With their 7-4 win over the Sharks on Saturday, the Canucks stand alone atop the NHL standings heading into the Christmas break. Maybe not the best game by the boys, a touch sloppy, but after a solid road trip coming home to bag the W feels good regardless. Here are your highlights:
What a great way to enter the Christmas break. Kuzy pots 2 after being benched, the Canucks have 6 different goal scorers, the team keeps cranking up that shooting percentage/PDO with 7 goals on 26 shots, and they get the win to lead the league. I’ll take it, you’ll take it, Tocchet will take it:
"It's nice," he said. "You get to go home for three days and the NHL takes a break and guys can enjoy their families. We definitely need a break. The guys need to get away from the rink for three days, be with their families, and enjoy it. And they should. We'll worry about it when we get back, the task at hand. Obviously the second half is coming here."
The Canucks earned and deserve a few days off. Maybe they’re getting a bit fatigued, tired legs and tired minds. Having a little break from the arena should help focus them for the second half of the season.
Tocchet seems to feel as much, saying, "We hung in there. There were some moments there we didn’t like. It’s nice (to win). We definitely need a break, guys need to get away from the rink for three days."
Ian Cole agrees: "It's nice perspective in the sense we enter every day saying 'How can we get better, what can we fix, what can we do?’ I think having that microview is good on a day to day. You hit little breaks in time like this at Christmas and you can step back and see the bigger picture."
“Tired,” Dakota Joshua said. “Just all this travel lately. It’s so nice to have these couple days off. It’s a little refresher.”
Family time, cookies, eggnog if that’s your thing, movies… a little relaxation before the grind of the second half comes into play. The Canucks have set themselves up well for this stretch run – who would have thought they’d be more concerned about playoff seeding versus just making the playoffs at the beginning of the year? – with a less-dense schedule and head full of steam. However, it’s good to keep things in check, and that’s one of the positives that bringing in a guy like Cole can do.
“It’s hard to continue to maintain that consistency over and over, over such long season. We talked about this to begin the season: there’s gonna be ebbs, there’s gonna be flows, bad games, good games, good stretches, bad stretches; as long as we continue to keep that same consistent mentality through everything we’ll be fine. It gets challenging come January. February, March,” he said.
And thus, after 27 games in 53 days to vault them to 1st in the NHL, the holidays and Christmas. They’re taking a break, and so should you. Enjoy your family, enjoy your downtime, enjoy whatever small and large traditions you have. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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