Back to the loss column for the boys. The Canucks played alright last night, but dumb penalties and a lack of finish lead them to a 6-3 loss to the Kings. If you want to see that, you can here:
Things aren’t so peachy in Canuck land at the moment. The boys are struggling at the most inopportune time. The Canucks have five games remaining in the regular season, and the team is sputtering. They haven’t beaten a playoff team since March 9 (when Demko went down). They’re 10-10-2 over the past couple of months. In that time frame they’re 24th in scoring (2.71 goals per game), 14th in defending (2.95), 22nd on the power play (19.7 per cent) and 23rd in penalty killing (74.6) – those stats coming from MacIntyre. They do rank 2nd in high danger chances, but clearly aren’t converting. So, how does the team feel about that?
“I mean, listen, there's some definite concern,” Ian Cole said. “But I don't think there's any panic. I don't think that there's a lack of confidence. We view ourselves as a much better team than a .500 hockey team. There's a reason we're in position that we're in. We've had three-fourths of a great season, and the timing of this trough is not ideal.
“But the only way to get out it — and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we were losing some games — is we have to work our way out of it. If the scoring has dried up, if that's the case, then we can't give up six goals. It's just the inconsistency that is concerning in terms of what we're giving up and what we're doing offensively. You've seen how well we can shut a team down. . . and then tonight was not as good. But we'll figure it out. We have all the confidence in the world in our team in here and our coaching staff to work together to figure this out. But we need to continue to grow and progress in the right direction because it is getting down to the crunch time.”
The boys are running out of room to turn this around. Perhaps even more telling was Tocchet’s post-game chat where he declined to talk about the recent struggles.
“I just look at this game,” he said. “I don't care about what's in the past. We've got five games before the playoffs start. I don't care what happened in the past. Tonight, like I said... their conversion rate was great, we didn't (convert).”
The Canucks fell behind early with a couple bad penalties. They had a few defensive breakdowns which led to goals. DeSmith wasn’t stellar but he wasn’t terrible. The Canucks outshot the Kings 42-29 and held a high-danger scoring chance advantage of 19-8 – the Kings just finished and the Canucks didn’t. But, that seems to be a motif lately.
“We seemed to crack more than they did,” JTM said after the loss. “And they won the special-teams game.
“We just kept shooting ourselves in the foot. I'm not saying we can't make mistakes, but it just cost us today.”
The silver lining is Demko and Lindholm are on the mend and should be back in the lineup soon. However, the Canucks have a tough task coming up against Vegas tomorrow night, and then a meeting with the Oilers on Saturday that will likely decide the division. The boys need to regroup and do it fast.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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