Vancouver Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said before Thursday’s game: “We need this. You’ve got to embrace it as a player. You want to play these games; you want to play in a heated rivalry. These are the games you play hockey for. This is a great game to coach, a great game to play.”
And then his team set a new standard for disappointment, falling behind the Edmonton Oilers 3-0 early and losing 6-2 in a game that represented everything that is wrong with the Canucks this season.
After all the hostility at the end of Saturday’s 3-2 win against the Oilers in Vancouver, the suspensions to Connor McDavid and Tyler Myers, after the talk about “response” and “digging in” and using all of this emotion to their advantage, the Canucks barely made a peep on Thursday.
Where has all the heart gone?
Until Teddy Blueger tried to fight Corey Perry early in the third period, one period after the veteran Oilers pest used a post-whistle swarming of Conor Garland as an opportunity to throw to the ice Vancouver captain Quinn Hughes, the Canucks treated the night like a “no-hit, nothing game” that Tocchet had lamented after the morning skate.
But the coach was right about something: “Those games suck.”
With just two wins in their last 10 games, the Canucks appear to be waiting for the trade that didn’t happen on Saturday when J.T. Miller was reportedly on the verge of being dealt to the New York Rangers.
It was hard to notice Miller on Thursday. Really, it was hard to notice any of the Canucks, other than the many making mistakes.
Brock Boeser and Filip Hronek scored for Vancouver late in the second period after Edmonton had pushed its lead to 5-0.
As a followup to their impressive win on Saturday, the Canucks blew a third-period lead Tuesday at home and lost 3-2 Tuesday to the last-place Buffalo Sabres. Tocchet said that game was one of the most disappointing he has coached during his 24 months in Vancouver.
Now three points out of a wild-card playoff spot (after the Calgary Flames handled the Sabres 5-2 on Thursday), the Canucks are proof that things can always get worse.
GOALTENDING RUN?
Thatcher Demko got his fourth straight start on Thursday, part of a run that Tocchet said the goalie needs to play his way back into form after missing eight months with a confounding knee injury. Demko was beaten three times on the first 10 shots he faced in Edmonton, which scored its six goals on 34 shots.
The Canucks were atrocious in front of Demko, mass-producing outnumbered rushes for the Oilers and neglecting the “guts” of the ice that Tocchet so often talks about protecting.
But in these four starts, Demko has allowed 16 goals on 96 shots for a save percentage of .833. And in 12 games since returning six weeks ago from his long injury layoff, last season’s Vezina Trophy runner up has a save rate of just .867.
You can not win with that level of goaltending. Demko would be the first to admit this.
Before Thursday, the Canucks’ team save percentage of .883 ranked 31st in the National Hockey League. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for management to remove Ian Clark’s director-of-goaltending title and send him into exile after the goalie guru asked for health reasons last summer to be excused from daily on-ice duties.
There is illness running through the Canucks, so goalie Kevin Lankinen may not be 100 per cent even if he was able to back up Demko the last two games.
But right now, the team can’t afford to be giving away game reps at the cost of having its best chance to win.
THE McDAVID EFFECT
It was very NHLish that Garland wasn’t penalized for holding McDavid in the final seconds of Saturday’s game, even if a delayed penalty probably wouldn’t have stopped McDavid from hacking the Canuck across the head to earn his three-game suspension.
But after the best player on the planet complained to reporters about the inconsistency of officiating, that a penalty should be a penalty regardless first or last minute — and after Garland admitted that he got away with holding — it was also extremely NHLish that the power plays in the rematch were 4-0 for Edmonton, which scored twice with its advantages.
It was also classic NHL that Garland was never going to get a call in his favour on Thursday. Halfway through the second period, after Garland poked at a puck that Edmonton goalie Calvin Pickard did not appear to have fully covered, he was bloodied by a Darnell Nurse punch to the face. At the back of the pile, Perry took advantage of the distraction to tackle Hughes.
The resulting calls were offsetting penalties: slashing and roughing for Garland, roughing for Nurse and Perry.
The Canucks weren’t happy with referee Trevor Hanson and Brandon Blandina’s interpretation of events. But no one should have been surprised.
Three of the four times the Canucks were shorthanded were due to penalties by ex-Oiler Vincent Desharnais, who looked unplayable on Thursday.
THE INJURY EFFECT
Watching Vancouver’s No. 2 defenceman Filip Hronek get badly and passively beaten by Zach Hyman on Edmonton’s opening goal, then twice pass the puck directly to Oilers in front of his own goal, reminds us how difficult it is for even good players to return after extended injury absences.
A dependable, play-driving star before he hurt his shoulder in November and missed seven weeks, Hronek has been a shadow of himself his first five games back in the lineup. Just as Demko has looked Vezina-opposite. Just as Dakota Joshua struggled after returning from cancer, and Boeser had two goals in 13 games after a concussion, and Miller still does not look like himself more than a month after returning from a personal leave of absence.
There is a critical-mass feel to all adversity the Canucks have been through. And on Thursday, key winger Kiefer Sherwood left the game in the second period and did not return.
QUOTEBOOK
Tocchet, post-game: “I’m sure they are dispirited. . . but you can’t give teams freebies, and we’re giving them.
“We’ve got to correct some stuff. Like, you just can not give people freebies. You can’t take penalties. It makes no sense to me right now. It really doesn’t. It’s the responsibility of every individual to bring something, and I think we’re not getting enough of that right now. So it’s my job to get some of these guys to bring it.”
