The Vancouver Sun
October 5, 2001
By Iain Macintyre

If this is stability, give us chaos.

The Vancouver Canucks, unchanged since last year in any manner except the colour of their uniforms, looked utterly disorganized for two periods Thursday as they opened their National Hockey League season with a sobering 5-4 loss at home against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Defensive-zone coverage was abysmal, blind passes were played to nobody and there were enormous gaps between forwards and defencemen. The goaltending? The only goaltending issue was that no one on Earth could play behind the fragmented Canuck team that appeared much as it had in the pre-season.

Netminder Dan Cloutier was the least of Vancouver's problems.

The good news is the Canucks have 81 games to fix themselves. The bad news is the next four are against teams that have won the Stanley Cup during the last four years and may do so again this season.

Based on Thursday's form, the Canucks will be halfway to Halloween before they win a game.

"We did everything we weren't supposed to do," Canuck captain Markus Naslund said. "We made crucial mistakes that cost us a lot of scoring chances, and they capitalized on a few. Maybe we just didn't use our heads enough."

"More than anything, I really believe we shot ourselves in the foot by not doing the staples of our game," winger Trent Klatt said. "We didn't keep the puck moving up ice. We didn't seem to want to get the puck deep. We tried to make too many cute plays. That's not us; I don't know why we tried to do that tonight."

The Canucks finally began to get the puck behind the Blackhawks' slow defence in the third period and the pressure resulted in rebound goals for Naslund, at 47 seconds, and Daniel Sedin, at 16:00. That reduced Chicago's 5-2 lead to a single goal.

The Canucks attacked in waves after that but couldn't conjure a tying goal. A single point would have been more than they deserved against a Blackhawk team that outshot them 22-10 through the first 31 minutes.

Vancouver repeatedly gave away the puck through the neutral zone, did not establish a forecheck and rushed around carelessly without the puck.

A fortune cookie scroll would have been big enough to list the Canucks who played well: Klatt, Henrik Sedin, Donald Brashear, Mattias Ohlund.

"This game should show us very vividly that we're not a fancy, overly-skilled team and we've got to work extremely hard to get success," Canuck coach Marc Crawford said. "I don't know exactly what the reason was we got away from our game plan. We can't make excuses for it. It was very apparent to me. . . why we weren't successful."

The game was close only in the first 10 and last five minutes.

Brashear scored on the Canucks' first shot, deflecting in Ohlund's wrister to make it 1-0 at 55 seconds.

The Blackhawks tied it at 7:31 after defenceman Phil Housley twice ambled down Canuck Main Street unchecked, swooping to to the front of the net to convert Bob Probert's pass.

No wiser, the Canucks left Housley untouched as the trailer a few shifts later and the new Blackhawk saw his shot ricochet through bodies until it nestled in the Vancouver net at 12:43.

Kyle Calder made it 3-1 at 14:26, tapping into an empty net to cap a 3-on-1 rush that began with Canuck rookie defenceman Bryan Allen getting pyloned.

Amid more suspect 5-on-5 Canuck coverage, Eric Daze made it 4-1 at 10:51 of the second period before Klatt scored for Vancouver 32 seconds later when Blackhawk goalie Jocelyn Thibault let his sharp-angle shot dribble in.

But Steve Sullivan restored the three-goal bulge when Chicago's power play passed it behind Cloutier again at 13:58.

Naslund made it 5-3 on a power play to start the third period and Daniel Sedin capped a 4-on-3 rush to set up the frantic finish. Thibault made the save of the night with his grill, taking Andrew Cassels' close-range shot on his mask as the final seconds ticked away.

"I think there are a lot of expectations," Allen said. "Guys were excited, starting at home, new uniforms -- maybe guys were just too emotional, too excited."

"The nerves were a lot higher five months ago [in the playoffs]," Klatt noted, "and we didn't make these mistakes then. We shouldn't make them now."



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