Woof. A 5-0 loss to the visiting Kraken Wednesday night had fans booing at the end of the game. For a team in a playoff “chase”, it was definitely not the effort you’d expect. The odds are now massively stacked against this team to make the playoffs, especially with their upcoming schedule. If you missed the game, probably for the best, and you can skip over these highlights:
They’re not mathematically eliminated, but they’re getting close. And they know it. The team feels… exhausted. Hughes and a host of players are either hurt or coming back from injuries. The whole thing seems cursed this year, but the boys are determined to finish out strong no matter what. But last night was not a strong game.
“It's really frustrating,” Marcus Pettersson said of Wednesday’s loss, the Canucks’ most-lopsided in 2 ½ months. “I think the looks that they get, we kind of give them. We know they're good off the rush, and they got a lot of chances off the rush. Yeah, it's deflating. We've got to pick ourselves back up and get back into the fight.
“We're going to fight right until the end. There's a lot of fight in this room and we're going to make sure we come back strong this weekend.”
“I'm not going to comment on, you know, guys being mentally tired or physically tired,” Hughes said. “I think that if you went around the league, everyone would say that they're mentally tired. I don’t think there should be any excuses.
“I mean, it's not tough to believe (in still making the playoffs) just because we're in it, and it's the reality. As far as that, obviously everyone's looking at standings daily, and. . . you know what the percentages are and whatnot. So, yeah, we know where we're at.”
The game isn’t really worth talking about. It was bad all around. The fans let them know it at the end. With ticket prices increasing next year, and the Canucks being one of three teams with 15 or fewer home wins… ya, not such a great time to be a fan at the games.
“I think that early on, I saw a lot of nervousness,” Tocchet said. “We had a couple power plays; you need some poise there. I didn't think we had some poise, and then they got a couple of quick goals on us and you could see guys were getting nervous, chasing the game. I mean, I think we had some guys that really gave some effort, but I didn't think we had a lot of poise tonight.”
There will be a lot of questions at the end of the year, but we’re not there yet. A few more games to close out the year, and maybe just maybe some miracle happens where the Canucks go on a run. Gotta Ted Lasso this.
“I mean, you've got to believe in yourself,” Tocchet said. “If you're struggling as a player, you've got to turn your game around — just got to believe in yourself. Plus, we've got a bunch of young guys (and) you owe it to them to keep pushing. You just keep pushing.”
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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