VANCOUVER — When a team pulls off a seemingly impossible, jaw-dropping comeback win, sometimes it feels like they got away with one. It can feel like they rode a twist of fate, especially if it’s a game they were largely outplayed in.

Take the Vancouver Canucks’ Game 4 comeback win against the Nashville Predators in Round 1, for example. The Predators handily controlled play for most of that evening and looked spotless defensively for the first 17 minutes of the third period nursing a 3-1 lead. Vancouver looked offensively inept for most of the third period, stuck in their zone defending, until Brock Boeser miraculously scored twice with the goalie pulled to force overtime, setting the stage for Elias Lindholm’s sudden-death winner.

Walking into the Canucks’ locker room after that game, you could sense that the team felt fortunate to steal that game back. Every player who spoke to the media acknowledged the group’s guts and resilience but stressed how much better they needed to play for the rest of the series.

Vancouver’s stunning 5-4 win in Game 1 against Edmonton was different. This wasn’t lucky or flukey. This wasn’t a three-minute heist. The Canucks deserved this result based on how convincingly they dictated the game for the final 40 minutes.

Sure, they made mistakes to dig a hole before that pushback. The Canucks came out sloppy for the first several minutes of the first period. They took a delay-of-game penalty 40 seconds into the game, putting Edmonton’s vaunted power play to work. After starting the kill strong, Ian Cole took the puck up ice for a counterattack chance instead of making a simple clear and changing. Edmonton went back the other way and got set up, trapping Cole for a 91-second shift. Leon Draisaitl fired a pass through a tired Cole’s legs to feed Zach Hyman for a backdoor goal. Later in the first period, Cole made another mistake, this one allowing Draisaitl to set up Mattias Ekholm for a screened shot that beat Arturs Silovs from distance.

Vancouver deserved the 2-0 deficit it had entering the first intermission. But to be down 4-1 more than halfway through the second? That felt cruel.

The Canucks were building momentum with threatening offensive zone shifts, trailing by just a goal thanks to Dakota Joshua’s tally 53 seconds into the second period when the first big bounce went against them. Cody Ceci’s long-range shot redirected off Cole in front to make it 3-1. Less than a minute later, Hyman’s rush shot deflected off Tyler Myers’ stick and fooled Silovs to make it 4-1.

The Canucks were down three goals and yet they’d surrendered just three high-danger chances at five-on-five to that point. Offensively, Conor Garland was stopped on a breakaway and an Ilya Mikheyev backhander hit the post, among other prime opportunities.

“I thought we were playing pretty good even though it was 4-1,” said Rick Tocchet.

How did the game flip from there? The Oilers mustered just eight shots on goal in the final 40 minutes, which is unacceptable considering Silovs, Vancouver’s third-string goalie, looked vulnerable. They were passive and struggled to break the puck out with poise and pace. Draisaitl left the bench with an apparent injury midway through the second period and didn’t look nearly as dangerous when he finally returned for the third period. Vancouver was fortunate to get a bounce or two finally go its way. The Canucks’ depth proved superior in Game 1.

Those are all legitimate reasons why the Oilers lost. But in the middle of the disastrous blown lead stood two defenders and a goaltender who were repeatedly exploited: The Darnell Nurse/Cody Ceci pair and Stuart Skinner.

Nurse and Ceci were on the ice for four of Vancouver’s five goals. The Canucks pummelled Nurse to the tune of a 12-1 advantage in five-on-five scoring chances. They don’t even have the excuse of playing tough matchups to fall back on because they primarily matched up against Vancouver’s third line of Lindholm, Joshua and Garland.

Joshua was first to find the loose puck, ahead of Ceci, off a point shot from the end boards for the Canucks’ first goal. They had difficulty breaking out against that line’s hounding, aggressive forecheck on Vancouver’s second goal, although Edmonton’s wingers needed to provide more support on the zone exit attempt. In the third period, Nurse failed to clear the zone, which quickly led to Miller’s tip goal to bring the Canucks within one.

Less than a minute later, on Conor Garland’s game winner, Nurse was caught flat-footed and too slow to switch from Joshua to Garland defending the rush. Skinner needed to make this save but had Nurse defended better, it never would have hit the net in the first place.

CONOR GARLAND PUTS THE CANUCKS UP BY ONE!!!! #Canucks | #LetsGoOilers
📽️: Sportsnet | NHL pic.twitter.com/0UgBkxIfiH

— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) May 9, 2024

Look, every defence pair is going to have a bad game every once in a while. The problem with Nurse and Ceci is they’re struggling with increasing regularity during the biggest moments of the playoffs. Vegas pummelled the Nurse-Ceci pair by a 7-2 score at five-on-five in the second round last year. Nurse and Ceci are bleeding chances against in the 2024 playoffs so far, controlling a dreadful 37.1 percent of expected goals while getting outscored 7-3 at five-on-five.

The Oilers aren’t going to win a Stanley Cup if their second pair continues operating like this. Nurse has the raw athletic tools to perform much better than this. He skates well, possesses above-average size and flashes good offensive vision from time to time. The onus should be on him as a $9.25 million AAV defenceman to step up and drive a solid second pair.

It’s wild how wide the margin between Edmonton’s expensive second pair and the Canucks’ unsexy, makeshift second pair of Carson Soucy and Tyler Myers was in Game 1. Myers spent 9:58 head-to-head against Connor McDavid at five-on-five, over which the Oilers generated just three shots on goal and zero high-danger chances. McDavid didn’t register a shot on goal for the first time in his playoff career. On top of that, Soucy picked up two assists — the first was a key pinch up the boards to keep the play alive leading to Lindholm’s goal and the second was a wicked cross-seam pass to Boeser, which led to Miller’s tip goal.

Edmonton’s second pair got torched all night. Vancouver’s second pair shut down McDavid and even chipped in with offence. This trend could change in a heartbeat — Nurse/Ceci could stabilize next game and/or McDavid could easily start torching Soucy/Myers — but the Oilers’ blue-line depth is once again emerging as a major question mark.

So is Skinner’s play after a dreadful Game 1 performance. Skinner deflected the Lindholm goal in off his own goal stick; he had ample time to seal the post on Miller’s tip goal. And then Garland’s goal from a weird angle was just ugly. The 25-year-old sophomore goalie has played very well the last few months and was steady in the first round against the Los Angeles Kings, so that should inspire some optimism for a bounce-back, but he imploded in the playoffs last year and is unproven in high-leverage moments (the latter is also true of Silovs).

It hasn’t been easy for the Canucks to generate offence these days: Vancouver ranked 24th in goals scored per game from the All-Star break to the end of the regular season and scored the fewest goals per game of any playoff team that advanced to Round 2. Yet playing against an Oilers team with vulnerable blue-line depth and a mystery box goaltender, the Canucks looked dynamic and threatening offensively again. It’s a warning bell that the Nurse/Ceci pair and goaltending are the Oilers’ biggest uncertainties in the second round for a second straight year.

(Photo: Bob Frid / USA Today)