Slumping Canucks all but out of playoff race after loss to Golden Knights

VANCOUVER – It’s down to the math for the Vancouver Canucks and, as with stock markets amid a tariff war, all the numbers are bad.

With Sunday’s 3-2 loss at home against the Vegas Golden Knights, Vancouver’s fourth in five games, the Canucks have just about eliminated themselves from the National Hockey League playoff race.

Eight points behind the Minnesota Wild with five games to play, and without holding the tie-breaker of regulation wins, there’s no more margin for error. To maintain any playoff hopes, the Canucks need to win Tuesday in Dallas when they open a difficult two-game trip against the Stars.

Minnesota beat Dallas 3-2 in overtime earlier Sunday, surviving a late Stars power-play before winning it on an advantage of their own.

The Canucks, by contrast, surrendered the winning goal to the Golden Knights with 3:14 remaining when a series of coverage errors allowed Victor Olofsson to score uncontested from the low slot.

With their season on the line, the under-staffed Canucks managed only two shots on net in the third period and wasted a stellar bounce-back performance from Vancouver goalie Kevin Lankinen, who had allowed 14 goals in his previous three starts.

“It felt like we didn’t really push that hard,” Canucks winger Nils Hoglander, who scored upon his return to the lineup from injury, told reporters. “Then they scored, and it was pretty hard to come back.”

The theme of being outplayed in the third period – of seeing the other team produce at key moments – has become a familiar theme in Vancouver’s three-week retreat from a wild-card playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Missing top centres Elias Pettersson and Filip Chytil, who are not expected to travel this week to Dallas or Denver, the Canucks are 1-3-1 in their last five games while the Wild have found ways to survive. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Blues, who passed Vancouver for the final playoff spot on March 20, have been destroying everyone in their path to the Stanley Cup tournament.

“We hung in there,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said Sunday night. “I mean, obviously we didn’t have the puck enough the second half of the game. They controlled the play, so we were kind of hanging in there. It’s tough when you don’t have the puck a lot, but there was some effort from a lot of guys out there.”

Asked how his team can maintain confidence with the standings so bleak, Tocchet said: “Confidence is something you don’t buy at a store. You work at it every day. You know, adversity, how you handle adversity, builds confidence, too. If you can handle adversity, you should be confident guy. (But) you can’t just turn on confidence. You build that.”

With five players in their lineup who spent large chunks of this season developing in the American Hockey League, the Canucks are trying to build a lot of things in these final games.

One of the callups, centre Aatu Raty, showed both the promise and faults that most talented prospects possess.

The 22-year-old, thrust into a third-line role after depth centre Nils Aman was injured at practice on Wednesday, battled to the front of the Vegas net to score the Canucks’ tying goal in the second period.

But Raty was also one of the Canucks at fault on Olofsson’s winning goal, as he offered only a weak stick check before allowing the Knight to go to the front of the net to convert William Karlsson’s pass. Canucks rookie defenceman Vittorio Mancini was watching Karlsson as Olofsson skated in behind him, and veteran Vancouver winger Dakota Joshua was not back quickly enough on the Vegas counter-attack.

“It just sucks to give up that one at the end,” Raty said, adding that he would need to look at the play again. “If you want to go out there and play for a good team . . . the coach has to be able to rely on you and in every (situation). Every player is so good, you’ve got to play good defense.”

“He’s a work in progress,” Tocchet said. “He’s a young kid. You know, he’s going to make some mistakes, but also . . . I like his effort, right? So you’ve just got to keep working with him.”

It was hard not to like the Canucks’ effort against the 2023 Stanley Cup champions and perennial contender.

After Hoglander opened the scoring on a rebound at 4:46 of the first period, Ivan Barbashev tied it for Vegas at 8:36 when he found space to skate behind Canucks defenceman Filip Hronek and beat Lankinen by cutting across the goalie and scoring inside the far post.

Lankinen stopped Nicolas Roy’s shot on another Golden Knights rush, but watched helplessly as the rebound caromed in off the back of Mancini’s skate at 13:15.

After Lankinen made a handful of big saves early in the second period, Raty tied it 2-2 at 8:03, whacking another rebound past Vegas goalie Adin Hill, who had done well to stop the Canuck’s initial deflection of Hronek’s point shot. Joshua started the play by intercepting the puck in the neutral zone.

Raty cut through the front corner of the crease to get in front of Hill, who raised his glove to brace himself against the Canuck just before the puck arrived. Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy challenged for goalie interference and, after a lengthy review, referees Peter MacDougall and Eric Furlatt let the goal stand.

But on the ensuing Vancouver power play, Hill made the save of the game, quickly pushing forward and to his left – and staying on his feet – to snare Pius Suter’s quick wrist shot from the low slot after a pass by Conor Garland. Olofsson scored from the same spot one period later.

The Knights outshot the Canucks 25-9 over the final two periods, and 12-2 in the decisive third.

“Yeah, a disappointing result,” Lankinen said. “Obviously, that’s on top of my head right now. I think we battled hard. It’s a good team we played against, but not the result we wanted.”

And desperately needed.

ICE CHIPS

Tyler Myers, the Canucks’ most experienced defenceman, missed a second straight game with an undisclosed injury. Playing injured, Quinn Hughes was on the ice for all three Vegas goals and finished minus-three to fall to even on the season. The Norris Trophy winner is minus-15 in 16 games since returning from an oblique injury.

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