The Lotto Line players did alllllll the damage last night in knocking off the Penguins 4-3 in OT, with Petey notching his fourth straight game-winning-goal. The game was tighter and tougher than the others on the road trip, but the Canucks stuck it out and pushed their record to 4-1 away from Vancouver on this swing. Here are your highlights:
Petey’s two goal four point night powered the Canucks to another solid top-to-bottom road victory. The forwards, defense, and goalie are all locked in right now. Not always the most pretty, but they’re getting it done consistently.
"Pretty resilient group,” Tocchet said after the game. “There are moments, obviously, we have to clean up. ... I have to admit that when the pressure's on us, guys aren't getting rattled. That's good. That's a good thing. We want to stick to our game as much as possible.”
Case in point: the Canucks are 25-0 thus far when leading after two. Night and day from last year. The mentality the team has – their confidence – is raising their baseline.
“We're building consistency; this is all about that,” big daddy Z explained. “I think every guy shows up every night to play their best hockey. If we're going to do it the rest of the year and in playoffs, we're going to be beating a lot of teams. That's definitely a success for all 23 guys in here. We're all working our asses off, playing for each other. That's the main thing.”
Tocchet expanded on that, on how they’ve been able to progress through the ups and downs. “In this business, you have to have a short memory and I think that's what this team does. The one thing is, when we teach them something… the next game, they're usually good at that. If our D-zone coverage is not good, the next game they'll correct it.”
With the way the team is playing, especially against these East Coast teams, pundits are starting to notice. This is from the Athletic’s power rankings, which have been notoriously stingy on the Canucks thus far, until:
1. Vancouver Canucks, 28-11-3
Last week: 6
Sean’s ranking: 1
Dom’s ranking: 1
One of us accepted the Canucks into our hearts months ago. The other is Dom. He’s late to the party, but he’s arrived. Welcome him with open arms. All it took was a week’s worth of stomping on the Metropolitan Division (eight out of eight points against Pittsburgh, New Jersey, the Rangers and the Islanders.)
We’re contractually obligated to note that their PDO, somehow, has gone up — it was 105.1 before the break and the Canucks have been running at 108.4 since. That’s part of the fun, though … right?
Number 1 in the rankings, number 1 in your hearts.
A couple other tidbits via the Athletic, these from Drance…
On the depth after the Lotto Line at the moment:
With Vancouver’s five best players on the ice, they’re better than most of their opponents. That’s driven a dizzying goal differential and powered the club to four consecutive wins, so you can’t really mess with it.
“It’s hard to break that up,” Tocchet reiterated again on Thursday, while handling the every game question about the line’s future.
Of course, it would be relatively easy to break it up if the club wasn’t getting results. And the club wouldn’t necessarily be getting results the way they have this week if their forward depth was giving back some of what the top of the lineup is currently generating.
At the moment, however, Vancouver’s depth forwards have held. More than held, they’re stacking up heavy shifts on their own.
On this current four-game win streak, Vancouver has actually outshot their opponent with every single non-Miller centreman on the roster at 5-on-5. Some of their lines have been outscored, but it’s by a negligible one-goal margin.
Obviously the “Lotto line” should stay together while they’re shooting 30 percent and demolishing all comers the way they have this week, but for it to really work, Vancouver’s other lines need to be able to at least hold the fort. So far that’s happening.
And a little note on Myers, with no giraffe comments to follow:
When Tyler Myers scored on Long Island on Tuesday, the goal put him on pace for the highest scoring season he’s managed in his career since his Calder winning rookie campaign over a decade ago.
LeBrun also has a good little chat with Rutherford on the Athletic website, but I’ll try and save some of those quotes for the next blog. Until then, to the comments:
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