeler-dealer type could rebuild a team on the fly. He couldn't, and the team lost value every summer through his moves. I still don't understand why Aquilini stuck with him for so long. Apparently he believed or wanted to believe the "this is the year" mantra.

Aman made the roster. I think that to send him down the Canucks would have needed to put him on waivers yesterday (Sunday), which did not happen. The opening day rosters will be posted soon.

Primarily just trading a 4th round pick to clear cap space and allow the team to operate out of LTIR this season. Brannstrom was a first round pick based on skating and puck-moving ability but he never developed into a legitimate "offensive defenceman" at the NHL level. He is small, soft, and is so-so defensively. And any NHL team that wants him (including Colorado) can pick him up off waivers. Not sure exactly why he was included in the trade. Colorado would probably have put him on waivers so by trading him they free up a contract slot and save some money (just cash). Or maybe the Canucks wanted him, hoping he would clear waivers and be a potential injury back-up. But it is not like the Canucks are short of LHDs in Abby. They have Wolanin, Brisebois, D-Petey, Hirose, and Kuds already.

Headlines from my point of view: 1. Fairly even game with a slight statistical edge to the Oilers, who won the "expected goals" battle. But the Canucks won on actual goals. The difference was Silovs. 2. Silovs was excellent. The one goal that scored was from a prime shooting area and the shooter had time and space (kind of the mirror image of Soucy's goal). As is often repeated, "most nights the team with the better goalie wins". That was true tonight. Would love to get Demmer back but feeling pretty good about the Silovs/Lankinen combo. 3. There is some injury-related uncertainty with Suter's status unclear and the news that Garland "tweaked something". Assuming that at least one more cut needs to be made, many people thought that Bains would be the guy to go. But Bains had other ideas and was very visible tonight. He made three nice plays leading to an assist on the first goal and scored a very nice PP goal. He was named second star, which was a stretch, but he did have a good game and will be hard to cut. 4. I have been high on Raty and many people thought he was a assured of a spot on the roster to start the season. But he had a couple conspicuously bad plays tonight, especially on the Oiler goal as he vacated the center of the ice after the losing the D-zone face-off, allowing Bouchard to just coast into a prime shooting position in the slot with time and space. He obviously has to make a play on Bouchard. Maybe he was confused about the assignments. His Corsi numbers were good (12 to 8 at even strength) and was among the best Canucks in on-ice expected goal differential but he had relatively easy minutes and probably did not help his cause tonight. 5. The PK was good. Forbert was particularly good on the PK. Unfortunately he kind of treats the puck like a hand grenade. That works on the PK but it limits his offensive support. 6. Hughes looked great. Petey's line had an empty net goal and a very nice goal on a great pass from Petey to Soucy. But, overall, Petey's line was only ok. The Miller line had some nice chances, including Boeser's crossbar. Good preseason overall.

Thanks to @Lewlowned for the practice lines and for keeping track of the roster. I have been on the Raty bandwagon for a while so it is no surprise he is still on the roster and moved ahead of Karlsson and PDG on the depth chart. It is a bit surprising that Bains is also still there and that he also jumped past Karlsson and PDG. But he had a good night against Edmonton and has had to good preseason. It is a good sign that Bains has improved enough to pass Karlsson and PDG. No surprise that Lekker was sent down, even though he was good in pre-season, camp, and at the youngstars. He will get a lot of opportunities to develop his game in Abby. No surprises on the D. And Hirose was not assigned to Abby purely because of injury. If healthy he would be behind Wolanin, DPetey and Kuds on my personal depth chart. It looks to me like Raty and Aman are battling over the 4C position. It is good that Blueger is at practice. I wonder if he is 100%. I also wonder about Miller's health and Suter's health. So I see some injury-related question marks at the C position. Overall, it has been a positive pre-season so far AND it looks like Abby will have a good team with some interesting prospects to watch.

Yes, Kudryavtsev could go to Abby, which is a much higher level than Junior. The problem is that Abby will have too many guys at LHD, including Wolanin, DPetey, and Brisebois, not to mention Hirose. As an overage Junior Kuds would be "the man" and play a lead role on the PP, PK, on shutdown and in important situations generally. But, if not for the logjam in Abby, I agree he would be better off in the AHL.

A lot of good comments from many posters. Here is my take on the game. 1. Definitely in "moral victory" territory. The Oilers put a very good team on the ice, including McDavid, Drais, and their #1 goalie. The Canucks did not have a top 4 D-man or likely top 6 forward (although Sprong has a shot). And the game was pretty even. 2. The most important thing by far is the play of Lankinen. He had a save percentage of 0.923. The expected goals against was 2.54 so allowing 2 actual goals puts him in plus territory. The first goal was a close-in chance by Perry who got all alone in front with time to make a move. The second goal was borderline goalie interference. And he made a lot of good saves. By far the biggest question mark right now is in goal and Lankinen could be an important part of the story until Demmer comes back. 3. As for the other guys, a few things fell into place but there are still a lot of questions. In the falling into place category is Sprong. He had an excellent game, including a nice play on Bains' goal AND solid defensive play. In the advanced stats he had the best expected goal percentage on the team. And he looked good by the eye test. Not sure where he plays on opening night, but it would not surprise me to see him in the top 6. 4. Before tonight I was on the Raty bandwagon, putting him ahead of Aman. Tonight, Raty was ok but looked a little off and had poor advanced stats. Aman was very good, including being the only Canuck with a positive face-off percentage. And he led the team in Corsi-for percentage, and looked good on the ice. It is not like he creates a lot of offence but he gives up very little defensively. In over 10 minutes of 5-on-5 play his expected goals against were 0.03, which is very low for a guy putting in a fair amount of time against McDavid and Draisaitl. Sasson also had a good night. Tocchet has a tough call to make. 5. Bains and Wolanin had good games. I am sure they are still headed back to Abby but both guys set the stage to get an injury call-up at some point. Kudryavtsev will likely go back to junior, but he made a positive statement. 6. On a side-note, Podkolzin has a good statistical night, but he was playing with McDavid. He plays hard, contributes to the physical game, and plays solid defence. And his skating has improved. But he still has a "hands of stone" problem and does not have a high hockey IQ. Bottom line: Tonight's game was a big win from the developmental point of view. Now we need to see a good performance from the core players on Friday.

Good call by @Rusty Shackleford. I see it the same way: Raty is in and Lekker probably starts the season in Abby. But tonight is a great test for both of them. It is true that in pre-season vets often stay home instead of going on the road. But tonight's roster is taking it a bit far. I think the Canucks are icing the weakest line-up so far, with no top-4 Ds and no top-6 forwards. I think the most interesting thing will be to see how Lankinen does. I think a lot of fans and media are too positive about Silovs. His career save percentage in the NHL (19 games, playoffs and regular season) is 89.8%, which is obviously not good enough. In the AHL over the past two seasons his save percentage has been about 90.8% -- about average for the AHL. Silovs has had hot streaks and makes a lot of saves on high danger chances, but he has trouble fighting through screens to track the puck and optimize positioning so he gives up too many goals on medium danger chances, as he did in the last game. Patera has not shown himself to be an NHL goalie. Tolopilo is a long shot to be the answer. Lankinen has a chance to make a statement tonight and move to the top of the list. Some combination of those guys needs to hold the fort until Demmer is healthy.

Last season Tocchet used the pre-season mainly to get ready for a good start to the regular season. This year Tocc is using the pre-season primarily to audition the young guys and rest the high end guys as much as possible -- trying to keep them healthy and fresh for the playoffs. So, once again, the Canucks put a relatively weak team on the ice. Here are a few comments. 1. I have been on the Raty bandwagon for a while. He had another strong game with a nice goal, a post, and good defensive play. His even-strength expected goals for percentage was 70%, just slightly behind his linemate Connor Garland. And that is an excellent number. He was also solid on the PK. The Hoggy-Raty-Garland line was the best line out there and looked very good. I have been saying for a while that I expect him to make the 23 man roster. (He might get papered to Abby initially for cap reasons but I expect him to play the first game.) He looked better than Aman tonight, as he has since training camp. And I think he has an edge on Sasson. 2. Nice to see Lekker score. The goal was lucky, but Lekker made a nice play on it. I still think he is likely headed back to Abby, but he looks good. He probably could play in the NHL now, but getting a year of development in Abby is probably better. 3. Sprong continues to play pretty well. 4. Several guys got a chance to play before being sent down, including Hirose, Nielsen, and Mueller. Those guys were all over-matched. Hirose did not look good by the eye-test and his advanced stats were very poor. (For example, his Corsi numbers were 2 to 12 against.) Mueller and Nielsen were also overmatched. Those guys are not NHL-quality players. Alriksson has had a great run since the young stars, but it is probably time for him to head back to junior. It will be interesting to see him at this time next year. And I expect D-Petey to be sent to Abby soon. 5. Not that impressed with Desharnais but neither Juulsen nor Friedman had a good game. Hope Desharnais is ok as 3RD. 6. I keep expecting Blais to be released from his PTO. 7. My biggest concern with tonight is Silovs. The book on Silovs is that he gives up too many goals on medium difficulty shots from distance and the Flames were shooting from distance. His expected goals against tonight was 1.75 and his actual goals against was 4. That is an ugly stat line. Silovs can be very good when he is hot but he has not been consistent. With Demmer out, Silovs, Patera, Lankinen, and Tolopilo all have an opportunity. None of those guys has made a statement yet. 8. Not concerned about the loss, but there will be some pressure on the team to come up with a good pre-season performance when they finally put their NHL team (or something close to it) on the ice.

A couple of comments: The forward lines for the Canucks were: 1. DeBrusk. Pettersson. Sherwood. 2. Heinen. Suter. Boeser. 3. Bains. Sasson. Karlsson. 4. Blais. Smith. Klimovich. 1. The 4th line consists of guys trying to make a good impression. It didn't work out. Smith had a bad giveaway that led to the 3rd Seattle goal and all three guys had a bad game. Smith had just over 10 minutes of 5-on-5 time and his expected goals for was 0.05. It is hard to be that ineffective. Klim had just over 9 minutes of 5-on-5 time and his expected goals for was 0.01. That is even worse. Blais was given more opportunities, with 14 min. of 5-on-5 time and had 0.26 expected goals for. That is not good but not too bad. But his 1.07 expected goals against was the worst of anyone playing. Seattle put a pretty good team on the ice, but it seems obvious that Klim, Smith, and Blais are overmatched. Time to end the experiment and send Klim and Smith to Abby and give up on the Blais PTO. 2. The line of Sasson, Karlsson, and Bains had a pretty good game in the underlying advanced stats and by the eye test. The ice tilted in the Canucks favor when they were on the ice. Bains seems to be a guy who plays solid D and generates quite a lot on offence, but the puck just won't go in the net when he is on the ice--at least not at the NHL level. 3. Petey has another lacklustre game, although he made a nice play on the Myers goal. He is obviously "mailing it in" during pre-season. Hope he is okay. 4. Suter did not look good at center. I am now officially on the "move Suter to wing with Miller and Boeser and let Raty play center" bandwagon. 5. Forbort is good on the PK but not impressed with his 5-on-5 play. 6. Too early to say much about Lankinen. Not a great look on the second goal even though the puck was deflected. He had no chance on the 1st goal (deflection in close). Not sure if he could have played the third goal better. Overall it was a disappointing game, but nothing to get too worried about. Seattle iced a significantly stronger team while the Canucks iced a fairly weak line-up.

In early pre-season wins and losses don't matter much, although it was fun to see the win and the last few minutes were exciting. The biggest issue is how the guys fighting for spots look. So which guys helped themselves and which guys did not? Here is my take. 1. Patera was okay but probably remains pencilled in at #3 on the depth chart (i.e. starter in Abby). Giving up 3 goals on 19 shots is not a great stat line and the Bean goal was not great. The other two goals were on grade A chances and he made some big saves, but no more than most goalies make on an average night. 2. The D is pretty much set and Woo and Wolanin did not do anything to make a case for making the team. Wolanin had some good moments offensively but had too many defensive breakdowns. I thought Woo had a tough night. 3. That said, I was a bit disappointed in Juulsen and Desharnais, both of whom struggled at times. (And Juulsen fell down on the 3rd Calgary goal.) But I guess Desharnais looks ok for a 3rd pairing guy with Juulsen as 7th man. 4. Sprong and DeBrusk had big nights offensively, with good chances as well as actual goals. But Tocchet was restrained about them in his post-game comments and it is pretty obvious he wants more defensive consistency from both guys. 5. Raty, Sasson, Bains, Karlsson, Blais and Lekker all played back-to-back. Lekker may be on the opening night team for cap-related reasons but I now expect him to be sent to Abby soon after, although he will get another shot in pre-season. I think the Blais PTO will end soon and I don't see how Karlsson or Bains could make the opening night roster. I think Raty and Sasson were pretty good tonight considering the fatigue factor and both are competing with Aman for a spot. Any of those guys could play 4C with Blueger injured or with Suter moving to the wing. (Suter was excellent with Miller and Boeser last year.) 6. As for the "stars", Hughes was coasting for much of the time but still looked like the best player on ice. Petey did not do much in the first two periods (and I have no problem with him coasting in pre-season), but in the 3rd period and OT he looked like the best forward on the ice. On the whole, pre-season is going pretty well. I just hope the goalies can hang in there until Demko is healthy.