Canucks Takeaways: Effort, execution lacking in embarrassing loss

It’s not the end of the road trip the Vancouver Canucks need, but the end of Murderer’s Row.

Not only have the Canucks been one of the busier teams in the National Hockey League so far with five games in 10 nights, but opponents in four of those games have been to the Stanley Cup Final in the last two years.

So the measuring stick the rebuilding team has been forced to use at the start of the season has been dauntingly long, sharp-edged and unyielding.

Splitting two rollicking games against the Edmonton Oilers, Cup finalists in 2024 and 2025, was good for the Canucks. Losing 3-2 to 2026 runners-up the Vegas Golden Knights was honourable. Getting embarrassed 7-2 Thursday by the current champions, the Carolina Hurricanes, was neither.

After Vancouver Canucks coach Manny Malhotra emphasized that his team needed to play its own game and not focus on the Hurricanes’ speedy, relentless press, they looked completely unprepared for the pressure as they fell behind 3-0 and managed just one shot on target in the first 17 ½ minutes.

Carolina led 4-0 and 7-1 and, unlike the second of the two shootouts with the Oilers when the Canucks turned a six-goal deficit into a 9-7 loss, there was no redeeming surge at the end by Vancouver.

The Hurricanes eviscerated the Canucks on special teams, going 3-for-3 on the power play and 4-for-4 on the penalty kill while also scoring a key shorthanded goal at 13:13 of the second period.

Well, already up 4-1, maybe the first of three goals by Logan Stankoven wasn’t pivotal to the outcome. But Jake DeBrusk had just trimmed the deficit to three goals when the Canuck power play had a chance to make it two. Instead, Vancouver surrendered a two-on-one that Filip Hronek badly defended and it became 5-1.

The Canucks won’t face any Stanley Cup favourites when they head to the New York area for three games in four nights starting Saturday against the New Jersey Devils. But that schedule certainly isn’t easy. And looming at the end of Vancouver’s six-game marathon are severe tests next week against another pair of recent Stanley Cup winners: the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning.

Thursday was disappointing. Without better effort and execution from the Canucks, this trip could quickly become a sobering illustration of how much work ahead is required for the rebuild.

“We acknowledge we’re going to have some rough nights,” Malhotra explained to reporters post-game in Raleigh, N.C. “But on our part and the way we coach it, it’s not going to be for lack of effort.

“We can’t have guys that are just going to go away in these situations. It shows what type of character we have when we show the ability to push back and play our game despite the score. And that, unfortunately, wasn’t the case tonight.”

Every coach talks about structure. But basic positional structure isn’t much good if unaccompanied by defensive awareness and anticipation.

On several of the Hurricane goals, including on their power play, Canucks defenders were in position to make plays but simply didn’t.