The Vancouver Canucks are broken.
Throughout this season, head coach Rick Tocchet has praised his team’s resiliency and how they bounce back from a bad loss.
“Listen, the last couple of years, this is a resilient group,” said Tocchet less than a week ago. “It takes a lot of punches and it gets back up.”
On Thursday night in Vancouver, the Canucks bounced back like a porcelain vase.
After a dreadful performance against the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday, the Canucks didn’t look the least bit resilient against the Los Angeles Kings. Instead, they looked fragile, falling apart at the slightest touch.
Less than a minute into the game, they were down 1-0. It took less than ten minutes to go down 3-0. When the Canucks finally got a goal back in the second period to give the team some life, that life was snuffed out immediately when they gave up a goal a minute later.
It wasn’t just that the Canucks were giving up goals either. It’s that the goals came from what Tocchet called “blunders” and “egregious mistakes.” They were blatant, obvious errors that had Tocchet and assistant coach Adam Foote incredulous on the bench.
“Honestly, some of the mistakes, Footey and I, we don’t understand,” said Tocchet. “We talked about it: certain players that you’ve got to make sure you’re above and D, you’ve got to get out of there if we don’t have any support. But, you know, the only thing that’s going to correct it is our coaching staff and the players — we’ve got to figure this out.”
The most overwhelming part of figuring out what’s wrong with the Canucks, who have lost 11 of their last 14 games, is that it feels like everything is wrong with the Canucks.
“We just give up too many odd-man rushes, too many turnovers, not playing the way we want to play, getting outworked — all of the above,” said Quinn Hughes.
It was awful, nigh-unwatchable hockey. So, the real resilient group on Thursday night was my two eyeballs as I watched this game.
- Here’s the most incredible thing about Thursday’s loss to me: the Canucks had two power plays in the opening ten minutes but, by the end of those ten minutes, the Kings had a 3-0 lead and the Canucks had just two shots on goal, making it the second time in as many games that the Canucks have gone down 3-0 before tallying their third shot. The incompetence is almost impressive.
- The problems started on the opening shift when J.T. Miller’s pass to the point didn’t have enough juice to reach Filip Hronek. The smart thing for Hronek to do was to back off into the neutral zone but instead, he tried to step up, allowing Adrian Kempe to chip the puck past him and race away for a 2-on-1. Quinn Hughes got a piece of Kempe’s centring pass, sending it fluttering into the air, but Alex Turcotte still got his stick on it to redirect it past Thatcher Demko.
- “I actually thought we were going to start well,” said Tocchet, who seemed at a loss that his belief had been so utterly wrong. “We just made some egregious, egregious plays. Pinching, the wrong decision at the wrong time — you can’t do that. Some guys are just making some really bad reads right now.”
- The Canucks’ power play had two opportunities to draw even in the minutes immediately after Turcotte’s opening goal. They didn’t get a single shot. By the end of the game, the Canucks had gone 0-for-5 on the power play with exactly one shot on goal. That was despite the coaching staff digging deep into their bag of tricks and pulling out ideas like “taking J.T. Miller off the first power play unit” and “putting J.T. Miller back on the first power play unit.”
- Two months ago, Tanner Jeannot hit Brock Boeser with a cheap shot that took Boeser out of the lineup for nearly three weeks with a concussion, for which Jeannot was suspended a mere three games. He should have been suspended for a lot longer, which is about the only thing that will actually dissuade cheap shots. Anyway, Vincent Desharnais stepped in to “avenge” Boeser with one of the saddest attempts at a fight I’ve seen in a long time. Desharnais looked like he had no idea what he was doing and didn’t throw a single punch, which is strange, because it was his 15th career fight. And thus, the code was satisfied, I guess.
- The Kings’ second goal was painful to watch. Kevin Fiala stepped right around Miller at the point and then Miller went into full coast mode as his teammates scrambled to cover for him. Hughes and Boeser both stepped up on Fiala, which left Turcotte, , so alone. Fiala got a shot through to Demko, Turcotte finished off the rebound, and Canucks fans everywhere immediately became body language experts.
- “It's hard,” . “I'm trying to be mentally strong. And I think this is where your character shows, in moments like this. So today, my mindset was to work my ass off and see what happens. And I really still think I did that, but it's just costly mistakes right now. I just need to focus more.
- 24 seconds later, it was 3-0. Elias Pettersson got caught flat-footed after battling for a puck in the neutral zone and Jonathan Lekkerimäki didn’t take a direct line on the backcheck, so neither one was anywhere near Kempe when he got a centring pass from Turcotte and tucked it past Demko. The mistakes were piling up around the Canucks like a hoarder’s magazines.
- “They had three goals because of blunders,” said Tocchet. “It happened in Winnipeg, same thing. We’ve got to correct it — or I’ve got to correct it. I mean, I can’t let it go but I can’t play two lines. So, I need some of these guys to step it up. Even if they just play neutral, just as long as they don’t make some egregious mistakes.”
- Tocchet took a timeout after the third goal, which is unusual, as he’s been unwilling to call timeout when things are going awry early in games this season. It seemed to make a difference. The Canucks immediately pushed back hard over the next ten minutes, with Phil Di Giuseppe forcing a great save from Darcy Kuemper, Jake DeBrusk hitting the post, and Nils Höglander buzzing around the offensive zone for another chance. Did they score? No. But they looked like they gave a damn, which was nice.
- “There’s some guys who are really tight, so we have to relax,” said Tocchet about the message during the timeout. “But in saying that, you have to have a little focus in your game. I think they had three goals where we have guys diving everywhere. Good players doing it too. You can’t do that. You just can’t do that.”
- Even in the midst of so much going wrong, Quinn Hughes is still brilliant. With five minutes to go in the second period, Hughes made something out of nothing. He turned on a dime to shake free of Warren Foegele at the point, then made like he was , and flung a dart into the bullseye that is the top corner for the Canucks’ only goal.
- Hughes’ goal gave fans about a minute of hope that the Canucks might have a chance at a comeback, a hope that was erased by the Canucks making a complete out of a transition from 4-on-4 to the penalty kill that gifted the Kings a power play goal.
- As the Kings got their man out of the penalty box, Miller dumped the puck in with two of his teammates already deep in the Kings’ zone, then inexplicably followed the puck in as if it was still even-strength. That gave the Kings a clearcut 2-on-1 behind him and Fiala used the possibility of a pass to walk in and pick his spot on Demko to make it 4-1. It was an utter disaster of proportions.
- After the goal, Tocchet was spotted saying something to Miller, who got up and moved to the end of the bench, which is often a sign that a player is getting benched. That wasn’t entirely the case, as Miller kept playing, but he got just six more shifts the rest of the game, playing less than three minutes in the third period. He finished the game with the lowest ice time at 5-on-5 on the Canucks.
- “He's struggling,” said Tocchet of Miller. “It seems like every time he's on the ice, something bad happens. I think he's got some bad luck, but he's also got some reads that he's got to look at himself right now and focus on some of these reads. I mean, you can't dive in on the 4-on-4, things like that. I think he's trying sometimes but I think the focus level has to get a little higher.”
- I'm not sure there's a more backhanded compliment that a coach can give a player than, "I think he's trying sometimes."
- For good measure, the Kings got a lucky bounce to take a 5-1 lead. As Demko watched Derek Forbort and Tyler Myers battle for the puck behind the net, it was suddenly revealed that neither Forbort nor Myers were actually anywhere near the puck, which had popped loose and was sitting at the side of the net. Foegele was the only player who spotted it and he pulled it out front and chipped it over Demko’s pad on the backhand.
- With the game out of reach, it might have been nice to rest Quinn Hughes in the third period. Instead, he played over eight minutes in the final frame and finished the game with a whopping 29:26 in ice time. It didn’t help that Carson Soucy got a ten-minute misconduct midway through the third and Tyler Myers left the game with six minutes left after a collision with Quinton Byfield.
- That’s right, in case this game wasn’t bad enough, the Canucks might have also lost another player to injury. Myers seemed to be favouring his left arm after the collision. Hopefully, he only left the game out of an abundance of caution and won’t miss any additional time.
- There were a few scattered boos in Rogers Arena at the poor performance on Thursday but the Canucks ought to be concerned that there weren’t more of them. At this point, Canucks fans might not even care enough to boo. The most disconcerting moment of the game for me was when there was a questionable penalty call on Brock Boeser and the fans couldn’t even muster up a “Ref, you suck!” chant.
- At this point, can you blame Canucks fans for checking out, especially when it looks like some of the players on the ice, including the guy who’s supposed to be the emotional leader, look checked out? It doesn’t help that fans are paying through the nose to see these lousy home-ice performances because the owners raised ticket prices based on one brief playoff run. Fans are going to stop showing up and you can’t blame them.
