The Canucks lost 5-2 to a Detroit team with a modest record of its own Thursday night, got outshot 29-12, and went nearly 40 minutes of game time without putting a single puck on net. That's a team that's forgotten how to play offense or defense, and it's the ninth straight loss in a stretch that has defined the start of this season.
This exact disaster was supposed to be fixed already. The Canucks finished dead last in the league last season, and the organization tore the whole thing down in response: Adam Foote was fired after a single season as coach, Ryan Johnson got promoted to general manager, Henrik and Daniel Sedin came in as co-presidents, and Malhotra was pulled up from the farm team to coach. That's about as complete a reset as a franchise can stage without changing the jerseys, and twelve games into the new era, the team looks worse than the one everyone agreed was a failure. You don't get to call this bad luck when you've already fired everyone responsible for the last version of it.
The Detroit game is the clearest evidence anyone needs. Lucas Raymond had three points in the first period alone, and Detroit didn't need to be special to do it, because Vancouver stopped showing up on the ice. Thirteen shots to nothing in the second period is a surrender. A team that gets shut out in its own building for the better part of two periods by an average opponent is missing more than one piece: structure and the will to compete for pucks in open ice.
RatingElias Pettersson hasn't been the problem lately. He scored in this game and has looked sharper through the slump than he did in stretches of the past year. But he also took a penalty at exactly the wrong moment on Thursday, wiping out a power play his team desperately needed, and he was on the ice for a pile of scoring chances against in the process. A core player playing well while his team gets run off the ice around him is a symptom, and a bad one: it means the team can't support the players who are actually trying.
Jonathan Lekkerimäki had a goal and an assist and was the one Canuck who didn't look lost out there. Good for him, but it changes nothing about the larger picture: one rookie playing well inside a 29-12 shot differential is just a bright spot on a real wreck.
The heat should land on the executives who sold a culture reset over the summer and then produced a team that can't manage a clean zone exit against a middling Original Six club. The players are just grinding through a bad stretch. Johnson, the Sedins, and Malhotra own this now. They inherited a last-place roster and had every chance to install real identity and habits, and instead they've built a team that goes stretches of entire periods without a shot on goal. This organization has only changed the names on the office doors.
The Canucks are, right now, as thin and disorganized as any team in the league, and the people who promised a rebuild have produced a worse product than the regime they replaced. Nine straight losses is an indictment.
