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Canucks' Tocchet demands accountability after Game 4 loss: 'Can't play with 12 guys'

EDMONTON — Twenty-four days into their wonderfully tumultuous, torturous, emotional National Hockey League playoff run, the Vancouver Canucks are still only halfway to a Stanley Cup Final.

With six wins, tied 2-2 in their second-round series against the heavily-favoured Edmonton Oilers, the Canucks have already travelled farther than most people expected this spring. But they’ve probably come as far as they can with what Rick Tocchet described Tuesday as 12 players. 

There are 18 skaters in the nightly lineup, and without the “five or six or seven” that Tocchet said again are missing, the Canucks’ playoff journey won’t continue past the Oilers, whose 3-2 win here evened the best-of-seven Stanley Cup quarterfinal at 2-2.

It took the Canucks 47 minutes to chase down the Oilers in Game 4, and 62 seconds to blow it after a series of mistakes allowed Evan Bouchard to snatch a winning goal for Edmonton with 38.1 seconds remaining.

Gotta See It: Oilers' Bouchard fires home game winner in final minute
Watch as Edmonton Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard fires home the game winner from the point with 38 seconds left in Game 4 against the Vancouver Canucks.
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    Trailing 2-0 heading into the final period, Vancouver had tied the game with 1:41 to go when Brock Boeser banked a shot in off teammate Dakota Joshua as the Canucks skated six-against-five.

    Had players maintained over the next two shifts the intensity that their coach displayed after the game, the Canucks would have at least gone to overtime and been one shot away from coming home with a chance to close out the series in Game 5 on Thursday at Rogers Arena.

    Instead, it is now a best-of-three against the Oilers. The Canucks won’t win two more games with 12 players.

    “We've been a resilient group all year, but we need five or six guys to get going here,” Tocchet said near the beginning of his painfully-honest, post-game press conference. “I mean, it's the Stanley Cup playoffs. Some guys, I don't know if they thought it was the playoffs. We can't play with 12 guys. We've got to figure it out quick. 

    “It's 2-2. Obviously, (this) is a tough one.  Edmonton came to play; they wanted it more early. The second goal, at the end of the period, was a killer. Another couple of mistakes, and then the last goal. You can't do that.”

    'Can't play with 12 guys': Canucks' Tocchet blasts 'passengers'
    Vancouver Canucks coach Rick Tocchet has strong words for his players, saying that more players need to get it going against the Edmonton Oilers, with some acting as 'passengers' in the playoffs.
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      We’ll get to the winning goal in a moment, but consider what Tocchet said.

      Responsible more than anyone for the resurrection and rebranding of the Canucks this season, Tocchet, the coach-of-the-year favourite, publicly outed one-third of his players for either not understanding the magnitude of the opportunity in front of them or being unwilling so far to fully sacrifice themselves for it.

      Reporters tried to steer the coach towards positive comments to suit their narratives of another impressive comeback and near-miss against the mighty Oilers. But Tocchet was having none if it.

      Since ink-stained, cigarette-smelling, booze-soaked newspaper reporters first invaded NHL dressing rooms a century or so ago, coaches have tried to spin positivity. But what Tocchet was selling Tuesday was not negativity; it was reality.

      A Stanley Cup winner as a player and assistant coach, Tocchet understands what some of his players do not: that this might be the best opportunity they ever have to win, and to attack it with anything less than their best is unforgivable.

      “It's a will to get the puck,” Tocchet said. “It's not Xs and Os; it's a will. There's times there, we have some guys — you know the puck, where the puck is going to go — you've just got to get there before the other guy. And I think we're pausing. Some guys are playing pause hockey. And you can't win if you have five or six passengers. Or seven. There was at least a half dozen, just, passengers tonight. Quite frankly, that's what it was. But saying that, that's playoff hockey (and) the next game is a new game. So some of those guys can be a hero for us. So they’ve got to step it up.”

      Tocchet has been imploring players to find more in themselves because he knows there is more even if they don’t. He isn’t worried about hurting feelings or straining relationships.

      He is concerned only about doing everything in his power to make the Canucks understand, putting his authority on the line so that he will not have the regrets as a coach that some of his players surely will later in their careers if Vancouver goes out in the second round of the Stanley Cup tournament without delivering their best.

      “Accountability” has been one of the biggest words and foundational themes that Tocchet has used since taking over the Canucks just 16 months ago and turning them into a 109-point Pacific Division champion this season.

      Iconic coach Scotty Bowman told us a story during the Canucks’ opening road trip of the season that when the Pittsburgh Penguins traded for Tocchet late in the 1991-92 season, just before the team’s second straight Stanley Cup, the player immediately started holding new teammates accountable. Even if it was Mario Lemieux, Bowman marvelled, Tocchet was willing to confront anyone he thought wasn’t doing enough.

      That was Rick Tocchet the player. This is Tocchet the coach.

      “The second period, I thought we had about five or six shifts in row we were there,” he said of chasing the Oilers in Game 4. “And then the third, there was chunks of it, but not consistently. You can say (positive things), but we need more consistent effort from more guys. And then maybe instead of just four or five shifts, we'll have more possession time.”

      Will Canucks tweak lineup after disappointing Game 4 loss?
      Gene Principe, Iain MacIntyre, and Mark Spector discuss Rick Tocchet's post-game comments after the Vancouver Canucks' loss in Game 4 and whether the Edmonton Oilers have fully realized their offensive potential in the series.
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        The half-dozen missing players? 

        You don’t need to look much past the bottom two forward lines which, in these playoffs, includes star centre Elias Pettersson.

        Tocchet didn’t name names but neither did he evade when asked specifically about Pettersson, who 10 games into his first, genuine playoffs has one goal and three assists. Pettersson had zero shots in Game 3 here and two shots in Game 4, although he did win the faceoff that preceded Joshua’s tying goal.

        “Like I said, there's five or six guys,” Tocchet said. “He's got to get going. I don't know what else to say.”

        Leon Draisaitl made it 1-0 for Edmonton on a power play at 11:10 of first period, which more than any other period in this series illustrated that special teams could be a path to ruin for Vancouver. While the Oilers went one-for-two with the extra player, the Canucks had three power plays, including a four-minute advantage for Evander Kane’s reckless high-stick on Tyler Myers, and were ghastly. The best scoring chance was a shorthanded breakaway for Oiler Mattias Janmark.

        “Not good enough,” Tocchet said of his power play. “They know it. I didn't think they worked hard, they mismanaged the puck. It's a four-minute power play. I think the second unit had. . . some shots, but it's just not good enough. They know it. You have to have a work ethic and you have to hold the pucks, and I didn't think we did.”

        Canuck defenceman Noah Juulsen, filling in for Carson Soucy during his teammate’s one-game suspension, charged out of position to make a big hit on Mattias Ekholm in the final minute of the second period. Juulsen got Ekholm, but the Oilers got a three-on-one break that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins finished with a wrist shot to make it 2-0 at 19:20.

        But Conor Garland, a catalyst for the Canucks the final two periods, scored with a shot past Joshua’s screen at 6:54 of the third period before Joshua got the tying goal at 18:19 while jamming the front of the Oilers net with Elias Lindholm.

        'Upset with myself': Canucks' Miller discusses missed block on game winner
        Vancouver Canucks forward J.T. Miller discusses Evan Bouchard's game winner in Game 4, taking accountability for the pass making it through and not blocking the shot from the point, and saying he's "pretty upset" with himself.
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          Perhaps thinking ahead to overtime, the Canucks suddenly became passive. Boeser failed to get the puck out of the Vancouver zone with J.T. Miller on the wrong side of the play, Filip Hronek hesitated on a challenge when it looked like the puck might be available, and then Miller failed to get in the shooting lane as the Canucks collapsed towards their net and gave Bouchard room to squeeze a screened shot through goalie Arturs Silovs.

          “I'm kind of disappointed because there was just too many soft plays on that goal,” Tocchet said. “You've got to dig in there (and) I thought we had four or five guys make mistakes on that goal. You know, you can't do that.”

          “I was in the wrong spot in the D-zone and then didn’t block the shot,” Miller told reporters. “We had a breakdown and then they ended up winning it.

          “I’m pretty upset with myself at the moment. That was a pretty big play at the end of the game there. That pass should have never got to Bouchard and (the shot) certainly shouldn't get past me. Arty can't see anything.”

          As always, Miller was holding himself accountable. We’ll find out in Game 5 on Thursday how many of his teammates are equally-demanding of themselves.

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