A win’s a win, but sometimes you hope your team wins a bit more emphatically against a bad team. Especially when your team has put up some spotty performances of late… but the Canucks did enough to secure two points last night, and that’s good enough at this moment. If you missed the game, here are your highlights:
The defense was porous, it was another slow-ish start, the Canucks gave up the first goal… but they dug in enough to grind out a 4-1 win over the Blackhawks. This game wasn’t in stark contrast to the Islanders game on Thursday, but it was overall better.
“We were not happy with the game against the Islanders, so good response,” said Elias Pettersson. “But now we got to make it two games in a row and make it our identity.”
Hopefully their identity is a bit better than that. Asked if last night’s effort would have been enough against the Islanders, Tocc wasn’t so sure.
“That’s a good question,” he said post-game. “I don’t know. I thought we were better than neutral zone. We’re still not there yet.”
At this point of the season you take the two points and move on, especially in front of the home crowd who hasn’t had much to cheer about at Rogers, with the Canucks sporting a measly 3-3-3 record at home.
Without early-season team co-lead MVP Lankinen in net as he rests up for tomorrow’s game, the team turned to Silovs who has been struggling on the year so far. And, in the end, Silovs was great, stopping 28 of 29 shots. He needed a bounce-back game, and the Hawks were a great opportunity for that. Silovs bailed the Canucks out a bit early, and settled in as the game went on.
“Just had to be ready, like risk management, things happen, turn over, make a save, calm the atmosphere down,” Silovs said. “I felt great, had a lot of confidence. Guys were doing a good job too, a good [penalty] kill that gives you a huge boost, especially at end of the first period, that's crucial. And then we started to play really well in the second and took over.”
“It's awesome to see,” Pettersson said. “He looked like the playoff Arty. He made some really good saves.”
“I thought he was solid,” Tocchet added. “I think he can string some good days together. He looked good. Especially, in the third period, he looked big in the net. He made a couple of saves where he looked big.”
The Canucks don’t have long to get their legs back under them as they play the Preds tonight. The team knows they’re not where they want to be, which is a positive thing… the gap between last year and this year means there’s a constant driving force to be better.
“You have to build each other back up and look at the reasons why we’re not at the level we want to be,” Tyler Myers said philosophically.
“We're family,” Sherwood said. “It takes time to build things and get everyone going in the right direction. So we'll just keep going day by day and put our nose down and work.”
Puck drop is tonight at 7. Hopefully the Canucks were conserving some energy last night and can come out of the gate hot.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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