Pulse of Canucks Nation: Sound Every Alarm, It’s Really Bad

That three-game series was so bad, we can only be relieved it’s over.

The Canucks are off to their worst seven-game start since 1995 after a disastrous mini-series against the Montreal Canadiens.

To give you an idea of how dismal it is, Vancouver has given up the most goals in the NHL by a margin of 12 (33-21), and they own the worst goal differential in the league by 6 (-14 to -8).

To make matters more laughable, the Canucks are actually tied for thirdin the NHL in goals for, while also owning that catastrophe of a negative goal differential. I’m not quite sure I’ve ever seen a team pull that off.

Enough of the doom stats, let’s just quickly run through how bad this series ended up. It actually didn’t start off all that badly.

On Wednesday night Vancouver won a wild 6-5 result in a shootout, led by two goals and three points from Bo Horvat, including the shootout winner. However, the theme of ex-Canucks on Canadian teams haunting the blue and green continued.

Tyler Toffoli scored a hat-trick in the defeat, and he wasn’t done yet.

I’ll rip the band-aid off quickly for games two and three of the series. The Canucks were outscored 12-5 over the course of the two games - losing 7-3 and 5-2. Toffoli scored another two goals and two assists over those two games, so he totaled 7 points in the series.

Quite literally the only positive from the two games was the fact that Elias Pettersson finally scored his first goal of the season in the 5-2 loss. Maybe this will finally bring Petey the confidence he’s been lacking in the early going.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the Canucks are in worse shape than any other team in league as things stand right now. That always makes for some fun takes, so let’s head to the Twittersphere:

To lead off: a very level-headed take from The Athletic’s Harman Dayal, as per usual. Yes, the Canucks have had 3 defensemen out with injuries so far, but this problem has been noticeable from everyone on the back end - even the usually steady Nate Schmidt and Alex Edler.

Chris Conte with a very accurate representation of the Canucks’ defense. At this rate the back end will be completely Utica/taxi squad after the next 7 games. Can we get another few more team doctors?

We’ll stick with the defense here because they’ve been that special - in a bad, but special way. After knocking out Joel Armia, and finishing Thursday’s game with 16 PIMs, Myers was surprisingly allowed to play. The big question is - was it out of pity or was it a punishment?

So according to Brayden, Petey’s slump = the 2010 Chicago Blackhawks. An interesting analogy to say the least and I’m not sure I see it.

We’ll finish off this painful Pulse with some far-fetched positivity. Carmen (not one to be optimistic) has a feeling big things are coming. As you can see, it’s not getting much love, but maybe they see something the rest of Canucks Nation doesn’t. We’ll see Carmen, we will see.