VANCOUVER — If Rick Tocchet didn’t fully understand the challenge in front of him, the Vancouver Canucks suckered him with reality on Monday.
The National Hockey League team’s new coach is more concerned about the process than results, but the Canucks were atrocious at both in a 6-1 loss at home against the Detroit Red Wings.
Tocchet sounded afterwards a bit like the old coach, Bruce Boudreau, as he struggled to make sense of what he had just witnessed from his players.
Through Tocchet’s first seven games, the Canucks had been, generally, a much better, sounder team at five-on-five. And then there was Game 8.
Sure, Canuck penalty-killing is still a lark and neither of their fill-in goalies, Collin Delia and Spencer Martin, has made nearly enough saves. Martin was put on waivers Monday, while Delia was put on trial playing behind a Canuck team that surrendered one goal on a breakaway, another on a two-on-zero, as well as a couple of uncontested tap-ins when the Red Wings had an extra skater.
We know Vancouver can’t defend; it has allowed five or more goals 25 times in 54 games. The Boston Bruins have also allowed that many goals 25 times — over nearly four years.
But even by Canuck standards, and especially in the wake of the progress Tocchet had made in getting players to do things like backcheck and conduct proper line changes, Monday’s loss was astounding.
The Canucks offered little or no resistance to the Wings, who had just beaten Vancouver 5-2 in Detroit on Saturday. Body odour would have provided more deterrence in front of Delia, who also stunk a little himself by spilling a couple of soft rebounds and allowing the six goals on just 23 shots.
“We had a bunch of guys that had tough nights, but we had no stop and start in the game,” Tocchet said, partly referring to the Canucks’ breeziness around the puck. “In the defensive zone, there's just no stop and start. Like, we gave in. We just weren't gritty enough. You know, wall work, the value of the little things — we're going to have to keep stripping this down until we get it right.
“It's my job, the coaches, to make these guys understand. We're going to have to go back to grade school on how to defend and how to stop and start because too many guys are spinning. (We're a) very high-risk team. Some of our better players today, they were just too risky for me.”
Hired on Jan. 22 at the start of a short, busy week ahead of the All-Star break, Tocchet lamented that he wished he could have 10 practices. Tuesday’s will be the Canucks’ fifth since he took over more than three weeks ago.
“It's a learning lesson for me because you can say ‘okay, we had six (days) and four (games),’” Tocchet said of last week’s road trip. “But, you know, other teams go through the same thing. That's why structure, discipline, leadership, they get you through these games when you just maybe don't have your best. I know some guys maybe didn't have their legs. But if you don't have your legs, then you've got to play smart hockey. Don't chase the game, don't have two D below the hash marks on a play. You've got to be smart.
“Everybody has duds, don't get me wrong. And obviously we've had our share this year. (But) we've got to protect the guts of the ice. Tomorrow, practice is going to be a protect-the-guts type of practice. We have to. Too many of those cross-ice passes; I've seen a lot of them this year.
“We've got to strip it down and we've got to just, you know, make people understand how important it is to do these hard things to win. It starts from the first goal, throwing a puck away and we give their best player a breakaway to start. The ball starts (rolling) right there. Then you get some guys get frustrated, smashing sticks. No more smashing sticks and stuff. You can't be entitled in this game. It's a hard game to play and we've got to stick together.”
Defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson is the guy who threw the puck away in the offensive zone, trying a high-risk cross-ice pass that was knocked away and led to Dylan Larkin’s breakaway goal that made it 1-0 at 10:58.
Ekman-Larsson was also the guy who later smashed his stick to pieces after returning to the Canuck bench. But the worst goal was the two-on-zero that Red Wing Pius Suter finished at 5:19 of the third period, making it 5-1, after Vancouver defencemen Quinn Hughes and Tyler Myers coasted off on a change as Detroit regrouped in the neutral zone and countered. Had the Wings hustled a little more, it would have been a three-on-zero.
“I'm not sure what people were thinking on that play,” Tocchet said. “I don't have an answer for you on that one.”
He’ll look for some answers on Tuesday, as the New York Rangers look forward to points night on Wednesday when they visit Rogers Arena.
“It's like basically almost go through walk-throughs,” Tocchet said of his practice plans. “When the puck is here, you've got to be here. And then when it goes over there, you've got to be here. We have to really almost go to that. I've done it before (and) I've been with coaches that have done it before sometimes and I think it helps. It has to help this team.”
It couldn’t possibly make things worse.
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