VANCOUVER — “We, like fans, as people that watch the game, are going: ‘Why the hell don’t they start better?’ We would love to know the answer. I just reiterated it today and it’s something that you have to remind the guys. . . almost on a daily basis, ‘Let’s be ready at the drop of the first puck.’”
Bruce Boudreau’s words were barely out of the Vancouver Canuck coach’s mouth when his team was outshot 13-1 Sunday night in the first 7 ½ minutes against the Tampa Bay Lightning. By that point, the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions had scored twice – one goal for each point they collected in a 2-1 win at Rogers Arena.
Sunday was the one day a year – after clocks are moved forward an hour for daylight savings time – when it’s almost OK to be late for something. But the Canucks long ago burned through their late-for-work passes.
They have lost only nine times in regulation in 35 games since Boudreau took over as coach three months ago. Their 21-9-5 record is remarkable. But also surprising, considering these are National Hockey League professionals and all, in five of those nine losses the Canucks have been outscored by a total of 15-0 by different stages of the first period.
Their tardiness Sunday was again perplexing and unsurvivable against a Lightning team that had lost three straight games on its Western Canadian tour and was desperate to avoid the champions’ first four-game dive in 25 months.
“There’s nothing more you can do other than warn them, show them, tell them,” Boudreau said after the game, having warned his players after the morning about the perils of another poor start. “And then instead, the other team came out harder for the first 10 minutes. I think they had 14 shots in the first 10 minutes and then I thought that we finally said, ‘OK, let’s wake up.’
“Sometimes when you’re playing Stanley Cup champions and they’ve got a 2-0 lead, they’re just not going to relinquish it.”
Not when you have the best goalie in the world, Andrei Vasilveskiy, in his Vezina Trophy form in the Tampa net.
In the final 52 minutes, the Canucks outshot the Lightning 35-18 but only J.T. Miller managed to get a shot that counted past the Russian goalie. And only then, at 5:54 of the third period, because Tampa defenceman Erik Cernak eased up on what he thought would be an icing call, allowing Conor Garland to centre to Miller.
“We don’t ever feel like we’re out of it,” Garland said. “But we just talked in there; we just have to have better starts. That’s what’s killing us right now. If we can just have a good start and play like we did in the second and third, we’re going to win a lot of hockey games.
“Something’s got to change. You know, if you’re not playing well at the start of games, change something in your routine and get ready a different way because these games are too important for us not to start on time.”
The Canucks have displayed a lot of flaws this season, albeit mainly in the first two months of the campaign when they staggered to a 6-14-2 opening quarter. But one consistent failure has been their inability to score first-period goals, a category in which Vancouver is tied for 29th in the NHL with 40 goals in 60 games. They’ve scored 27 first-period goals in Boudreau’s 35 games.
They’ve overcome this deficiency on great goaltending, solid defending and being resilient.
But they trailed 2-0 against the Lightning by the time the game was barely five minutes old.
Victor Hedman was unchecked at the top of the Vancouver crease to tap in Patrick Maroon’s reversal from behind the net 3:26 after the opening faceoff, and Travis Hamonic’s turnover along the boards against Corey Perry left Ross Colton wide open in the slot to make it 2-0 at 5:06.
“It’s obviously not a good start, especially understanding how hungry they were going to be,” Garland said. “They’d lost three straight, so definitely a big game for them as well. To not come out the way we should was disappointing.”
It looked like Garland had snatched a tying goal for the Canucks at 7:58 of the final period when he poked in a puck that Vasilevskiy left uncovered beside his post after a save on Tanner Pearson. But veteran referee Ian Walsh had whistled play dead.
Three minutes later, Walsh and Garrett Rank rescinded a Canuck power play by reversing a high-sticking call against Lightning defenceman Jan Rutta, who was judged upon video review to have caught Tyler Motte in the face on a follow-through.
Howls of protest from the crowd of 18,760 followed both plays.
The Canucks were robbed alright. They were robbed of a realistic chance of winning by sputtering through the first eight minutes and bestowing a two-goal head start to a formidable team that knows how to win.
• Canucks star Elias Pettersson, who had 18 points in his previous 13 games, did not play due to what Boudreau said is an upper-body injury that will keep the centre out day-to-day. Pettersson missed most of last season, and struggled the first three months of this one, after hyper-extending his wrist last March 1. . . Miller’s goal extended his points streak to 12 games, three shy of the franchise record last reached by Todd Bertuzzi in 2002. . . The Canucks reach the mid-point of their seven-game homestand Tuesday against the New Jersey Devils.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
