VANCOUVER — Vancouver Canucks have entered the desperate part of their recession, which appears to be approaching its 15th anniversary.th month, but certainly currently covers the 2025-26 National Hockey League season.
Having climbed to the bottom of the standings through all the traditional means—injuries, weak defense, bad special teams, insufficient saves, and a stacked group of forwards (no centers)—the Canucks are now losing games by outplaying their opponents.
This is a new phenomenon, but it may be the most discouraging path to victory since there really isn't much to fix. Except maybe some luck, and no one has a foolproof formula for that.
The Canucks beat the Utah Mammoth on Friday and lost 4-1. Just like they beat the San Jose Sharks the week before and lost 3-2. The next night they were as good as the Los Angeles Kings, but lost in overtime 2–1.
Apparently they are still doing enough to lose. But lately they've been doing enough to win and it's just not happening.
The Canucks outshot the Mammoth 32-18 and trailed in every period. The dangerous scoring odds were 23-12 for Vancouver in all situations, with Natural Stat Trick voting committee calling it an expected 4-2 Canucks win.
Vancouver lost seven of eight games (1-6-1) while playing well enough to be above .500.
It's more difficult than just playing poorly and earning your losses.
“I think it's more difficult,” winger Jake DeBrusk said. “I think in all of these games I had chances to score, Grade-A (chances) that didn't come through and we lose by one goal. We lose, you know, close. So take it personally. Obviously I'm not the only one, but yeah, I think it's harder.”
“Well, you’d rather play well than play poorly,” Conor Garland said. “But at the end of the day you go home and it's either a win or a loss, so you have to find a way to bury some chances, get a little bit of luck, whatever it is. We have our looks and they just don't come into the game. It hurts because, you know, it looked like we dominated them when we were 1-0 down; we have three or four looks (and don't score) and then they come and score one. It's hard to win when you're not. score.”
Entering the game, Utah was 5-10-3 since Oct. 26, one loss worse than even Vancouver during that span.
On the Mammoth's first-period goal, Mikhail Sergachev's point shot hit Canuck Elias Pettersson's stick and Marcus Pettersson's skate before driving into the net at a mockingly modest pace as goalie Kevin Lankinen slid the wrong way. If Elias Pettersson Jr. had been on the ice for Vancouver, the puck would have given him the bird, too. Sergachev looked embarrassed.
At least their second-period goal was a real deflection for Utah, with Nick Schmaltz getting another Sergachev shot as Mammoth got to the Canucks end with the puck for about the first time in five minutes.
Meanwhile, the Canucks were throwing pucks hard at Mammoth goaltender Karel Weymelka (Brock Boeser) or off the crossbar (Kiefer Sherwood), missing a half-open net (Boeser) and generally getting just stuffed by Weymelka, creating some great scoring chances.
Arshdeep Baines finally made a layup that missed the goalie to put the Canucks on the board at 4:17 of the third period.
But amid Utah's two hits on Lankinen in the final frame, Kevin Stenlund played the puck around the Vancouver goalie during an outnumbered rush to restore the two-goal lead with 2:08 remaining before John Marino fired into the empty net during a sluggish six-on-four power play for the Canucks.
“We need to score a few more goals, right?” Canucks head coach Adam Foote summed it up. “You guys see the numbers for yourself, you guys watch the game. We didn't give them much, but we have to make sure we hit our goals. It's a shame we didn't come up with that goal. We have to find a way to get this game done.”
“I'm not upset because… I just looked at all the pros and cons. We should have gone 4-1 or 5-1. It's that simple. I can't be upset about what we're doing. Hopefully the goals will start coming.”
The Canucks have scored just once in each of their last three games and more than twice in their last seven.
The Mammoth went 1 for 2 on the power play, while the Canucks finished the game 0 for 3. So it's not like Vancouver really has nothing to improve. Their static power play, stuck at the top of the zone, has been hibernating 0 for 15 the last four games after going 10 for 30 to warm up.
However, in Friday's game, the Canucks were good enough at five-on-five that they could win despite a one-goal deficit on special teams.
“Especially in the first and second matches, I thought we were great,” winger Linus Carlssonelevated to the top line of the Canucks rankings, said. “Even in the third, I thought we had a good push. Unfortunately, we didn't get the puck in.”
“I think by playing this way we're going to get some wins. We need wins right now. I mean, I think we certainly deserved a lot better tonight. It's hard to see the positives, but we'll come here tomorrow and look at some positives (on video) and just try to continue to build on that effort. Clean up some stuff, but I think we played great tonight.”
They did it. This is the depressing part.
The Minnesota Wild will face the Canucks on Saturday night.
