“It’s just been a microcosm of our season.”
That’s how Vancouver Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet started off his post-game media availability after Tuesday night’s loss to the Buffalo Sabres.
“Key times, key moments, we’re not getting them,” Tocchet said frustratingly. “Two faceoff goals. You’re up 2-1. We ice the puck there. Should have connected on that play. There’s just key moments. Protecting the middle of the ice. Sometimes the key moment – and I hate to use the word – we go kind of numb in the key situation. We’ve got to turn that around.”
The Canucks allowed two goals right off of defensive zone faceoffs in tonight’s game. Tocchet took us through what he saw on those two goals:
“Well, I don’t know who it was, not to pick on people, but you’ve got to go in a straight line. If you go straight line, you probably get that play. And the other one, a couple of guys go went on their different routes. Two goals in the guts of the ice. Can’t happen. If we’re in the right spots, those aren’t goals.”
Tonight was one of the stronger opening two frames for the Canucsk on home ice this season. They were rewarded by a 2-1 lead heading into the third period. However, it seemed like the team just decided to sit back on their lead and lacked urgency to try and extend their 2-1 lead.
“Yeah, I don’t know if it’s urgency or hockey IQ,” Tocchet explained. “Like, we defer. We’ve got a bunch of good things happening, and then all of a sudden, a guy gets it, and then he just defers to not moving his feet and ‘I’ll just throw it to the point.’
“I think sometimes we, whether we think it’s going to be easy because we had like five chances in a row, that’s the hard thing to flip. That’s the one thing the coaching staff gets a little frustrated [with] because when you’ve got the other team down, you really want to keep doing the same thing. But we’ve got to attack the interior but I just felt like we were just perimeter.
“Perfect example; we scored a goal because our D were moving their feet, changed direction, we got the puck through. So I think it’s a lot of that stuff. We’re freezing for whatever reason. We’re getting satisfied…I don’t know why we would be satisfied.”
It’s been a struggle for the Canucks to win back-to-back games this season. In fact, December 1st was the last time this team was able to string back-to-back wins together. Tocchet spoke on the team’s consistency level this season:
“Consistency is a responsibility on an individual player. You’ve got to come to the rink and consistently do the hard things, do the right things, and then whenever everybody collectively does that, then the team becomes consistent. I don’t know sometimes we’re just lacking that. Some nights, you might just have to do this to be consistent for us, and I think when we score a goal, and we’re up 2-1, I think our next three shifts, we made some blind plays. We’re actually giving Buffalo a chance to go the other way.
“Some guys have to know their role. You can’t always try and score when it’s not there. That’s something that we’ve talked about, where we’ve got to flip it. We’ve got to flip that attitude or we’re going to be in trouble this season.”
When the team does sit back and let the game come to them when they have a lead, they often are letting this happen because they play a lot of dump-and-chase hockey. Rarely do they ever confidently carry it into their zone and match that pressure with pressure that Tocchet wants to install with this team.
“It’s the same thing in the offensive zone,” Tocchet continued. “To be a rush team, you need all five people skating. You can’t just have two guys skating and the rest posting up. Being satisfied, maybe we were up 2-1, you stop skating. We’ve been preaching that until the cows come home, you’ve got to move your feet in this league. You’ve got to attack the interior; you’ve got to attack the wall. You have to have double drives. That’s a good rush team. The D’s got to get up in the play. You can’t lag behind. You need four attack as a good rush team. Sometimes, we’re not getting that for whatever reason.”
Good teams find a way to win. That’s something this Tocchet-led club was elite at doing last season. If they had a lead going into the third period, they were able to close out that game with their strong defensive structure. However, this season, it seems like the team lacks that same level of confidence in those tight situations to help the team secure the victory late in games:
“Yeah, there’s pockets of it,” Tocchet said. “There’s pockets of some good stuff, and like I said, there’s pockets where we’re just – I don’t know if I want to say defeated, but we’re up 2-1. You should feel confident. You should want that puck. You should know off the faceoff; this is where I’ve got to go. For whatever reason, I don’t know.
“There’s a few guys, whether a few, could be four-five-six guys some nights where they just kind of stand around. It’s almost like it’s too big for them sometimes. I don’t know why. Just go play. That’s the frustrating part. Some guys have to go unlock, whether it’s some nervousness or where to go? I don’t know.”
Coming off a big win against the team that eliminated you from playoff contention last season, a big division rival, this was a perfect matchup for Vancouver to build off of. They were facing off against the 30th-ranked team, who’s playing their second game in as many nights. This, by all accounts, should have been a perfect momentum builder for the Canucks.
“This was a win we wanted,” Tocchet said disappointingly. “[It] Could have given us some confidence for the team. Now, we’ve got to go back to the drawing board again. 2-1 lead; I thought we had a bunch of chances during the second, and then we didn’t have any. We dried up.
“In hockey, there’s key moments. Most of the game, 70% kind of neutral. It’s that 30% you need big moments where the tide turns. Whether it’s a big faceoff win, or a block, or a backdoor play, scoring there. Those are big plays that you’ve got to make and we’re not having enough this year. We know that. We need more big plays moments to get ourselves out of this.”
Listen to the full media availability here:
Typically in Tocchet’s post-game availabilities, even in a loss, he usually speaks confidently and uplifts his players. However, that wasn’t the case on Tuesday evening.
When asked about Filip Hronek’s play, having him run his own line, Tocchet said:
“I don’t know. Bunch of different combinations. I don’t know.”
When asked about the play of Elias Pettersson and his line, Tocchet said:
“I don’t know. I thought they were okay.”
When asked about Mark Friedman and how he looked in his return to Vancouver’s lineup, Tocchet said:
“Yeah, he gave us some minutes. He tried.”
Top to bottom, this was a disappointing effort from the Canucks. And with some of these responses from the head coach, Tocchet doesn’t seem to have answers for the team’s struggles this season.
The team will have an opportunity to redeem themselves on Thursday in Edmonton against the McDavid-less Oilers.
