One day after a solid defensive showing with their goalie standing on his head, the Canucks served up whatever that was. The team was porous, and the goaltending shaky at best as the Canucks’ late rally fell short in the 5-4 loss. Here are your highlights if you wanna see:
After last year’s incredible playoff run, it seems like the rigors of the NHL are catching up to Silovs. He has not been what he was last year – and that’s fine, he’s still a young goalie with a lot of promise. But unfortunately the Canucks need a little more right now, and he isn’t delivering.
“Yeah, he's struggling,” Tocchet said of Silovs. “You know, he's got to battle. He's got to get bigger in the net and battle. It's the NHL. It is what it is. (He has) got to work tomorrow and get his game.
“It's the goalmouth stuff that seems to be going in all year. I think he's just got to be a little bit bigger in the net. I guess when you don't have confidence, you sink in your net. So, you know, he's got a battle. It's like everybody. When you're struggling, you've got to battle through it.”
“You wait for your opportunity, and then it's, like, 4-1 in the first period,” Silovs told Sportsnet after the game. “So it's hard. But I'm just trying to push through, trying to shut it down as much as I can.”
“It is hard,” he continued. “You know, it's like, I have 10 shots and four goals. I think any goalie would think something's wrong, something's not going the way you want it. You just have to stick to the next shot.”
With Demko nearing return, hopefully Silovs can head back to the AHL and get his confidence back. He’s not ready for the show at the moment, and that’s fine.
This is all not to say the players in front of him don’t deserve their fair share of blame either, they have been equally unimpressive and unstructured. But with the combination of the two you get Wednesday night’s game: they gave up the first goal (for the 12th time in 21 games), fell behind 5-1 with 4 goals coming in the first, and were trying to play catch up the whole night. No bueno.
“The chances we gave up were just too Grade-A,” Soucy said. “We can't put that on Arty. We need to come out and be ready to take away the high-danger scoring areas better, especially on back-to-back (games).”
The Canucks were much better Tuesday night at shutting down Boston through the middle, but didn’t even come up to snuff.
“We gifted some goals,” Tocc said.
“I liked the battle back from us,” Pettersson added, “but we can't come up with an effort like that to start and expect to win the game. We've got to be better, and especially start on time. We don't give Arty any help back there.”
The Canucks seem to be turning into a broken record of how many times they know what they need to do but then don’t do it. The effort had been there the previous few games and then disappeared last night. The team is treading water, but with their soft schedule so far that doesn’t bode well if they can’t flip the light switch soon.
Next game goes tomorrow afternoon for you all – a game I can actually watch! First one of the season (unless I’m in a bar or Christmas market somewhere…)
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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