VANCOUVER — Who had J.T. Miller in their pool getting benched before Elias Pettersson?
This is far from the Vancouver Canucks’ lowest point. But Miller’s ice time of just 11:41 in Sunday’s 5-3 loss to the Nashville Predators was his lowest in a Canuck uniform, his least playing time since Vancouver acquired him from the Tampa Bay Lightning 5 ½ years ago.
Miller had only two third-period shifts as the Canucks allowed the desperate Predators, arguably the biggest under-achievers in the National Hockey League so far this season, to score three times in a little over seven minutes late in the second period to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead.
When Miller was playing well for most of the season’s first month, Pettersson was largely invisible. Now that Pettersson has re-emerged — his power-play one-timer Sunday was the centre’s fifth goal in seven games — Miller was sitting on Rick Tocchet’s bench with the game on the line.
“I went with the guys I thought could get us back in the game,” Tocchet told reporters without flinching.
With the Canucks’ two alpha-forwards, impact centres who are among the best 30 players in the league, so rarely simultaneously at their best, is it any wonder the team has slowed to a sputter in November?
The Canucks are 2-3 during a six-game homestand and on Tuesday they face the toughest visitors yet in the New York Rangers.
They took a step forward in Saturday’s scrappy 4-1 win against the Chicago Blackhawks, then a step back less than 24 hours later against a Nashville team that had won only one of its last seven games and had lost six straight on the road since last winning away from home on Oct. 25.
The Predators may have looked a little more desperate than the 9-5-3 Canucks, but they certainly executed more precisely at key moments.
The Canucks are 3-4-3 at Rogers Arena this season.
“I mean, it’s not something we like,” senior defenceman Tyler Myers said. “It’s things we’re talking about each and every day as we come in. We’ve got to find a way to get more consistent; we’re going back and forth right now. We’re responding after a tough night, but then it seems like we slip a little bit. We’ve just got to work on focusing on the things that. . . allow us to be successful, and then we need to focus on doing it more often.
“There’s no question there’s parts of our game that we want to get better at… whether it’s stops and starting, supporting each other, communicating on the ice better for each other to help each other in different situations. But that’s part of the year. You have to keep building. You can’t dwell on anything bad that’s happening. As soon as you start, you know, playing ‘poor me,’ that doesn’t help anybody. You just have to come to the rink, get better and work together as a group to be more consistent.”
“I liked our five-on-five play,” Tocchet said. “We just need some key guys to make some plays for us.”
After Predator Zachary L’Heureux and Canuck Aatu Raty traded fourth-line goals in the first period, Pettersson’s blast from Quinn Hughes’ return pass put Vancouver ahead 2-1 on a power play at 9:51 of the second period.
But struggling Predator Steven Stamkos was able to measure his shot through traffic and hit his spot over Canuck goalie Kevin Lankinen’s catching glove for a power-play goal at 12:17, 42 seconds after Nils Hoglander’s puck-over-glass penalty.
Just 2:04 later, Roman Josi made it 3-2 for Nashville on what was essentially a five-on-three rush made possible by a hugely-advantageous change: a bad one for the Canucks and a borderline legal one for the Predators.
And at 19:38, 37 seconds after Conor Garland’s neutral-zone holding penalty, Canuck penalty-killing collapsed, allowing Jonathan Marchessault’s seam pass to find Stamkos alone on the back side. Stamkos buried another wrist shot past Lankinen’s glove as the Nashville power play, which had generated just three goals in 10 road games, scored for the second time in seven minutes.
“Obviously, the penalty kill wasn’t good,” Tocchet said. “That kind of was the difference in the game. We’re up 2-1, we had a couple of chances at (an open) net, and then we get penalties and they score the two goals.
“We ran around a little too much. We gave that… flanker shot and we overplayed the one side. I didn’t like our structure in it. We talked about it before the game. We just didn’t do the game plan. A couple of guys ran around. Can’t do that.”
Miller and Pettersson were the penalty-killing forwards on Stamkos’ winning goal.
Ex-Predator Kiefer Sherwood’s long-range goal brought the Canucks within one, down 4-3, with six minutes remaining in the third period. But Gustav Nyquist’s empty-netter sealed the victory.
“Obviously, not our best,” Garland said. “It’s a tough one to be (leading) 2-1 and then all of a sudden it turns pretty quickly there.
“We want to play good every night, and when you don’t, you have to rebound and play well. I think we’re probably searching for consistency more than anything. Just got to play better.”
And for more than one game at a time.
BOESER UPDATE (SORT OF)
As seems to be team policy, the Canucks haven’t confirmed that top winger Brock Boeser is dealing with a concussion after getting hit in the head by Tanner Jeannot on Nov. 7 with a check that earned the Los Angeles King a three-game suspension.
But Tocchet mentioned the P-word, “protocol,” to reporters Sunday morning when asked for an update on Boeser, who missed his fifth straight game.
“I think he’s stepped it up,” Tocchet said of Boeser’s path to a return. “You’ve got to get the heart rate (up). . . you know, that protocol. I don’t know to what extent, but I know that he’s done more and more every day.”
Defenceman Vincent Desharnais missed his second straight game with an undisclosed injury. And with Derek Forbort (lower leg) going back to injured reserve, Elias Pettersson, the rookie defenceman with the Abbotsford Canucks, was recalled Sunday for lineup insurance. EP2 did not dress.
