The Vancouver Canucks took a home run swing with their acquisition of Elias Lindholm well ahead of the trade deadline. They spent their two biggest trade assets — or at least the two they were willing to part with — to get the centre from the Calgary Flames: their 2024 first-round pick and prospect defenceman Hunter Brzustewicz.
But sometimes when you swing for the fences, the pitch goes off the end of your bat and dribbles into the infield for a hustle-it-out single.
Lindholm scored two goals in his first game with the Canucks against the Carolina Hurricanes, then another two goals against the Detroit Red Wings five games later. That’s it for goals from the former 42-goal scorer: he has a grand total of 4 goals and 3 assists in 19 games since the Canucks acquired him, including just 1 point in his last 12 games.
To put it bluntly, that’s nowhere near good enough.
But it might not be entirely his fault. According to Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet, Lindholm isn’t “fully healthy.”
“He's a little banged up too, to be honest with you, so he's playing through a little thing here and there,” said Tocchet. “It's nothing major.”
"It's tough to score goals if you don't shoot the puck."
At the very least, Tocchet's revelation provides some context for his struggles and potentially a little bit of forgiveness from demanding Canucks fans. But as for Lindholm himself, he makes no excuses and is as demanding on himself as fans are, if not more so.
When asked what the Canucks coaching staff has said to help him break out of his slump, Lindholm placed the onus squarely on his own shoulders.
“We talk a little bit but I mean, mostly it's from myself,” said Lindholm. “I don't know if I'm even averaging a shot on net since I came here. You want to be closer to three. It’s tough to score goals if you don't shoot the puck.”
Lindholm gave a rueful laugh at that last point, though he slightly undersells his average shots per game. In his 19 games with the Canucks, Lindholm has 27 shots on goal, for an average of 1.42 shots per game — less than half as many as he’d like. In his last nine games, Lindholm has just seven shots.
Even with that in mind, Lindholm feels like his game is coming around. While he didn’t get any shots on goal against the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night, he did have four shot attempts and created several dangerous chances for his linemates, Ilya Mikheyev and Sam Lafferty. By the end of the game, that line had a 16-to-6 advantage in shot attempts when they were on the ice together at 5-on-5, while high-danger chances were 5-to-1.
“Until I start shooting more, it'll be tough, but I feel like my game overall is going in the right direction,” said Lindholm. “So now it's just to maintain that and keep getting better each and every day.”
"It's just the subtleties of the game that you try to help him with."
Tocchet suggested that Lindholm doesn’t need much to get his game back on track. Instead, it’s more about making minor adjustments.
“With veteran guys like him — he's an 800-game guy — it's little things,” said Tocchet, before rattling off a series of things Lindholm doesn’t need to work on: “He knows how to play the game. He knows how to play without the puck. Obviously, his faceoffs are great.”
Instead, Tocchet drills down to smaller details — moving feet more on one specific play or releasing the puck more quickly on another.
“I don't think you have to go through a whole X's and O's with Lindholm,” said Tocchet. “It's more the subtleties. Sometimes you tip off before you shoot, we're finding you're tipping off your shot, where maybe before there was a little more deception in your game.
“It's no different than Hughes, no different than Millsy, Pettersson. Good players need that a little bit. It's not like we sit them down and have to go okay, we've got to rework his game. It's just the subtleties of the game that you try to help him with.”
"You've got to just remind yourself that you still can put the puck in the net."
Some of those subtleties come with confidence. When a player is confident that they can score with their shot, they’re more likely to get their shot off quickly; if the puck hasn’t been going in for them lately, they’re more likely to hesitate and second-guess themselves.
For a player like Lindholm, who has produced at a high level before, sometimes they can bank on that past experience.
“In all pro sports, if you have good confidence, you're a good player and when you're not confident, you're going through a tough time,” said Lindholm. “You've just got to remind yourself that I am a really good player. It just hasn't worked out so far. A couple years ago, I scored 42.”
“I know I can do it, but you've got to just remind yourself that you still can put the puck in the net,” he added with a wry chuckle.
Tocchet also added an interesting note on Lindholm, that perhaps suggested he plays things a little too safe. Lindholm takes a lot of pride in his defensive game and is always careful to stay above his check in the offensive zone, which prevents potential odd-man rushes but can also limit a player’s opportunities to create scoring chances.
“He does play a smart game where there are some times, 'Hey, man, go for it,'” said Tocchet. “I think that will all come together. We've just got to connect all those dots together and I think he'll be fine.”
The Canucks are counting on it. While his scoring has been missing thus far in the regular season, all will be forgiven if he can put up some points in the playoffs.
