With one fairly minor exception, Dave Nonis decided to stand pat at the National Hockey League trade deadline. It’s hard to doubt that the general manager of the Vancouver Canucks tried to make a few things happen. But when it came time to pull the trigger on a significant move, Nonis either didn’t have what other teams were looking for or wasn’t prepared to meet the hefty asking prices reported necessary to fetch a big name. So Nonis opted instead to show faith in the hockey club he had assembled, believing he had enough talent in the locker room to make some noise come playoff time.

The only noise Nonis might hear a month from now is the calls for his head from a fan base growing increasingly frustrated as the realization hits home that the Canucks are once again pinning their hopes as a hockey team on a star goaltender and very little else. Understandably, Nonis has no other option but to publicly defend his players and their chances to do great things this spring, but even he had to know that swapping Matt Cooke for Matt Pettinger wasn’t going to do much to bolster his club for the stretch drive.

That faith the GM had shown in his players was promptly rewarded by his group frittering away a lead with 15 seconds to play against Colorado in the first game after the deadline, squandering a 2–0 third-period lead to Columbus in the next game, and, to top it off, getting run out of the rink against a glorified minor-league team in Chicago. And now the general manager has to be hoping that embarrassing 4–1 loss to the Blackhawks isn’t a sign of things to come as the Canucks hit the toughest month of their schedule.

On the heels of the two late-game losses on home ice, the Canucks responded with arguably their poorest period of the season in the Windy City. After saying all the right things about learning from the losses to the Avalanche and Blue Jackets and vowing to turn it around against the Hawks, the Canucks made a statement, all right. Their lack of intensity, unwillingness to compete, and overall disinterest in playing a physical game spoke volumes as they were outshot 9–2 and outhit 15–2 by a bunch of teenagers and assorted call-ups running around in Blackhawk jerseys.

But it really isn’t just those three games that tell the story of this team’s stumble toward the finish line. Nine times in the dozen games they played in the month of February, the Canucks held a lead at some point in the third period. That should translate into wins at the NHL level. But in just three of those nine games the Canucks were able to win in regulation time. The other six opponents—many of them teams they’re battling with for playoff positions—managed to gain at least one valuable point in the standings.

Although they held the lead in the Northwest Division on New Year’s Day, the Canucks mustered wins in just 10 of the 24 games that followed. The loss to kick off March—a month in which the Canucks will cram 15 games into 29 nights, with 10 of those contests on the road—hardly set the tone for the rigorous tests to follow. And now instead of thinking of reeling in Minnesota and Calgary in the division race, the Canucks have no choice but to turn their attention to the teams charging hard in their rear-view mirror. The two-month malaise has left the Canucks scrambling to hold off the likes of Nashville and Phoenix—two teams written off as pretenders prior to the season—just to squeeze into the top eight in the Western Conference.

Without an airlift of talent at the trade deadline, the Canucks are moving forward with the group they’ve got. It’s basically “what you see is what you get”—although many clearly aren’t enamoured with what they see and fewer still are holding out much hope for any kind of run come playoff time. Even though the Canucks seem to have a better team on paper than they did at this time last year, it’s hard to imagine this group getting past the opening round of the playoffs—if they make it that far.

When he gets clearance to return from wrist surgery later this month, centre Brendan Morrison will be the only addition to the once injury-riddled but now relatively healthy Canuck lineup. Morrison is a fine hockey player, but in no way is the Pitt Meadows native a saviour. Roberto Luongo is the only saviour in the club, and unfortunately he can’t score goals, which remains the team’s biggest weakness and one that was not addressed by management before the season or with any kind of deadline deal.

The trade deadline signals the true start of the stretch run in the National Hockey League, and with it comes tighter checking and the need for players to sacrifice to succeed. The Canucks rely on Daniel and Henrik Sedin to provide much of the team’s offence, and those two still haven’t proven an ability to consistently produce in the playoffs or in playofflike conditions. And three-game pointless streaks for each of them following the deadline hasn’t done much to suggest that a whole lot has changed this season.

Along with Luongo, this is the Sedins’ team now. If the twins can’t find a way to raise their games during this playoff push, there’s hardly reason to believe the Canucks will be part of the playoff party when it starts next month. It’s not just the Sedins: the Canucks need their best offensive players to lead. But good teams don’t do many of the things the Canucks have done in the past couple of weeks. Good teams protect leads rather than watch them slip away. Good teams play hard from the opening face-off; they don’t retreat when the going gets tough.

To take the course of action he did at the trade deadline, Nonis must have believed he had a good team. The Canucks still control their playoff fate, so it’s too soon to render a final judgement on the general manager’s deadline-day strategy. But based on the early returns, doing little at the deadline may have been a big mistake.