After a solid win against the Flames, that was a complete letdown of a game. Hell, might have been their worst one of the campaign so far. When you record 6 shots through two periods, it’s probably an ugly affair, especially against an Islanders team that isn’t a juggernaut. If you want to see them, I got your highlights:
Not even Dakota Joshua’s first game of the season or Jonathan Lekkermaki’s first NHL goal could spark the Canucks. The team has been flat a lot at home, especially in the first periods. In his post-game availability, Tocchet took full responsibility for that:
“Don’t ask about individual players today, OK? No offence,” he began.
“I apologize to the fans. We’re not playing good enough at home. It’s on me. Guys played light tonight. I thought we were ready to go; we weren’t. It’s on me. I’ve got to get this team to play harder in the first period. Spurts here and there, but not enough from a lot of guys. So got to go practise tomorrow and go right back to the drawing board.”
He even circled back to it later in his presser.
“It’s a frustrating situation because the fans are paying, what is it? Two, three, four five hundred bucks? And we’re throwing some duds at them. So I apologize to the fans again. We’ve got to correct this,” he added.
It’s nice to see Tocchet recognize his hand in this, and I fully expect them to chip away at this issue going forward. But as for last night, that was trash. The Canucks couldn’t defend, they didn’t generate any level of a forecheck or general energy, and they were mediocre passengers to the whole shebang.
“We just keep making a habit of making other teams’ nights way too easy,” Miller said. “They look like they have time and space because we don't do anything to disrupt them on the forecheck. We turned over way too many pucks today. So, yeah, it's not good.”
The high-danger chances were 11-2 for the Islanders at five-on-five. No bueno.
The defending got so bad at one point they mixed up their top 4 to get some level of a spark going. Hronek was out to lunch on the fourth goal, and the Soucy-Myers pairing continued to get caved in. Before the Islanders game, that pairing had been outshot 81-45 and outscored 9-3 at five-on-five. Through two periods last night they were out-chanced 6-0. Not that they’re supposed to be offensive dinamos, but for a shutdown pair they’ve been sieves so far this year.
The Canucks are clearly still constructing their identity, and sitting at 8-4-3 isn’t terrible… but other teams are starting to find theirs and the Canucks need to take it up a notch or be left behind here.
“We've just got to put in a full effort every night,” Desharnais said. “There's no secret weapon. We're just too soft. We're not playing to our identity. We got one goal tonight and we just stopped playing. They just outplayed us. They wanted the game more. That's what happened, and that's what happened against some other teams, too. It's just unacceptable. We've just got to be better.
“We're going to lose games. We can't win all 82, so it's normal to lose games. But it's not normal to lose games like we're doing right now. We're letting our goalies down. We're not playing to our standards right now. We have a big stretch of games coming, and we've got to figure it out. We've got to come together, play as a team, play hard. That's our identity. That's when the Canucks are so hard to play against: in-your-face hockey, straight ahead. We have skill; we will score goals once we get there. But we're just not playing hard enough. That's the bottom line.”
They have a chance to turn it around when Connor Bedard and the Blackhawks come into town on Saturday night.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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