“I apologize to the fans,” said Vancouver Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet at the beginning of his post-game press conference Thursday night. “We’re not playing good enough at home. It’s on me.”
The apology came after a 5-2 loss to the New York Islanders that brought them to a 2-3-3 record on home ice. It was also the fourth time this season the Canucks have given up five or more goals at home. That happened just twice all of last season.
The Canucks were one of the best teams in the NHL on home ice last season, with a 26-9-5 record. Not only did that play a big role in their success in winning the Pacific Division, but it also meant that Canucks fans consistently got their money’s worth when they came out to Rogers Arena.
This season, the Canucks haven’t quite provided the same value.
“It’s a frustrating situation because the fans are paying — what is it, two, three, four, or five hundred bucks a ticket and we’re throwing some duds at them,” said Tocchet. “I apologize to the fans again. We’ve got to correct this.”
The Canucks kicked off the season by giving up a 4-1 first-period lead in their home opener to lose 6-5 to the Calgary Flames in overtime. They lost 6-0 to the New Jersey Devils two weeks ago before embarking on a very successful three-game road trip, then lost 7-3 to the Edmonton Oilers when they got back to Vancouver.
And on Thursday night, the Canucks were somehow even worse.
The Canucks managed just three shots on goal in the first period but at least they scored a goal and escaped the period tied 1-1. Surely that was the low point and they could only go up from there, right?
Instead, they again managed just three shots on goal in the second period, gave up two more goals, and were down 3-1 heading into the third. It was an immensely frustrating 40 minutes of hockey.
The Canucks finally seemed to wake up in the third and piled up a whopping 20 shots in the final frame, but it didn’t matter. The game had already been lost.
It was disconnected, disinterested, and discombobulated hockey. And it’s hockey that the Canucks have served their home fans too many times already this season.
The Canucks made me regret that I watched this game.
- The game started in such a promising fashion for the Canucks. Less than three minutes into the game, Jonathan Lekkerimäki scored his first career NHL goal to open the scoring and it was a beauty. J.T. Miller drew in two defenders off the rush, then put the puck in Lekkerimäki’s wheelhouse and he fired it in with a shot so wicked it should be played by Idina Menzel on Broadway.
- It was a 93.4 mph shot and Lekkerimäki made it look effortless. His technique on his shot is utterly flawless. Quinn Hughes called it “The first of many” for a reason. That is a pure goalscorer’s goal.
- I know that Miller was likely legitimately happy for Lekkerimäki scoring his first goal but, as a heart-on-his-sleeve type of guy, he takes losses hard. So I apologize for finding his deadpan delivery of “It was a nice goal, I’m happy for him” immensely funny.
- That was the Canucks’ first shot of the game. They had just five more through the end of the second period. Stunning.
- The Islanders tied things up before the end of the first with a power play goal. The Islanders’ power play looked like it was in slow motion with their methodical puck movement but it was quick enough for Anders Lee to pass the puck through Tyler Myers to Jean-Gabriel Pageau for a backdoor tap-in. Maybe the slow puck movement lulled Myers to sleep.
- You can tell things aren’t going well for the Canucks when Quinn Hughes, the most elusive skater on the team, gets rocked by a clean and hard open-ice hit. Maxim Tsyplakov absolutely crushed Hughes near the end of the first period with probably the hardest hit Hughes has ever received.
- Any hope of a bounceback period from the Canucks died 14 seconds in when the Islanders took the lead on a brutal bounce. Scott Mayfield’s point shot took a double deflection off two Canucks’ sticks — first Pius Suter’s, then Miller’s — before knuckleballing past Kevin Lankinen, who looked like a baseball catcher trying to catch an R.A. Dickey pitch.
- Two minutes later, the Canucks’ defensive coverage completely disintegrated, surprisingly with the usually reliable third line on the ice. Kiefer Sherwood and Danton Heinen both chased the puck-carrier into the corner, leaving Simon Holmstrom wide open in the slot. Grant Hutton found him for an initial chance that Lankinen stopped but Pierre Engvall had position on Carson Soucy to be first to the rebound, while Tyler Myers was too busy searching for the puck to tie up Engvall’s stick to prevent him from making it 3-1.
- “Our netfront, there’s too many goalmouth scramble goals,” said Tocchet. “It’s got to stop.”
- Tocchet and assistant coach Adam Foote shook up the defence pairings after that goal, splitting up Soucy and Myers for the remainder of the second period, though they were reunited in the third. Soucy instead skated with Filip Hronek, while Myers skated with Hughes. Like a paper straw that’s been sitting in a drink for too long, it didn’t really work.
- The Canucks looked a lot better in the third period, but it would have been hard not to. Still, they got 20 shots on goal in the third period, so their shot total by the end of the game looked almost respectable. “Look, we only got out-shot 32-to-26! This was a close game!”
- Aatu Räty might have cost himself a spot in the lineup in the third period. Räty picked off a pass in the defensive zone and had control of the puck. All he had to do then was bank the puck up the boards to Nils Höglander but he instead tried to stickhandle around Kyle Palmieri, who knocked the puck off his stick to Brock Nelson, who passed the puck back to Palmieri for the goal. What made it worse is Räty could have still prevented the goal if he boxed out Palmieri and tied up his stick. Instead he did a fly-by and tried to swipe the puck away.
- It was a bad play by Räty, but re-watch that clip and ask yourself, what in god’s name is Tyler Myers doing? With the puck still in the Canucks’ zone and under pressure from Islanders players, Myers skated directly away from the slot — you know, exactly where the puck ended up — to go exactly where Höglander already was. It’s one of the most daft decisions I’ve ever seen from a defenceman.
- Fortunately, the goal was overturned as Palmieri put himself offside when he entered the Canucks’ zone thirty seconds before the goal. As far as the actual game is concerned, that thirty seconds didn’t happen. But we saw it. We know what you did Räty and Myers. We know.
- The Islanders made it 4-1 for real a few minutes later anyway. Off the rush, Filip Hronek went to one knee to block a passing lane that didn’t even exist, completely ignoring Anders Lee wide open behind him. Instead of boxing out Lee, the only thing Hronek actually accomplished was preventing Lankinen from pushing out to the top of his crease to try to make the save.
- That said, the Canucks still might have been able to prevent the goal if Miller’s controller hadn’t disconnected at the worst possible moment.
- “I can just speak on behalf of myself as a leader,” said Miller after the game. “I’m just going to try to be better next game, I guess. There’s no point in being really negative right now. It wasn’t good.”
- It looked like Nils Höglander had cut the lead to two with just over five minutes left but the official waved it off immediately, ruling that Höglander had punched the puck into the net with his glove. Höglander insisted that he hit the puck with the shaft of his stick and, in my opinion, the replay supports his assertion, even as John Shorthouse and Dave Tomlinson watched the same replay and said it hit his glove. I’ll let you be the judge:
- The Canucks boldly pulled the goaltender on a late power play — their only power play of the game — and went 6-on-4. Ultimately, it just led to an empty-net goal for Noah Dobson after the penalty was killed.
- Then Tyler Myers scored! Yay! With a minute-and-a-half remaining, Myers took a faceoff win by Blueger, stepped around his man and snapped a quick shot past Semyon Varlamov’s blocker. For a brief moment, Myers looked like the same guy who won the Calder Trophy 14 years ago.
- If there was a bright spot apart from the goal by Lekkerimäki, it’s that Elias Pettersson had 10 shot attempts, six of them on goal, including a couple of blistering one-timers on the power play. For a while, it seemed like he was the only guy on the team actually shooting the puck. Honestly, Pettersson had a pretty strong game, it’s just that nobody else was along for the ride.
- “I don’t know. I don’t know. I have no idea,” said Tocchet when asked why the team has struggled on home ice. “We’re going to have to change pre-game skates, we’re going to have to do something different, because we cannot play light. We’re too light of a team. You cannot guess where the puck goes. You don’t have to kill people, you don’t have to ram guys through the boards — even though, every once in a while, I wouldn’t mind it — I would rather a guy just stay in front of a guy. That’s your man. We’re just spinning off people.”
- This game was dumb and bad and I don’t want to think about it anymore.
