GDT: Oct 18: Canucks vs Rangers - 7:00pm, TSN

[tantalum]

Obviously it's hard to blame a goaltender when you don't score goals and the PP has to take a very large portion of blame. However, while the goals weren't bad (I'd argue the rebound control on the first rebound was not spectacular) at some point the big saves also have to be made and Luongo just isn't doing that right now. For his pay he ought to be. And we've seen this from Luongo for my liking. Pick a Chicago series, a few games in the Cup final, EVERY October...I understand why people are getting frustrated. He's being paid a huge amount of money right now and needs to perform.

I'm sure many will say Lundqvist didn't have much to do that the 40 shots were easy. Indeed some were easy but he actually made a number of saves through a good deal of traffic, a few tips and when the score was 1-0 he made 4 or 5 very good saves. But ultimately he just sucked everything up. There were very few rebounds. The guy was on his game and out competed the guy at the other end.

[Listercat]

This one has to hurt.
.
Canucks controlled the pace for the first 2 periods, overcoming some early penalties well and looked to be in good shape for a first game back.

KIng Henrik became Tim Thomas and that was all she wrote. Luongo who looks uncertain, could not match the intensity and was unable to come up with the saves when needed.

PP "looked" good for the most part in controlling and moving the puck but could not beat the King. Lundquist plays deep in his net but is always square to the puck. The only way to beat him is up high and the Canucks could not make it happen. The Rags blocked a lot of shots in front as well.

1 st goal : poor rebound control
2nd goal: As Topper said, Dank and Burr expected Hank to win the battle for the puck so they took off up ice. OOOPS!
3rd goal: Bieksa got caught on the pinch but got back to take 1 man. What happened to the backside winger?

[Arachnid]

Wow, did they ever shit thy bed last night...October is the cruelest month to be a Canucks fan...now I know why they have OcktoberFest! Beer helps numb the pain

I'm tempted to say bench Luongo and go with Cory but I won't.................until April...

[Boston Canucker]

Wow, did they ever shit thy bed last night...October is the cruelest month to be a Canucks fan...now I know why they have OcktoberFest! Beer helps numb the pain

I'm tempted to say bench Luongo and go with Cory but I won't.................until April...

In the race for the cruelest month for Canuck fans, my money's on June.

[sagebrush]

Wow, did they ever shit thy bed last night...October is the cruelest month to be a Canucks fan...now I know why they have OcktoberFest! Beer helps numb the pain

I'm tempted to say bench Luongo and go with Cory but I won't.................until April...

In the race for the cruelest month for Canuck fans, my money's on June.

Traumatic memories come flooding back.

[Per]

A few comments:

King Henrik!

I have Henrik Sedin and Henrik Zetterberg on my fantasy team. Unfortunately I couldn't get Lundqvist.

Can't have too many Henriks on your team!

[Potatoe1]

Tough game but it happens. Canucks dominate for about 50 min get stoned time after time then their defensive and goaltending turn to crap and they lose. Anyway there were some positives to take away as there are some signs the team is getting it's game on track. A lot of the shots were from the outside but the Canucks still had a massive territorial edge and on most nights they get a win.

-Luongo was responsible for the loss but he certainly managed to embarrass himself in the 3rd. None of the goals were particularly bad, but they were all stoppable and you have to make some saves.

-Sedins with a rare off night, perhaps they though Kesler was going to pick up their slack.

-First unit power play let us down big time and was probably the best choice for the goat horns. Kesler was obviously off in his first game back but the play on the points was a bigger problem. Edler cant seem to hit the net, and Sammy just isn't playing very well at all right now. The Second unit looks quite good however mostly thanks to Hodgson and Salo. Given his excellent play with the second unit it seems pretty clear how to fix the first unit (pssst. AV put Salo on the first unit).

-Not sure how he looked on the Telecast but at the rink you could see that Cody did not look confident defensively on the wing. Offensively however there were no problems, Cody and Burrows were probably the 2 canucks most active offensively.

-Hansen just looks terrible right now which is a big bummer because he was once of the few forwards actually able to properly train this summer. He cam in without enough intensity and now his confidence is a bit shot. Kind of a shame we don't have the depth to stick him on the 4th line for a few games.

-Speaking of the 4th line, at this point is looks far better then this time a year ago. Hey that counts for something right?

[dchrist2]

I understand all the calls for Sami on the 1st line powerplay, but am I the only one who remembers when it has been tried in the past and hasn't exactly lit the world on fire? I mean both the Sedins and Sami have been around for awhile, this has been tried before, and if it had worked really well, don't you think they would have kept with it?

I think the bigger concern is you don't want Sami blasting from the point with the Sedins and Kesler sitting in front. Big time risk for an injury with that shot. Let Burrows or Higgins take those shots, they are a little more replaceable. In fact, I seem to remember the last time Sami was on the 1st unit a few years ago he hit someone, and then for the rest of the year couldn't hit the net because he was too scared to hit and injure another one of our top players.

That said, Samuelsson definitely needs to get off the point. I know we were somehow better with him back there last year, but this is a new year and he hasn't shown he can handle it.

[Potatoe1]

I understand all the calls for Sami on the 1st line powerplay, but am I the only one who remembers when it has been tried in the past and hasn't exactly lit the world on fire? I mean both the Sedins and Sami have been around for awhile, this has been tried before, and if it had worked really well, don't you think they would have kept with it?

I think the bigger concern is you don't want Sami blasting from the point with the Sedins and Kesler sitting in front. Big time risk for an injury with that shot. Let Burrows or Higgins take those shots, they are a little more replaceable. In fact, I seem to remember the last time Sami was on the 1st unit a few years ago he hit someone, and then for the rest of the year couldn't hit the net because he was too scared to hit and injure another one of our top players.

That said, Samuelsson definitely needs to get off the point. I know we were somehow better with him back there last year, but this is a new year and he hasn't shown he can handle it.

Salo was a mainstay on the first unit power play 2 years ago.

Right now the biggest problem with the first unit has been the point play and biggest positive with the second unit has been Salo (and Hodgson to a lesser degree).

The changes really couldn't be more obvious.

Sammy did a solid job on the point for us last season (once Edler went down) but he is coming off surgery and hasn't gotten his game on track yet.

Once he gets it going the Canucks can always go back to the current set up. Right now though the Canucks need goals and Salo has the hot hand.

[herb]

I think you're right Pot. Salo has looked excellent to start the season.

How much different would this game have been if Edler would have scored on that sweet dipsy doodle dangle rush of his?

[Rayxor]

I don't get the chance to see every game, so I'm a bit P.O.'d that this was one i did see. Damn shame that they couldn't make hay with all the PP's. It worked against us and you knew if NYR ever got a goal, it would boost them and deflate us. I don't blame Lu but his play wasnt above reproach. A big save on one of the goals could have changed things. He didnt have a good nor bad game but another game that would be a reasonable showing for a journeyman: stopped the ones he should have and let in the harder ones. We know he can be better than that, and the sooner he does, the better for everyone.

The shots the Canucks got were plentiful but not many of them were great scoring opportunities. Lundquist didnt have to play lights-out, he just had to be solid and in position, the D took care of the rest. They just got back from Europe and were able to keep things simple and were able to capitalize on the mistakes.

Ballard looks so much better now that he is allowed to jump into the rush and had some of the better chances to score.

Kessler looked good out there (compared to what had been our 2nd line) but with plenty of rust. Love his level of competitiveness but its too early for him to be trying to do everything.

Swap Sami for Sammy on the 1st unit PP. Surely with the level of skill in our top 5 Dmen, we can come up with something better than him at the point. Does Sammy have a clause in his contract that he can't be benched?

[Benjo]

Only in the NHL would you get an unsportsmanlike penalty for helping a teammate.

Lundqvist was terrific, great lateral movement but he also makes himself look big. Lu has started either laying prone or crouched with his knees together far too often leaving a ton of free net available.

I thought the 4th line was better than the third last night

Bieksa/Ballard seemed to mesh better than Ham/Edler

The Canucks took a beating in front of the net and slowly started to shy away from it as the game wore on.

Did anyone miss Sturm?

[Rumsfeld]

I wouldn't say stellar, but he was pretty decent; 15-10, four shutouts, 2.56 and .914.
One more win and he would have been the toast of the town.

I wouldn't have brought up the previous two playoffs either if I were trying to Luongopologize. I notice you guys don't like to do that.

2009 I will give you.
2010, as I recall, the Canucks were simply beaten by a stacked team (that went on to win the Stanley Cup if I recall correctly).

It is poor reasoning to define every playoff defeat as a goaltending failure.... every year, there is only one good goaltender in the league?

There is no shame in simply losing to a better team. There is shame in looking like you are completely incompetent in the process. If Luongo was one of the better-performing goalies in the playoffs every year I highly doubt he'd receive any criticism at all. He hasn't been for a very long time.

You might have noticed I didn't include Lou's 2007 defeat on my list. He played very well in both series that year and so I am therefore not critical of him for losing.

Against Chicago he was fucking terrible BOTH years, stacked team or not. Nashville, San Jose and Philly also lost to Chicago in 2010, and none of the goaltenders on those teams were lit up like Luongo. None of them were so easily flustered and so totally embarrassed like Luongo was.

Again, I can actually remember the games and how they went down. It's not all box scores and "herp derp, but they were playing da Champs!" for me.

[Larry Goodenough]

Forget bad goals, forget sloppy coverage... I would be quite interested to see a month-by-month breakdown of how many games Luongo outplays or is outplayed by his goaltending counterpart. That's kind of an important facet of NHL netminding... how often can you raise your game to a higher level than the other guy.

4-0 other guys so far. But hey, it's October -- and Luongopologists know damn well that games in October don't count.

http://vansunsportsblogs.com/2011/10/14 ... uantified/

This blog post from ther Sun attempts to put numbers to Luongo's "mental toughness" by looking at quality starts vs starts in which a goalie blows up. His numbers are then compared to the likes of Lundquist.

It doesn't exactly touch on outplaying another goalie in a head to head game, but does have some interesting advance stats in it.

[Larry Goodenough]

I understand all the calls for Sami on the 1st line powerplay, but am I the only one who remembers when it has been tried in the past and hasn't exactly lit the world on fire? I mean both the Sedins and Sami have been around for awhile, this has been tried before, and if it had worked really well, don't you think they would have kept with it?

I think the bigger concern is you don't want Sami blasting from the point with the Sedins and Kesler sitting in front. Big time risk for an injury with that shot. Let Burrows or Higgins take those shots, they are a little more replaceable. In fact, I seem to remember the last time Sami was on the 1st unit a few years ago he hit someone, and then for the rest of the year couldn't hit the net because he was too scared to hit and injure another one of our top players.

That said, Samuelsson definitely needs to get off the point. I know we were somehow better with him back there last year, but this is a new year and he hasn't shown he can handle it.

Samuelsson took Edler's spot last year on the PP for something like a 40 game sample. The league's top powerplay did score at an even greater clip with him on the point.

I know there's frustration with Samuelsson, but a 40 game sample shows he is a good fit there. A 6 game sample should not prove the opposite. Especially taking into account Kesler was out the first 5 games.

Again, I understand the frustration, but this team became an elite team largely based on patience. I don't see any changes happening anytime soon.