Canucks take a 3-0 lead into third, lose 7-4. To the Islanders.

A coworker had a party bus going down to Vancouver from Whistler, to catch the Canucks game against the Islanders, and emailed everyone to say one or two tickets had come available.  I didn't bite, I guess I'm less interested in catching their games lately.

So they started off pretty well, going up 3-0 going into the third period, but gave up a club-record 7 goals in the third period to lose 7-4.  They actually tied that record for most goals allowed in a period, set two times by the Oilers in '83 and '85, when they had Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson and Paul Coffey.  As Sportsnet's Don Taylor said, the Islanders' roster isn't exactly comparable.

Now, three of those goals were on the powerplay, and one in the empty net at the end of the game, but Eddie Lack did not make anyone forget about Roberto Luongo and Corey Schneider tonight.  The talking heads were plain-spoken in stating that a starting goalie should not give up a 3-0 lead in the third.  And when the Canucks scored to tie up the game at 4-4, he gave up a goal ten seconds later when he made a puck handling error.

One thought which occurred to me while I watched the game is that Yannick Weber is one of the six defencemen on the team and Raphaël Diaz is the one who was sent packing, contrary to the decision that was made in Montréal.  I didn't find much on the blogs as to why young Mr. Diaz was sent to the Rangers, mostly generic statements about the fact that he was brought in to sub in while Kevin Bieksa and Chris Tanev, the club's leading right-handed d-men, were injured.  It seems they made a different evaluation in which Swiss player to keep.

The Canadiens kept Raphaël Diaz for his better sense of the game, his better all-around skill set, whereas the Canucks banked on the fact that Yannick Weber has a good shot from the point, and can help their powerplay.  He was paired with leftie Jason Garrison on the second wave, and they set each other up for one-timers, and the penalty killers had their hands full trying to deal with those two, since they both have bombs.  Vancouver decided to keep the player who does one thing very well.  And tonight, Yannick Weber had that impact that we wanted him to have for our team, in that he got off some dangerous shots on net, and picked up an assist when Chris Higgins cashed in one of his rebounds.

John Tortorella was calm and reasonable in his post-game presser.  Like he's not feeling the heat, doesn't feel that his job is being threatened by the horrid streak his team is on.  He might know something about how the owners are feeling that we don't.