Canucks buckle in third as miserable road trip continues

On the 12th day of January, the Vancouver Canucks took their first lead of 2026. But they’ll still be looking for their first win on the 13th.

After blowing their first two leads of the new year, the Canucks were tied with the Montreal Canadiens going into the third period Monday night at the Bell Centre. And then the next six minutes were like a field test in muscle memory and mental conditioning.

With just two regulation losses in their previous 12 games, the Canadiens played with confidence and swagger and poured in three goals to win 6-3. They looked like a winning team. Given the chance to win, the Canucks sagged and came apart and lost for the seventh consecutive game to make their place at the very bottom of the National Hockey League standings even darker. Clearly, they are a losing team.

Canucks coach Adam Foote made significant changes to a lineup that was ventilated in the first three games of this funereal road trip, giving minor-league callup Nikita Tolopilo an immediate start in net, replacing two of Vancouver’s youngest defencemen, and seeing veteran Conor Garland return from injury just as leading goal-scorer Kiefer Sherwood was forced out by a medical issue.

But when the game was still tantalizingly available to the Canucks despite being outshot 27-14 through 40 minutes, they made critical backchecking and defensive-zone mistakes while failing to get key saves from their goalie.

It really is true in the NHL that winning and losing is habit-forming because the Canucks’ default position right now is to buckle defensively under duress. Losing has made them brittle.

“When they go up early in the third there,” defenceman Tyler Myers said, “that quick goal (at 29 seconds), we’ve got to show some better maturity in the way we react to it. Things are obviously not going our way right now. But they’re only one up with a whole period left, and we got quiet. And then they got a couple of more quick ones. You know, we’ve got to try and stay up (emotionally) in those situations.”

Canadiens defenceman Mike Matheson broke the 3-3 on the first shift of the third period, beating Tolopilo cleanly from above the faceoff circles after Jake DeBrusk chased deep on the backcheck and Linus Karlsson strayed over to his linemate’s side of the ice.

Only 38 seconds later, it was 5-3, as Juraj Slafkovsky caught Tolopilo on his knees and off his near post after rookie Canucks defenceman Tom Willander got trapped between the passer (Ivan Demidov) and the shooter.

And after Tolopilo made one of his best saves of the night on Oliver Kapanen, the Canadiens’ centre soon made it 6-3 anyway, finishing off a poorly-defended rush in which there seemed to be some confusion between Willander and Filip Hronek about who should be covering whom.

“I think win or lose, I always think there’s a lot to take from it,” Willander, 20, said of his NHL learning curve. “You know, every game you make individual decisions and see what works and what doesn’t.”

How thin is the NHL’s margin for error?

“Yeah, it’s a tough league,” Willander said.

Vancouver’s other 20-year-old rookie defenceman, Zeev Buium, was healthy-scratched by Foote for a “reset” but almost certainly will be back in the lineup when the Canucks face the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday in the second of back-to-back games.

The Canucks’ incumbent young defenceman, 21-year-old Elias Pettersson (Junior), was sent Sunday to the American Hockey League for development time there. He was replaced Monday by 23-year-old callup Victor Mancini, who looked fine in 18:08 of ice time and was, according to naturalstattrick.com, the only Canucks skater to post a positive expected-goals percentage at five on five.

Asked about his team’s compete level after surrendering two goals in 38 seconds early in the third, Foote said: “It’s not about that. It’s about a couple goals going in (on mistakes). Maybe Tolo could have had a couple of those. I mean, you know, we just have to keep learning and keep moving forward, and stop making those mistakes.

“It was 3-3 at the start of the third. We just can’t have two quick mistakes. It’s hard to come back from that.”

Playing his first NHL game since Dec. 8, and his fifth game this season, Tolopilo was beaten from the high slot by Montreal defencemen Noah Dobson in the first period and Alexandre Carrier in the second. But he also made a pile of strong saves, including a paddle-down rebound robbery on Kapanen when the game was still scoreless.

Carrier began the night with one goal in 45 games, but scored his second in 20 seconds to make it 3-2 Montreal at 4:51 of the second period after Slafkovsky got behind Willander to create a two-on-one.

“There’s no excuses,” Tolopilo said after allowing six goals on 41 shots. “It wasn’t an easy game but, like, I need to get better. I’d probably like a couple of goals back. There was some really good things that I liked about my game, but some things where I want to clean up and get better.”

Given the Canucks’ losing streak, there was a lot of pressure on Tolopilo to perform after injured starting goalie Thatcher Demko was sent back to Vancouver for further medical testing.

“No, I don’t put too much pressure (on myself),” Tolopilo said. “It’s my job, like, to just go out there and play. You know, we always kind of play under the pressure.”