On Sunday, the Vancouver Canucks were officially eliminated from the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
On Tuesday, they looked like a team that had been officially eliminated from the playofs.
Against the Seattle Kraken, the Canucks looked like they were ready for the season to end. It showed up in how they played on the ice, it showed up in how they coasted to the bench on line changes, and it showed up in their body language. They just looked drained.
Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet did not mince words after the game and made his frustration eminently clear.
“The energy level was not there,” said Tocchet. “After a day off, that’s the alarming thing. I’ve got to take a look at that because, if you have days off and guys don’t know how to prepare on days off, then I’m going to have to start babysitting a little bit more.
“That’s hockey 101: coach’s rules. If you can’t be professional on a day off and come in and have energy, obviously you’re doing the wrong thing on a day off. I don’t know what they’re doing.”
The players’ body language is what seemed to bother Tocchet the most.
“Body language is something that you can control,” said Tocchet. “I thought we’d been getting better at it but it’s not going to creep back in — I’m not going to allow it. Bad body language is not mental toughness; weak-minded people have body language like that.
“One and done, if you do it once in a blue moon, I get it. We’ve all done it. But it’s got to be once in a blue moon. You can’t have a steady diet of it… It’s a weakness — a mental weakness — when you have bad body language all the time.”
It seemed like so many of the changes — structural and cultural — that Tocchet was pushing seemed to be undone in this game. Tocchet felt much the same way.
“I saw some slow changes. I saw guys when they were tired, not getting the puck in — they tried to make a play at the blue, then change,” said Tocchet. “These are bad habits that I thought we were striding on but obviously, it crept back in in some people’s games.”
There are just five games left in the Canucks’ season, so perhaps there could be some forgiveness for the lack of energy, the lapse in details, and the bady body language. Tocchet, however, was not in a forgiving mood.
“Maybe guys are looking at the end of the season, I don’t know,” said Tocchet. “It looked like some guys were just not into it. You can’t afford not to be into it, you’re trying for your NHL lives to play in the league.”
I have to confess: I was looking at the end of the season when I watched this game.
- The Canucks managed just 18 shots on goal against the Kraken, just shy of their season low. “We got outworked in pretty much every area of the game,” said J.T. Miller. “Maybe had some looks in the third but that’s a playoff team sitting on a two-goal lead: they know what they’re doing.”
- The game actually started well for the Canucks, with Elias Pettersson pulling off a highlight-reel move to open the scoring. He figured out a new way to score that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. After Andrei Kuzmenko dangled around his check but lost control of the puck, Pettersson took the loose puck and toe-dragged it behind his own back into the net. Like Detective Lucky Piquel’s junior partner, that goal was bonkers.
- “I saw that [Martin] Jones was out of position or didn’t cover the far side of the net, so just tried to, I don’t know, flick it between my legs or whatever — I don’t know what I did,” said Pettersson.
- Akito Hirose got some time on the penalty kill in his second NHL game and managed to save a goal with a quick stick, preventing a potential tap-in by Jaden Schwartz. Honestly, watching Hirose calmly deal with pressure by making smart, simple passes was one of the few highlights of this game for me, so I honestly hope Tocchet plays him as much as possible over the next five games.
- “He’s a smart player,” said Tocchet. “He's got to put some weight on, he's got to get bigger, but for thinking the game, I didn't think he was in trouble that much tonight…That’s why hockey IQ is so important.”
“I just like the fact that you tell him something — we talked about some of the reverses if the other team overloads, and he did it,” Tocchet added. “He didn’t panic. Usually, some defencemen will panic and throw it up the pile. He actually reversed it twice and we beat pressure. That’s a good thing, when a young player like that is in a pressure situation, you see how he deals with it. There’s something there, for sure.”
- Anthony Beauvillier made it 2-0 on a brilliant assist by Conor Garland. Nils Åman’s dump-in deflected off the end boards out to Garland and he sold a fake slap shot like he was Hafid, then sent a backdoor pass to Beauvillier for an absurdly open net. They say Martin Jones is still trying to stop Garland’s slap shot to this day.
- Other than the goal, the line of Beauvillier, Åman, and Garland were actually quite bad. Beauvillier’s goal was literally the only shot on goal the Canucks had when any of those three players were on the ice. To be fair to Garland, he also sent a slap shot off the post on the power play in the third period, which didn’t count as a shot on goal, but still, one shot on goal is pretty bad.
- Speaking of one shot on goal, that’s all the Canucks managed when Kyle Burroughs was on the ice too. Burroughs is a great depth defenceman but he was out of his depth on a pairing with Quinn Hughes and dragged them both underwater. Shots on goal were 10-to-1 for the Kraken when Burroughs was on the ice at 5-on-5 and 10-to-3 when Hughes was on the ice at 5-on-5. Unfortunately, Burroughs was a bit of a boat anchor for the good ship Hughes.
- There was an early sign that Collin Delia was feeling a bit shaky when a puck snuck through him and had to be cleared out of the crease by Hughes. He got beaten even worse for the Kraken’s first goal. To be fair, Yanni Gourde used Åman as a screen but the shot came from far enough out that Delia should have been able to make like a ska band and pick it up, pick it up.
- “Our power play has been very inconsistent lately,” said Miller. “It just seems sloppy and we seem to be getting on our own page a little bit when things aren’t going our way. We’re not really making a difference in the games lately, which sucks.”
- Technically, the Canucks’ power play did make a difference in this game, just in the wrong way. They got a nearly minute-long 5-on-3 early in the second period when they were still up 2-1, giving them a chance to extend their lead. Instead, they were entirely disorganized and managed just one shot on goal. Then as the 5-on-3 came to a close, Kuzmenko fired a bad-angle shot wide and it caromed out to Vince Dunn as he came out of the penalty box for a breakaway, forcing Delia to make an alert glove save.
- The Canucks never fully recovered. With time left on the power play, Myers sent an aimless dump-in to the far corner that was picked off and rung around to the blue line, where Garland couldn’t hold it in. Brandon Tanev raced out with the puck on a 2-on-1, kept it himself, and went top corner faster than a teenager trying to close a porn pop-up just as his mom walks into the room.
- An uncharacteristic turnover by Pettersson led to the go-ahead Kraken goal. He tried to make a short pass to Hughes but instead gave it right to Jordan Eberle, who sniped the puck off the far post and in.
- Pettersson followed up the uncharacteristic turnover with an uncharacteristic penalty, just his seventh of the season. On the subsequent power play, a Daniel Sprong point shot took a double deflection: first Eberle got a piece of it, then Schwartz got the whole thing to send the puck past Delia to make it 4-2. As Yogurt says, never underestimate the power of the Schwartz.
- The Canucks got a four-minute power play in the third period after Åman drew a high stick. Down 4-2 and needing to shift the momentum, the Canucks managed just one shot on goal in the entire four minutes. Disastrous.
- Matty Beniers hit the empty net with a minute remaining in the third period to make it 5-2 and put the game to bed. The Canucks looked like they could use the sleep.
- There seemed to be an incident near the end of the second period where Miller left the ice and went straight down the tunnel. When asked what happened, Miller simply said, “I’m not 100 per cent sure.”
- Tocchet wasn’t sure exactly what happened either but didn’t seem happy with Miller’s body language. He initially said, “I think Millsy was frustrated that he missed that breakaway, I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.” Immediately after that, however, is when Tocchet went into his feelings on body language, saying that only “weak-minded people” have bad body language all the time. Make of that what you will.
