“Finding new ways to lose” would be the title of the Canucks latest chapter. Not so much the literal reasons, those haven’t changed, but just the fact that Vancouver blew a three-goal lead in the first period for the first time in franchise history.
“It sucks, we wanna win,” Canucks forward Brock Boeser said postgame. “We came up short, but we’ve got to keep pushing, we’ve got to keep working hard and get this going in the right direction.”
Boeser scored the second Canucks goal in the first period, his eighth on the season.
It didn’t take the Pittsburgh Penguins 43-minutes to dig out of that first period hole, it took them nine minutes.
“Anytime you jump out to an early lead like that you sort of relax a little bit and once they (Penguins) caught fire, I mean they were pretty dangerous the rest of the period,” Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau said postgame. “But I thought at the end of the period, okay great, they had 20 shots, we weathered the storm a little bit, if it’s coming out tied after the one period. I thought if we could regroup, we’d be able to muster up something else.”
No Canucks Comeback
The Canucks gave up two more goals in the second period to fall behind 5-3. Their comeback bid fell short in the 3rd period for a one-goal loss.
“I’m glad to see the way in the third period that we didn’t quit,” Boudreau added. “We kept coming and we almost had something at the end. (Pittsburgh forward Evgeni) Malkin got four points, but he also gave up an awful lot of chances too. Sometimes it goes in for you, I mean, ‘Petey’ (Elias Pettersson) could have very easily had four or five points himself had he converted today, so then it would have been him having a great game and not everyone looking at Malkin having a great game.”
The Canucks have lost five of their last six games and have fallen 15 points behind the third place Seattle Kraken in the Pacific Division. Vancouver remain eight points behind the Edmonton Oilers for the second wild card spot in the Western Conference.
