The Canucks started the post-Christmas break on the wrong foot, dropping a sloppy 4-1 loss to the Flyers on Thrusday night. Here are your highlights, if you want to watch such things.
“Five-minute explosion, those three goals. Huge mistakes.”
Tocchet’s concise explanation pretty much sums it up. The Canucks laid an egg after their nice at-home Christmas break in a sloppy, turnover prone game. They lost the mental battles, puck battles, and effort battles through the night. They’ve built themselves a nice cushion in the standings, so no dire need to panic over the one regulation loss in their last 10, but the boys know they need to be better and to learn from this.
“It’s gonna get harder and harder. So this is a learning lesson. You know? We just got to be more invested in the game. We weren’t invested. It’s not about the loss it’s I think we were a little — there’s some parts of the game that wasn’t good obviously. And we gotta get back to the drawing board,” Tocchet added.
The Canucks don’t play again until Tuesday, so lots of time to get back to the drawing board and right this misstep. Though, they just came off a long stretch and were flat, so maybe that’s not the best recipe right now? Either way, the boys are saying the right things.
“As a team, obviously we're not happy with that,” Petey said after the game about his team’s effort. “I think they outworked us and Casey kept us in the game. Sure, we had a few looks, but I think they were the team that was working harder.
“We're high up in the standings, so we're going to get teams' best (against us) every game. We've got to embrace that and always bring it every night.”
Coupling the next game against a bottom 5 team in Ottawa and the sting of this loss, I think we’ll see a better effort forthcoming: reset mentally, put the workboots back on, and realize that not every game is going to be 4+ goals. Even after his sloppy game and bad second period giveaway, big Z knew how the season needed to progress.
“You've got to prepare yourself to win a 1-0 hockey game, you know what I mean?” Zadorov said. “There's a lot of good teams who play good defensively this year — L.A., Vegas. If we're going to play playoffs against them, that's playoff hockey. You've got to grind and grind, and if it takes 59 minutes to score a goal, it all comes from defence, for sure. The games are going to get harder as the season progresses. Teams are going to start playing harder and harder (because) there's more on the line.”
I think we’ll see a renewed commitment come Tuesday, and hopefully that sticks around as we get into the second half of the season here. Hope you all enjoy your New Years Eve!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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