First game back after a road trip showed no signs of slowing down for the Canucks as they took care of business in a 4-1 win over the Wings. Nothing crazy, just a solid bend-don’t-break game for the fans in Vancouver on Thursday night. Here are your highlights:
Lindholm made his home-ice debut and potted two goals. Petey chipped in with three assists. Demko kept the team in front on a few grade A chances. Tidy work for a solid win.
“I like the effort,” Tocchet said after the win. “It was a long road trip coming back with the one-day turnaround and I thought the effort was there. We hung in there, [Demko] was great… I thought the guys did a really great job.”
The Swedish line put in a great showing, and as Lindholm settles in and gets more comfortable, we can only hope that compounds. He’s had a couple whirlwind weeks, playing in a different city every night post-trade. Now that he’s settled in Vancouver, hopefully he can also settle into his role on the team: he had been moving between lines and positions, but Tocc talked about keeping him at center moving forward after the morning skate.
“We've been kind of bouncing him around so, it's kind of a little bit on me,” he mentioned. “It's my job to get him settled in. I wanted to try a little different few things. I like him at centre. I’d like to see him settle in a little bit at centre. (Points) will come. To me, it's being in the right spot at the right time when we have breakdowns. That’s when he’s really good.”
For Lindholm, it’s about adjusting to a new team, system, players… everything really. After playing the last 6 years in Calgary, it’s difficult in a short timespan.
“I thought it was going to be a little bit easier,” Lindholm said. “Everyone has been great, but just to get used to everything... I thought it would be an easier thing for me to get used to the system and stuff. But I think that's been more on me overthinking stuff and so on.
“I'm here because they wanted me and to try to help this team do some special things. The first game, I wasn't thinking too much. But since then I've been thinking a little bit more. That's more on me to kind of, you know, just play my game and help this team and no over-think things.”
His former teammate thinks only big things are on the way for him once he gets over that hump, though:
“You will see,” Zadorov told everyone. “I mean, he's been our top player in Calgary the last three years. He's an unreal centreman. I put him in the same category as (Alex) Barkov and (Sean) Couturier. When he's really good, he's in the same category as Patrice Bergeron — those Selke centreman who can play both ways. He is a great teammate. He can play anything. He's a horse; he can play 25 minutes a night. It was huge trade for us and I was super excited when it happened.”
On a night both of them scored, I assume they were both excited.
There are 27 games left in the regular season for the boys, and the Canucks still sit first overall in the standings. They padded their lead last night – now up to six points over multiple teams – and despite not being as dominant as early in the year they’ve been trucking along at 7-1-2 in their last 10. Oh yes, they’ve been keeping that PDO rolling. However, with so few games left and the league getting tighter towards the playoff race, every game now is a test and chance to learn for the postseason. Tocchet talked about that, how everything now is through the lens of the playoffs. With the number of penalties being called on the boys last night, it would have been easy for them to get frustrated.
“Things might not go your way but you’ve got to hang in there. And you need everybody to hang in there. You can’t get frustrated if something’s not working,” Tocchet said. “I thought, for the most part, we didn’t really get frustrated.”
A perfect 6 for 6 showing on the penalty kill was emblematic of that.
The Canucks are back in action Saturday night with another litmus test game against the Jets. Should be a playoff-like game.
To the comments we go:
(Quotes from MacIntyre, Patrick Johnston, and NHL.com)
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