Few random thoughts:
- Probably just confirmation bias on my part, but I swear no matter what series it is (or "big game" in a series), the Canucks are always on the wrong end of the momentum early. They're either "weathering the storm" of the visiting team, or "weathering the storm" of being the visiting team. This season especially, the first ten minutes of the game were altogether predictable.
- Luongo was sharp early. Would have been nice for him to stop that third goal, but the team had basically stopped generating offense by the time it was 2-1, so it wasn't determinative
- AV swapping the lines again for the first game of the playoffs paid some dividends, as most of the lines had good games -- with the exception of the first line, which was abysmal. But Weise moving to the Kesler line in the third period was all kinds of dumb.
- Garrison and Hamhuis were way underplayed. AV looks like he's managing icetime for a long run, but he might want to make sure it's not another 5-gamer first. Corrado and Alberts acquitted themselves well, but why is Corrado within 4 ES minutes of Hamhuis? Play your best players FFS.
- Canucks special teams were bad again. First PK was atrocious, and the breakdown in coverage that led to the 1-1 goal was obvious about 5 seconds before it happened. Special teams continue to be the team's biggest weakness.
- Raymond just gonna Raymond. Solid neutral zone game (even if he bails on hits at center and dumps the puck in a lot with nobody to retrieve it), but at least 3-4 times he had the puck in a dangerous area, faked a wristshot, and curled back to the offensive blue-line to lose possession. I can't wait to see this guy go. Decent player, but not smart enough to take it to the next level.
- Nice to see the team play physically, but they did it at the cost of smart zone entries. It's one thing for the 4th line to dump the puck in and go rattle Vlasic, but seemingly every line was playing dump-and-chase hockey. You just don't generate the same puck possession doing that.
- All in all and AV special for a playoff game. Aim for a low-event ES game, don't push the pace, and start playing a different strategy than you played most of the year (dump and chase). I'll never understand it.
Edit: Also, can we get rid of the "delayed wristshot" everyone on the team uses now? Shoot the puck already. Daniel got the puck wide open in front of the net and waited for Niemi to get set and a defender to show up before he shot. You can't let a goalie get set before you shoot. Crazy.
