CHICAGO – Rick Tocchet keeps rolling the dice, playing his third line. They’re actually the nearest thing the coach has to a sure thing.
While the Vancouver Canucks have ridden the swells and eddies of the last month, the forward line of Conor Garland, Teddy Blueger and Dakota Joshua has been immune to the inconsistency that has plagued their team.
When other lines look flat, they’re not. When others are struggling and complicating their games, Garland, Blueger and Joshua continue to put in shifts — literally and figuratively — by safely getting pucks deep, outworking the opposition, creating scoring chances and winning their matchups.
They’ve been a Life Line for the Canucks, who took three of four points in a pair of weekend matinees when they could easily have had one or none.
They’ve been playing well for a month, since the line was formed soon after Blueger returned to the lineup the day before centre Pius Suter was injured on Nov. 12. But for the first couple of weeks, the line got almost nothing on the scoresheet. The players’ fancy stats were great, their goals and assists almost non-existent.
One of the more enthusiastic card players on the Canucks, Garland started using the phrase “keep rolling the dice” to encourage Joshua, and the phrase became a bit of an inside joke with some teammates.
But then they started hitting on their chances, and the line has generated six goals in the last seven games. On Sunday, Garland, Joshua and Blueger helped turn around another leaden start for the Canucks, generating offensive-zone time and momentum and producing a tying goal by Joshua early in the second period in what turned into a 4-3 win over the Chicago Blackhawks.
Just 25 hours earlier and two States over, Joshua set up Blueger for the Canucks’ only goal in a 2-1 shootout loss to the Minnesota Wild on Saturday.
Joshua has done most of the scoring (four goals) and Garland most of the playmaking (five assists), and the trio has combined for 16 points in the last seven games, which have become a 5-0-1 points streak for the Canucks. No wonder Tocchet keeps rolling the dice.
“That was just when we weren’t scoring,” Garland explained of the phrase. “Just stick with it and it’s going to go in eventually. If we go through something like that again, we know that if we play well, (the scoring totals) don’t really matter.
“It doesn’t matter to me; it’s more about winning. I’m at a point in my career where I’m getting older and I just want to be able to have a chance to win. When you play well, you help the team win whether you’re producing (goals) or not.”
After a dreadful first period when the shot clock read 12-1 in favour of the Blackhawks at one point, the Canucks tied the game 2-2 at 3:04 of the second period when Garland button-hooked with the puck, as he often does, waited for Joshua to find space between defenders, then fired a slap-pass for his linemate to deflect past goalie Petr Mrazek.
Just 41 seconds later, Brock Boeser picked his spot just over Mrazek’s pad on a two-on-one for his NHL co-leading 23rd goal of the season and a 3-2 Vancouver lead.
“It’s nice every time we can get one to go in,” Joshua said. “I think we’ve just spent enough time together at this point that we know what the plan is, and we know where to expect each other to be. It makes the game a lot easier. You don’t have to think as much, which goes a long way out there when it’s happening fast. Just being on the same page has helped us out.”
While Tocchet tinkers with other lines – he promoted Suter to play with Elias Pettersson and Ilya Mikheyev on Sunday – he has kept his hands off the Life Line.
“They dragged us into the fight – Dakota, Gars, and Teddy,” Tocchet told reporters.
“I think we’re on the same page as far as mindset, you know?” Blueger said. “Just going to work and trying to outwork the other team. You want to make skilled plays, but I think kind of priority is to make sure we’re outworking the other team.”
Since Nov. 15, which is when Vancouver began to scuffle after little after its 12-3-1 start, Blueger, Joshua and Garland are all top five among Canuck regulars in shot-share and expected-goals-for at five-on-five, according to naturalstattrick.com.
After Joshua and Boeser scored 44 seconds apart, Mikheyev tipped in Tyler Myers’ point shot to make it 4-2 at 15:51 after an outstanding puck retrieval by Suter, who shrugged off an unpenalized elbow by Blackhawk Ted Donota on a faceoff outside the Chicago blue line and sped on to the forecheck to embarrass defenceman Wyatt Kaiser with a takeaway behind the net.
Cole Guttman scored on a power play for the Blackhawks at 6:44 of the third. But the Canucks defended their lead well and got another strong game from goalie Thatcher Demko, who finished with 25 saves. The Blackhawks were on the power play because the newest Canuck Nikita Zadorov was assessed an instigator penalty at 5:21 for manhandling Reese Johnson in a fight after the fringe forward clobbered Pettersson with a hit along the boards.
“I appreciate it so much,” Pettersson told Sportsnet after the game. “It’s not that it was a bad hit or anything — I don’t mind a good hit — but it just shows he’s going to back me up no matter what. It shows that you’re playing for each other. It shows your teammates and everybody. It’s what a good teammate does.”
“One of your better players gets hit, I think that’s something around here that we don’t mind that (instigator) happening,” Tocchet said. “I actually like the rule. It’s a good rule. But I also like the passion in Zee.”
It was a successful weekend for the Canucks, despite two more sluggish starts. They are 21-9-2 and have built a 13-point cushion in the National Hockey League playoff race.
“I have to think of different ways to get the team ready,” Tocchet said. “Whether it’s different stuff in the gym, maybe less me, I don’t know. We have to definitely address it. Getting three points out of these two games in the back to back, you know, we’re happy about getting the points. But we have to clean up our game.”
The Canucks visit the Nashville Predators on Tuesday before ending their trip Thursday against the Dallas Stars. Expect Tocchet to keep rolling the dice with his third line.
“Conor Garland came up with that one,” Joshua said. “He likes to play cards.”
What about Joshua?
“I don’t play cards.”
