The Vancouver Canucks hit a new low Thursday night, dropping a 6-2 decision to the Winnipeg Jets and setting a franchise mark for the worst 18-game start in club history.
At 3-14-1, the Canucks have now piled up 14 losses through 18 outings, a number that stands alone in team history. The 1997-98 Canucks reached 13 losses after 18 games, but this version of the club has gone one step further into the record book.
There’s an asterisk to the misery, though. This is a team built around future upside more than immediate results, and that showed again in Manitoba. The Canucks were overmatched in a game that turned quickly and stayed tilted the rest of the way.
The opening stretch told the story. An early penalty gave Winnipeg a chance to seize control, and the Jets’ second goal came just 14 seconds after their first, a brutal swing for a Vancouver team already trying to find its footing. From there, the night only got heavier.
Liam Ohgren and Brock Boeser were the only Canucks to score, while Marco Rossi supplied one of the few bright spots in the loss. He drove play with seven shots, four hits and won seven of 11 faceoffs for a 64 per cent success rate. Elias Pettersson, though, didn’t register a shot.
The Canucks also did manage to keep Kyle Connor from adding to his goal total, but he still made his presence felt with two assists. That pushed him to 42 points on the season, with 17 goals and 25 assists. Mark Scheifele also added to the damage, scoring his 20th career goal in 42 games against Vancouver.
The result fit an ugly trend. Vancouver has now lost seven straight in Winnipeg, and the Jets have won 31 of the last 40 meetings between the teams.
What makes it sting a little more is that Winnipeg entered the night having been outscored 17-7 in first periods before this game, and the Jets had just snapped a nine-game losing streak Tuesday. Even so, the Canucks couldn’t take advantage.
They’re supposed to bring pace and structure, but once they fall behind, the game tends to unravel. The chase begins, the coverage slips, and the losses keep stacking up.
Ohgren, at least, continues to give Vancouver something to watch.
After being scratched Oct. 22 against Detroit, the 22-year-old winger said he wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.
“I have to play strong, faster, win more battles and be hard to play against,” Ohgren, 22, told Postmedia. “I just want this thing (healthy scratch) to never happen again. I’ve been thinking a little bit too much out there to not screw anything up and stay up in the lineup.”
He backed that up Thursday. Ohgren has four goals in his last six games, and his first-period finish against Winnipeg was his sixth of the season. After entering the offensive zone, he held onto the puck, read the play, and snapped a wrist shot past the goalie for a goal that showed more patience and confidence than panic.
It was a clean example of a young forward learning that there’s often more time in the offensive zone than he thinks - time to make a better play, or take the shot himself, instead of rushing the decision.
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