The
John Tortorellaera era kicked off for the Vancouver Canucks last night in San Jose
and the skillful led Sharks team outmanned the Canucks by a final score of 4-1.
A
huge talking point over the offseason in Vancouver was the fact that, star goaltender
Roberto Luongo was still in a Vancouver Canucks uniform. After it was
determined at the trading deadline last year that he was untradeable and Luongo
himself saying, “my contract sucks”. There was huge speculation of how he would
preform being the starting goalie again.
Personally,
I believe Luongo played well last night despite giving up four goals. He was
bombarded by many San Jose scoring chances and kept the Canucks in the game
until Patrick
Marleau netted home the insurance marker with 5:21 to go in the game. This is
where I think Luongo could have handled his emotions better. After the goal, he
instantly went down on his back like he was crumbling in pain. To be fair, the
goal was a huge back breaker in the game that basically sealed the deal. However,
I always found it a bit immature.
When the game resumed, the San Jose fans started
to get on Luongo by heckling his name. This seemed like it was more of a
distraction for the rest of the team. Soon after the Sharks had a two on
nothing break-a-way where Tommy Wingels scored on the rebound to make it 4-1.
Overall, I think Luongo handled him self fairly
well. Early on in the game he looked poised to prove his critics wrong. He
looked sharp making some big saves in the 1st period and was able to
keep the game scoreless until Jason Garrison blasted a shot home on the power
play to give the Canucks a 1-0 lead. As the game wore on, Luongo looked up for
the task. He was in good position on the rare two minute 5 on 3 that the
Canucks had to kill off in the 2nd period when the game was tied at
one.
Unfortunately, the team didn’t play that well in
front of Luongo, as the Canucks were very undisciplined taking eight minor penalties
including a too many men call and a roughing penalty that took the Canucks off
the power play.
All in all, the Canucks maintained their
composure fairly well. In spite of the team playing sloppy at times, they were
able to keep calm and have their teammates pick up the slack. For example, there
are a lot of bright spots from last night’s game. The Canucks Penalty kill was
able to kill off all eight minor penalties. This is a great improvement from
last year’s playoff series where the Sharks went 7-24 on the power play last
spring on route to knocking the Canucks out of the playoffs.
