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If you strained and looked beyond an ugly first 10 minutes, the Vancouver Canucks’ core solidity was a defining trait of their 2-0 victory over the Minnesota Wild on Thursday night at Rogers Arena.

Coming off of three consecutive loose defensive efforts, Vancouver was stingy on Thursday. Tough to break down. Strong on recoveries. Difficult to break out on. All but impossible to seam. Opportunistic against the grain.

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In the latter 50 minutes of their contest, with their backup netminder in net, the Canucks put up a wall. They were disciplined, countered sharply and played the Wild even territorially, despite holding a lead all evening and adding to it in the third period.

Overlooking the first 10 minutes, however, would be a mistake. The club salvaged their effort admirably against the Wild and got the regulation shutout win at home, but for 10 minutes on Thursday night, the Canucks lost seemingly every single physical engagement. They permitted the Wild to dictate pace with troubling ease.

Dating back a month now, the Canucks have played .500 hockey. In their last nine contests, they’ve trended to win one, and lose one on an every-other-game basis. They’ve cooled off significantly after their dream start to this season.

A good start, however, is a powerful thing in a league with a broken standings system. It’s incredibly difficult to make up ground and Vancouver has fashioned itself a big, comfy cushion over other Wild Card aspirants out West. It’s a lead they’ve padded, if not with consistent form, then by at least distributing their wins favourably and beating those teams that are, in theory anyway, chasing them — teams like Minnesota, Calgary and Seattle.

If we raise our standard above that deeply marketable, but unsatisfying bar of being just above average enough to qualify for the playoffs, there’s a volatility at play with this team — a volatility we saw encapsulated within one, single contest on Thursday — that should linger as a concern for those hopeful of this Canucks team’s ability to meaningfully contend.

This is a team with high-end stars, enviable forward depth, a generally solid team-level defensive game at 5-on-5, a very dangerous power play and exceptional goaltending. This is not, however, a team that typically controls play at the top end of their lineup. This is not a team that can reliably kill penalties. And this is not a team with functional depth on the back end.

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Those latter traits suggest that Vancouver’s recent inconsistent form may be baked into the profile of this team. For all of Vancouver’s impressive finishing skill and sturdy goaltending, if they’re too reliant on those more ephemeral facets of the game — and if they can’t regularly control play 5-on-5 — then their results will continue to be volatile.

On Thursday they survived the first 10 minutes and found their game, but as we’ve seen recently against the best teams — like New Jersey and Vegas — you can’t count on surviving those stretches. Those teams that don’t have that baseline, well, they might be playoff teams, but that’s where the realistic hope stops.

Here are 5 more observations from Vancouver’s victory over Minnesota on Thursday night.

Casey DeSmith bails the Canucks out early

With all the attention on Nils Höglander’s top-six promotion and Andrei Kuzmenko’s fourth-line demotion, the stakes of Casey DeSmith’s start flew under the radar heading into the game against Minnesota.

DeSmith had gone 11 days since his last start against San Jose, which is a long layoff, especially compared to his stretch in mid-November where he earned three starts in eight days. He’d lost his last two starts after a sturdy run of games to begin the season. If DeSmith followed that up with a poor performance against Minnesota, it probably would have hurt his future playing time. The Canucks have just one back-to-back between now and Feb. 18 and with the team playing unevenly recently, the Canucks’ coaching staff could have ended up handing Demko the lion’s share of games, with DeSmith starting very sparsely over the next two and a half months.

DeSmith’s shutout, the first from a Canucks backup in six years, should erase any of that uncertainty. He was the only reason the Canucks escaped the first period somehow up 1-0. DeSmith tracked the puck remarkably well, making excellent saves on a pair of dangerous wraparounds. He stopped Joel Eriksson-Ek on a tremendous power-play rebound chance on the doorstep. He made a terrific, quick reaction point-blank stop on Connor Dewar after a sharp pass from below the goal line. If a couple of those chances went in, this could have been a completely different game.

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Through eight starts, DeSmith has notched a .917 save percentage and saved 1.6 goals above expected. He’s trustworthy and deserves regular appearances even with a spaced-out schedule so that Demko can stay fresh. This type of backup goaltending is a luxury the Canucks haven’t had in a long time.

The puck-moving struggles and communication concerns

There were many theories online about why the Canucks had such an awful first period: They weren’t skating. They were weak on the peak. The forecheck wasn’t a factor at all.

All of those explanations have sprinkles of truth but the root of the problem was that the Canucks couldn’t break the puck out of the defensive zone. After all, you can’t play fast and activate your forecheck until you have an opportunity to gain centre ice.

It felt like there were more icings than tape-to-tape passes. Defensemen made questionable decisions under pressure. Wingers were turning pucks over along the defensive zone boards and that included unlikely offenders like Sam Lafferty and Ilya Mikheyev. Heck, we counted two icings and two turnovers for Quinn Hughes in the first period, which is incredibly rare.

The problem with stacking bad zone exits on top of each other is that even when you do eventually get the puck out, your forwards are out of gas and immediately change once you gain the red line. Because of that, Minnesota was able to break the puck out of their zone against an absent, line-changing Canucks forecheck and attack again. It became a positive feedback loop. By the end of 20 minutes, it was one of the worst periods from a transition perspective that we’ve ever seen from this team under Tocchet.

Big picture, the Canucks need to improve their blue-line personnel. In the short term, the Canucks could cut out a few of their mistakes by simply communicating better as teammates.

There was one defensive zone retrieval in the first period, for example, where Tyler Myers picked up the puck. The entire weak side was flush with time and space. All Myers needed to do was make a simple reversal. Instead, his tunnel vision activated and he chipped it up the strong side wall, which allowed the Wild to regain possession. In that situation, his defence partner and the weak side winger need to be shouting for a reversal.

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It was similar to New Jersey’s game-winning goal on Tuesday night. On that play, Ian Cole failed to get the puck out because his backhand clear was kept in, despite there being clear, open passing opportunities on the weak side. It was a bad decision, but why was nobody yelling at him to reverse? Filip Hronek, Elias Pettersson and Sam Lafferty were all in a good position to make that call.

The Canucks need to improve their defensive zone transition game before they can legitimately tango with some of the top contenders in the West.

The Top-Six Outshot Again

With their top two lines on the ice on Thursday night, the Canucks were outshot by the Wild (9 shots for, 12 against), out-chanced (10 scoring chances for, 17 scoring chances against) and out-attempted.

This has become a bit of a troubling trend for the club. With Vancouver’s top two lines on the ice, the Canucks have outshot their opponents in just two of their most recent eight games. If you go back a month — a 15-game sample — with their top two lines on the ice 5-on-5, the Canucks have outshot the Toronto Maple Leafs (by one in a game they trailed throughout), the Colorado Avalanche (by one in a game they trailed throughout), the San Jose Sharks twice, the Seattle Kraken once and the Calgary Flames.

Now if the club was still finding ways to win more than every other night, we wouldn’t focus on it. Every time the Canucks top-six has faced a contender in recent weeks, however, the result has been ugly, and most of the damage has been done by the opposition’s top lines.

Right now, the Canucks have a subtle top-six issue. For all of J.T. Miller and Pettersson’s gaudy overall production, the club isn’t manufacturing nearly enough chances or shots (or goals) when they’re on the ice 5-on-5. Unless that trend is arrested, it’s going to be very difficult for this club to string wins together.

How the Canucks limited rush and Grade-A chances against

Minnesota had a 26-17 edge in shots but by the eye, it was clear that the Canucks won the battle for true Grade-A chances. Brock Boeser, Dakota Joshua and Teddy Blueger all had clear or partial breakaways. Nils Höglander and J.T Miller each had a 2-on-1 rush opportunity. Blueger had another unbelievable rush chance from a Joshua set-up in the second period that he rang off the crossbar. Miller was twice robbed on glorious power-play looks from cross-ice passes.

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Even when the Canucks were lifeless in the first period, they prevented those types of catastrophic breakdowns. They packed the slot, blocked 22 shots compared to the Wild’s 11 and didn’t allow any cross-ice passes. Vancouver’s rush defence, in particular, has shined this season besides Tuesday’s contest against the Devils. Meghan Chayka shared Stathletes data from Dec 5 which had the Canucks ranked fourth-best in the NHL at preventing odd-man rushes against.

Odd Man Rushes against.

How are you feeling about your team? pic.twitter.com/EPZIGvKgjC

— Meghan Chayka (@MeghanChayka) December 5, 2023

Conor Garland highlighted the team’s back-checking as a big difference when The Athletic asked why the team’s effectively limited rush chances.

“I’ve played for Rick for probably over 300 games, it’s always been the same: You come back hard or you don’t play,” he said. “That frustrates players when you get guys backpressuring. A lot of guys can make plays off 3-on-2s. You go over so many 3-on-2s in practice after a while you know where the plays are and where they aren’t, but when there’s back pressure it just challenges you so much more. Even on good players, it makes it hard.

“Usually what makes us better is it starts in the o-zone having an F3 and then the other guys coming back too. You don’t just wanna see desperation back checks, it starts right away and you kill plays early.”

The Third Line Engine

Garland is Vancouver’s best forward at even strength at the moment.

Yes, we know, the goal-scoring hasn’t been there for the pricey, undersized buzzsaw forward that is driving Vancouver’s most consistent line. That’s not ideal given his cap hit, but in context. Garland has been living through shooting percentage hell all season, with very little power-play opportunity and a pair of wingers who have never previously cracked the 30-point milestone in their NHL career, which probably partly explains why he hasn’t picked up a secondary assist all season. It shouldn’t be dwelled on too significantly.

Hockey isn’t a game of raw numbers after all — it’s cool to score five goals, but not if your opponent scores six — it’s a game of ratios. And the fact is, Vancouver is controlling play better with Garland and his linemates on the ice than they are with any other forward trio. They’re also outscoring their opponents by a more favourable ratio with Garland’s line on the ice than they are with their top-six.

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On Thursday night, Garland’s line was the first line to get going in a mostly dreadful first period, stemming the bleeding against the Wild. It was Dakota Joshua and Noah Juulsen who engineered the turnover and Garland who found Teddy Blueger for the 2-0 goal that iced the game in the third period. Garland also sent Joshua in alone with a perfect stretch pass, although the opportunity wasn’t converted. He was literally all over the ice.

Look at the hockey card stats all you like, but if you’re watching this guy play right now, it should be crystal clear that he’s simply playing great hockey.

(Photo: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)

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