from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

The Vancouver Canucks have evolved so much, so quickly, that the 72 hours between their game Saturday night and the next one on Tuesday will be filled across the city with angry talk about how the home team was robbed by referees in a 4-3 overtime loss to the New York Rangers.

Before this season, all that outrage and despair was generally channelled towards the team itself, which didn’t need much help from officials or anyone else in order to lose National Hockey League games.

On Saturday, a too-many-players penalty to Canuck Dakota Joshua while his team was already shorthanded led to the Rangers’ second five-on-three goal of the game and another power-play marker 63 seconds later as New York turned a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead.

And after Carson Soucy’s slapshot tied it for Vancouver with 4:18 remaining, K’Andre Miller won it for New York on a two-on-one in overtime after Canuck Elias Pettersson turned over the puck when tripped skate-on-skate by Ranger Chris Kreider.

Rangers' Miller snipes OT goal after Pettersson tripped at other endPlay VideoPlayMuteCurrent Time 0:00/Duration 1:40Loaded: 9.86% CaptionsFullscreen

The too-many-men call against Joshua, who jumped on the ice (but did not seem to impact the play) when Pettersson was still well away from the bench on the penalty kill, felt harsh. The skate-on-skate contact in OT, as Pettersson was cutting back on Kreider, looked like a penalty.

But fixating on the officiating in a game when each team had six power plays obscures a larger point: Saturday was yet another test aced by the Canucks as they rebrand themselves under coach Rick Tocchet.

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Game highlights are below.