"Mentally weak" Canucks hold players-only meeting after collapsing again

Three games, multi-goal leads in each of them, three losses.

The Vancouver Canucks set an infamous NHL record Monday night, becoming the first team to blow leads of two or more goals in each of their first three games to start a season.

They blew a 3-0 lead and lost 5-3 to Edmonton on opening night, blew a 2-0 lead in Philadelphia and lost 3-2 on Saturday, and surrendered a 4-2 lead Monday in Washington, going on to lose 6-4.

Canucks are the first team in NHL history to lose each of their first 3 games of a season while blowing a multi-goal lead in each contest

— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) October 18, 2022

They’ve only played three games, but it feels like three months have passed since opening night.

The Canucks held a players-only meeting following their latest collapse, according to head coach Bruce Boudreau.

“We have to hold each other accountable about what’s going on right now,” Canucks captain Bo Horvat told reporters in Washington. “Including myself. We’ve got to remember this feeling. We’ve got to remember how bad this feels. I keep saying we’ve got to learn from it but enough’s enough. This is three games in a row now that we’ve had leads and outplayed teams, and it’s just unacceptable by us, it’s unacceptable to myself, my leadership.

“I hold myself accountable. I’ve got to be better. Luckily we play [again] tomorrow night, so we’ve got to have a short-term memory and go out there and do it.”

The Canucks were in full control of tonight’s game heading into the third period, with a 4-2 lead after outshooting the Capitals 19-13 in the second period. But Washington scored a power-play goal early in the third period, and dominated the rest of the game — scoring four times in the final 20 minutes.

Boudreau described his team as “mentally weak.”

“It did look like we started to… collapse, and we’re afraid to win. They came at us pretty good and we just didn’t handle it very well,” said Boudreau.

“I think right now, mentally weak would be a good assessment. When you’re on a roll, you’re waiting for good things to happen. When you’re on something like this, you’re waiting for something bad to happen.”

The biggest thing ailing the Canucks right now has been their penalty kill, which has a league-worst 50% efficiency. Washington scored on two of their three chances with the man advantage. Vancouver has now allowed six power-play goals on 12 chances this season.

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“There’s definitely something wrong,” Boudreau said of his team’s play while shorthanded. “I must have the wrong guys out there, because they’re scoring in the first 15 seconds all the time.”

Perhaps we’ll see personnel change on the penalty kill Tuesday in Columbus. Ilya Mikheyev, who was brought in to kill penalties, is expected to make his Canucks regular season debut.

But one player alone can’t fix Vancouver’s problems.

“We can’t be mentally weak,” said Horvat. “Right now it feels like we’re getting down on ourselves when they score one.”

“We’ve just got to show more maturity in our game and take it to teams. We had them on the ropes. We were doing a lot of good things. We’ve got to find ways to win. Simple as that in this league. It takes a full 60 minutes, I say this all the time, I feel like a broken record, but it takes a full 60 minutes to win a hockey game, and we’ve got to start doing that.”

They’ll try again tomorrow.