Canucks' disheartening, winless road trip still features silver linings |
It wasn’t so much a road trip as a six-game educational tour that the Vancouver Canucks finished Saturday in Tampa. They discovered how much they don’t know.
More constructively, they discovered how much room they have for learning in the coming months (and years) as the National Hockey League team’s rebuild gets going.
Over six games in 12 days, which included three opponents who have combined for five of the last seven Stanley Cup championships, the Canucks were schooled. Sometimes, brutally so.
Their 4-2 loss Saturday to the Tampa Bay Lightning capped a winless road trip in which the Canucks claimed just one of 12 points available — and even that one, from Thursday’s overtime loss to the Florida Panthers, was a consolation prize for blowing a two-goal lead in the final nine minutes of regulation time.
Vancouver had another 2-0 lead in Tampa, thanks primarily to spectacular goaltending from Kevin Lankinen, but surrendered four unanswered goals over the final 34 minutes.
“It’s obviously disappointing to come away from a trip with one point,” Canucks coach Manny Malhotra told reporters in Tampa. “And just the way we're giving up points and goals, it continues to frustrate the group. But you know. . . a lot of the things that we see are fixable. They're self-inflicted wounds, so we recognize the answers have to come from within our room, and we'll continue to work at finding them.”
32 Thoughts: The PodcastHockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.Latest episode
32 Thoughts: The Podcast
Hockey........