VANCOUVER — In the last three months, the Vancouver Canucks are on a seven-game losing streak following wins.

We know, there are two problems with this statistic: small sample size and, seriously, they’ve won only seven games in three months? Yes to both.

The Canucks were schooled Thursday by the Tampa Bay Lightning, which had lost seven of their last 10 games but still looked an awful lot like Stanley Cup contenders as they thumped Vancouver 6-2 at Rogers Arena. 

The lopsided loss followed by two nights the Canucks’ impressive 5-2 win against the Florida Panthers, who won the last two Cups but won’t be playing for one this spring.

Tuesday was progress for Vancouver, Thursday a step back. That’s the performance story of a rebuild in 48 hours. Still, it would be nice if the Canucks could learn to start to move forward from victories instead of retreating.

Their last winning streak — literally, just winning more than one National Hockey League game in a row — was in December, 2025. The first day of spring, 2026, is Saturday when the St. Louis Blues visit Vancouver for the sixth installment of the Canucks’ season-long (and man, their season is long) homestand.

“It wasn’t our best today, so it’s important to learn from it,” Canucks centre Marco Rossi said. “I mean, they’re a really good team to play, so it’s important to learn from it, like I said before. It’s important to stay positive. You know, you’re going to have some nights like that, but it’s important just to learn from the mistakes.”

“It was a tough game,” winger Linus Karlsson said. “Watch video tomorrow and try to get better.”

As usual, the Canucks’ communications staff accommodated the Vancouver media’s peculiar and consistent request to speak post-game en masse to goal-scorers to explain a dismal loss.

Actually, Rossi didn’t score, but assisted on goals by Karlsson and Liam Oghren. Rossi has nine points in his last four games and bore almost no responsibility for Vancouver’s 47^th loss in 68 games.

Six different Tampa players scored on goalie Kevin Lankinen, who also was one of the less culpable Canucks, and Nikita Kucherov, Brandon Hagel, Anthony Cirelli and Darren Raddysh all had multi-point games.

Among skaters, only Rossi rivalled any of the best Lightning players. After his two-goal game against the Panthers, Elias Pettersson was back to almost invisible against the Lightning, finishing with one shot on target in 16:10 of ice time.

“Guys kept going at it, but it was one of those nights where we got chasing a little bit,” Canucks coach Adam Foote said. “They took advantage of a couple of mistakes.

“They’ve been playing a lot of years together, so they’re connected. It’s the grit and the 50/50 battles — how hard they’re in on pucks. They’re getting into our body and we’re getting caught on the wrong side, we’re losing those 50/50s. And then when they kick it out, they’re beating you to the net. It’s, again, just being savvy.”

Yes, the Canucks have a lot to learn.

The Canucks have been much better since the Olympic break at displaying more resilience when the game turns against them. But they were utterly answerless early in the second period against the Lightning, who stacked shift upon shift in the Vancouver zone and scored three times in less than five minutes to seize control.

A 1-0 game turned into a 4-0 black hole.

Sure, there was some bad luck for the Canucks during this decisive stretch, like Lankinen losing his stick before getting beaten stick-side by Raddysh, and Kucherov redirecting a puck in off Vancouver defenceman Filip Hronek (after the Tampa star fooled young defenceman Elias Pettersson with a devious stick tap).

But the Canucks couldn’t get the puck, let alone take it down the ice to alleviate pressure. They looked in those minutes completely overmatched. Shots were 10-2 for the Lightning in the first 12 minutes of the middle period before Ohgren scored against the run of play at 12:06, making it 4-1.

“We’ve got to find ways to stop that bleeding,” veteran defenceman Marcus Pettersson said. “I think there’s too much, like, hope that a guy beats a guy and we can get something going, instead of working as a five-man unit and transporting the puck as a five-man unit up the ice. We’re going for hope plays. It feels overwhelming.

“We’ve got to have better plans to help each other out there. I think it starts with being predictable for each other. It starts with one guy setting the tone and closing in our D-zone, and that kind of sets the tone for the next guy and then the next guy. But I think we’re too hesitant and we coast a little bit, and that allows teams to have this O-zone time on us. It feels like all the games that we lose, it’s the O-zone possession time that’s a big difference.”

The Canucks had only two failed power plays, but it was nice to see 20-year-old rookie Zeev Buium quarterback the top unit during a first-period power play that followed a television timeout. Filip Hronek has dominated power-play point time recently, and Tom Willander has also had some looks on the first unit.

Buium’s confidence with the puck, his patience holding it and spinning away from pressure while using his agile skating to try to open lanes, hasn’t translated very often to passes and plays that cut open an NHL defence. He has just eight points in 31 games in all situations with the Canucks, roughly half the production the defenceman had in slightly less ice time with the Minnesota Wild.

But with a ton of offensive upside as a potential future No. 1 defenceman, and as a paramount piece in the Canucks’ rebuild, Buium certainly deserves more power-play reps down the stretch. These final 14 games for Vancouver should be all about pushing their prospects forward.

It looked like Lankinen, the veteran backup who has struggled for most of this season, was building Thursday a fourth straight quality start — his best stretch of the campaign.

He stopped the first 10 Lightning shots before Jake Guentzel, with body position on Willander, opened the scoring on a deflection at 17:37 of the first period. In the second period, Tampa scored on two more tips, as well as Raddysh’s goal when Lankinen did not have his stick.

Six goals on 30 shots is never going to be good enough for an NHL goalie, but Lankinen stopped the shooters on three two-on-ones and made one of his best saves this season to rob Hagel backside with a desperation, lunging save after Kucherov’s cross-ice pass beat four Canuck skaters.

The save was so good that Hagel circled back after the whistle to say something to Lankinen.

There have been several games this season when Lankinen just needed to be better. But he couldn’t reasonably have been expected to do much more on Thursday. This wasn’t his fault.

All season, the Canucks have run an in-arena promotion where everyone scanning a QR code on the scoreboard can save on Uber Eats when the team reaches 20 shots on goal. As a competitive barometer, that bar is far too low.

The Canucks have managed 23 or fewer shots in nine of their last 20 games, and tested Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy just 10 times in the opening 40 minutes before “peppering” him with 11 shots in the third period.

Winger Jake DeBrusk had four of the 10 Vancouver shots in the first two periods, equalling the sum amassed by the other 11 Canucks forwards. Pettersson, the original Elias, scored twice against the Panthers to end a career-long 20-game goal drought and acknowledged he needed to shoot more.

On his second shift Thursday, Drew O’Connor set up Pettersson just above the corner of the crease while he was unchecked in front of Vasilevskiy. But instead of shooting, the Canucks’ $92.8-million man held on to the puck and looked for a pass to someone else. Vancouver did not generate a shot from the sequence.