VANCOUVER — Embattled by credible reports of an impending J.T. Miller trade and other external noise, the Vancouver Canucks gave up a third-period lead at home, again, and dropped a regulation result 3-2 to the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night.
It wasn’t precisely a dispiriting performance, but it was next to it.
Despite a solid showing in the middle stanza of the contest, Vancouver’s offensive attack looked popgun. Aside from a couple of assertive shifts and some meaningful pressure after Buffalo took the lead in the third period, Vancouver’s competitive level was lacking against a less-rested opponent that’s struggled enormously all season long.
With the Washington Capitals and the Edmonton Oilers looming on the schedule to close the week, a mid-week loss to Buffalo on home ice wasn’t exactly something that Vancouver — already trailing the Calgary Flames in the race for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference — could afford. It was probably something they deserved on balance, however, given their form and intensity.
Here are three takeaways from Vancouver’s latest dropped result at Rogers Arena.
A dull start
The first period moved quickly, mercifully, but there was little else to commend it.
Vancouver didn’t surrender too much outside of a couple of rush-scoring chances, but they generated even less. The club rarely entered the zone with control, and heavy shifts were few and far between.
It was a period effectively played in the neutral zone. Two teams were skating quickly up and down the ice but accomplishing very little.
Vancouver’s middling first-period effort turned a bit sour when Tage Thompson uncorked a heavy wrist shot low through layered traffic that eluded Thatcher Demko and gave the Sabres an early 1-0 lead. It was an unfortunate goal, but not a soft one for the Canucks goaltender.
More than anything it was just incredible that either team managed to generate a goal, given the pace, flow and lack of meaningful chances throughout the opening 20 minutes.
The shift
In the second period, Vancouver found their footing, relatively speaking.
You would prefer to see the Canucks put their boot a little more firmly into a team like the Sabres, who are pacing to finish dead last in the Eastern Conference. But Vancouver nonetheless controlled the second stanza of the contest — first levelling the score, and then taking the lead with a persistent, skillful shift on which Brock Boeser, Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson were ultimately able to combine for the key go-ahead goal.
That shift, taking advantage of multiple broken sticks by the Sabres, represented a turn-up-the-pressure attack mode that we’ve seen too sparingly from Vancouver this season. It was a welcome sight and a wonderfully persistent goal for the club:
Absolute domination in the offensive zone from the Canucks on their second goal, finished off by Elias Pettersson: pic.twitter.com/Q4LOf9Yc7m
— Wyatt Arndt (@TheStanchion) January 22, 2025
Given what we know about this club’s posture and the fact that the team is likely to look different between now and the NHL trade deadline, it can be difficult to get worked up about moments of form (or a lack thereof), or even the results in mid-January games against a cellar-dwelling out-of-conference opponent.
It’s not that these games don’t matter, the Canucks are locked in a tooth-and-nail race for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, but it’s somewhat difficult to ascribe meaning — analytical or otherwise — when a team is on the verge of significantly changing direction.
In moments like that second-period shift, however, you can see the outline of a Canucks team that was so promising at the outset of this decade and so dynamic throughout last season. It’s not something substantial, perhaps, but it’s something.
And given how this season has unfolded, at this point, we’ll take it.
It’s probably not a great sign …
Even before the Canucks surrendered a pair of third-period goals on an exceptional effort from JJ Peterka and coughed up another late lead on home ice to a poor Sabres team playing in the second leg of a back-to-back, this game was a stalemate.
Vancouver’s 2-1 lead wasn’t especially convincing or authoritative. The Sabres skated with them all night, and the run of play was roughly even. Outside of a genuinely awful Sabres power play, there was very little separating the two teams, until Peterka outperformed Vancouver’s game-breakers to secure 2 points.
In the discussion of what comes next, one fact shouldn’t be ignored: this Canucks team has lacked both offensive juice and two-way discipline all season long. That’s been clear all season, but this effort against a flawed, inconsistent Sabres team solidifies it.
The Canucks shouldn’t be overly fearful of changing up their core group, in part because they haven’t performed well enough or played hard consistently enough to warrant such caution.
(Photo of JJ Peterka passing around Filip Hronek: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)
