The Ides of February Are Not Kind To Canucks - 6th Loss in Last 7 Games.

Was this game as bad as the Seatown loss? No.

It was worse. Humiliation at home by an old rival is much worse.

Klings played a perfect late season road game. Nucks played a perfect pre-season game.

Nucks played a slow, disconnected, tentative indirect game. For the 1st 40 minutes. Then in the 3rd, their 2 minute pushback was not that pushy.

1ST PERIOD

Hockey game or chess match? Or staring contest? Or who could score on the lowest amount of shots. Nucks had 3 and no goals. LA had 7 and...

Juuls screens Demmers

Doughboy scores...ugh

'82

1-0 Kings after 1.

We are lucky to be down by one.

Atty

2ND PERIOD

Not getting any Nucks luckier in the 2nd. Or energized. Or engaged.

Gamethread were taking shots, even if the Nuck weren't.

More shots unleashed on the streets of Surrey tonight than at the Rog…

This game is marginally more exciting than a NyQuill overdose.

Rob

At least someone got a goal. Even if it was an elderly forward from LA.

Doughty, kopitar, what is this, 2014?

Twitch

2-0 LA after 2.

This game is marginally more exciting than a NyQuill overdose.

Rob

3RD PERIOD

The chess match, low event (wasn't low event for Demko) portion of the program is over.

Nucks have time (not enough) to stage a comeback. And who better to break Talbot's near certain SO, than the new broken-up Nucks PP.

And they did. Not making it up. Gnarly distracts the defenders, Millsie to Bessie and Nucks are on the board. Their solitary tally for their entire game. Yay!

It was nice while it lasted.
The comeback, that is.

Atty

With the comeback portion of the event out of the way, Nucks moved onto the total collapse and humiliation section of the game.

A combo of bad reads, weak forecheck, lazy changes and pathetic backchecking leads to LA potting 3 goals while making 5-Alarm Demko look like overplayed early 2023 Demko.

Game thread was charitable as ever.

Beautiful goal, humiliation complete.

The boys are playing like they'd rather be on the beach today.

Atty

Jesus, Boeser, that was the worst back check I've ever seen. He literally stopped skating at the blue line and gave Clarke a freebie mini-breakaway in the zone. He should be benched for that.

copey

Back-to-back home losses for the 1st time this season. It's been a season of firsts.

EGREGIOUS LAZY GAME NOTES

The formerly #1 team in the NHL is in a slump. Will they have the big boys balls to pull themselves out of the slump before the old habits haunt the team in the 2nd season?

Don't know.

They were so many poor performances, from Pete's D-brainfart pass into the slot and weak forecheck that resulted in goals against - to the entire Nucking D-corp who were better deployed as the 7th D. Even Huggie.

One simple stat shows which team wanted to sacrifice to ensure the win. Nucks blocked 6 shots. LA blocked 23. Kings wanted to win, Nucks just wanted to go have another rest day, because it's so hard being at the top of the league for so long.

Other than Miller and a few minutes, Gnarly and Laff, no Nucks had a good, hard working game. Demko looks tired. Pete looks beat - the burden a $100M future must be crushing. Lindy is still looking for a line, a place to play well. And, speaking of crushing pressure, Josh needs to get back ASAP and get re-signed ASAP.

ROG LOWLIGHTS

Shortie and Ray in the ROG to witness, while not napping a dull 40 minutes - and 20 minutes of Not Again! hockey.

GAME STATS

SHOTS

PLAYER STATS - so many fugly staties.

TACO TALK

"Egregious." - That's the word Taco used more than once to describe his player's play.

Now that the Egregious! game and February is over, Nucks have a chance to rebound and play like the team that became the best in the 1st 50 games. Or not. Not up to us long-waiting Nucks fan to turn the Nucking current towards the winning shore.

Nucks get a chance to do that on Sunday in Disneyland. Where I hope to see Desmith get the net and the win. If the Nucks can't get a commanding win in Anaheim with DeSmith, then why bother going through the motions - contract obligations aside.