Canucks fight, but lose third straight.

The bit of losing is starting to wear on me. I'm thinking, if we can't handle this tiny little road trip (although, our second longest of the year), how are we going to handle this monster coming up with the Olympics in view? This latest in this little losing streak is a 1-3 loss at the hands of the Red Wings. The loss has dropped us back down to .500 puck, and makes a home in home series against the Colorado Avalanche more important that you can even fathom. But, before we get ahead of our selves, let's focus on the positives from last night's loss:

1) Mason Raymond's big goal. I'm not quite sure how Raymond got the puck in the net on this one, just squeezing it between the pads and the post, but it was our lone goal, and it was huge. It was the 8th goal on the year for Ma$e, a power play goal, and it was the only offensive glory we grabbed at the Joe on Thursday night. I love Ma$e, I love the goal.

2) We had 6 less penalty minutes that the Wings! This is pretty huge for my Vannies. One of our major faults this season has been our multiple penalties, especially in the first period. This time around, we just had a goalie interference from Alex Burrows and a well earned 5 minutes for fighting where Rick Rypien completely destroyed Brad May. Why does May always want to fight us? Oh yeah.

3) Ryan Kesler was a born leader. Kes played a hard game, finishing with 1 assist, 4 shots on goal, 2 blocked shots, and 50% of face offs won. Ryan stepped it up when he needed to, and played a solid game at the center position.

Obviously, there were many more negatives, if I can think of them:

1) B Lu. Now let's keep in mind that Roberto gave up 2 goals on 28 shots (the third goal was scored on a crazy empty netter where the puck bounced off the boards and into the open twine). That's a 92.9% save mark, and not too bad. However, we have been without the Amazin' Roberto for quite a while, and we have needed him to return with the kind of game that blows the NHL On The Fly announcers away. We need this homey to show up against Colorado, and put a couple of doughnuts on the board.

2) The literal negative. We didn't have a single player on the ice with a positive rating in this game. The biggest offenders were Kevin Bieksa (-2), Ryan Kesler (-2, which I obviously left out above), Mason Raymond (-2), and Henrik Sedin (-1). For the first three, they were all on the ice when the Vannies scored their only goal, so to have a -2 means they were also on the ice for all three Detroit goals. Rough time, baby.

3) Dub Dub didn't work his magic in the circle. Welly is usually a face off master for the Canucks, but last night he went 5 for 18 (27.8%), which made it hard for his wingers (including Samuelsson) to get going. It all starts with the draw fools.

4) Speaking of Samuelsson, he was a ghost. I made a big deal in my last post about how he needed to step up against his former team to make us wicked proud. His line? 0 goals, 0 assists, 0 +/-, 2 missed shots, 1 blocked shot, and 3 giveaways. Awful. Just plain awful. MS better get back to rolling like he was earlier in the campaign.

The next two games are possibly first half of the year defining kinds of games. The Canucks travel to Colorado on Saturday to take on the red hot Avs and then have a long break before hosting the Avs next Friday (that's a lot of days without hockey!). At 10-10-0 (20 points, and still racist against OTLs), the Orca are trailing the first place Avs (12-4-3) by 7 points. Within the division, we have Calgary (23) above, and Edmonton (18)/Minnie (15) below. If my boys don't start winning, though, they're going to find themselves living in the basement. So far this season, the Canucks and Avs have split 3-0 decisions. Colorado blanked the Vannies in the second game of the season, and then my boys returned the favor with Andrew Raycroft's best performance of the year on November 1. In the most recent edition of the season series, the Canucks got goals from Ma$e, Kesler, and Tanner Glass (his 1st NHL goal), including an amazing 18 save effort from out qualified backup. What will the final be this time around? God, I hope it's a win.