The Canucks handedly beat the Blackhawks 6-2 Saturday night in Vancouver. It was a good vibes game, as the Canucks scored more than 3 goals for the first time in 17 games. And it was off the back of only 15 shots! Petey is finding his groove, Hughes seems to be getting more comfortable coming back from his injury, and the boys are starting to get a little confidence in their playoff push. Unfortunately Chytil took a heavy hit from behind with five minutes left in the game and didn’t return, so hopefully it’s nothing major and he can be back soon. If you missed the game, here are the highlights:
The Canucks need Petey to raise his game: they bet on that with his contract, and they bet on that with the JTM trade. It’s taken a little bit, but he seems to be coming around. After scoring four times in three months, he has four goals in his last 5 games, with back-to-back multi-point games.
“Yeah, can you believe it?” Pettersson joked with reporters. “No, it feels great, obviously. It feels good. I'm happy.”
“Even just looking at him,” defenceman Tyler Myers said, “you can tell he's, you know, he's playing a lot more free right now. Unbelievable shot tonight on his goal. Nobody knew it was in, it was so good. But the more Petey can go out there and not overthink. . . I'm the same way, a lot of guys are, if you start overthinking it's hard to play mind free.
“He's more vocal in the room. You know, he's stepping up for us the last couple weeks. We just want to keep it going.”
“He's just one part of our team but, obviously, he's a huge part,” Canucks winger Conor Garland said. “But we need everybody playing well and everybody buying in. This is playoff hockey for us the rest of the way, and we're going to need guys all up and down the lineup contributing.”
“I always tell guys, you know, you could have an average first two periods, but rise to the occasion,” he said. “So that’s good for him. It’s something that we need from him: when things are just kind of neutral, that he could just elevate his game (like that).”
“I don’t think he has a world in his shoulders right now,” Tocchet added.
Chytil looked shaken after taking that hit late in the game. There wasn’t any update on his status, but the team didn’t like it either way.
“It looked from behind, like he kind of got his head wedged against the boards there,” Canucks centre Teddy Blueger said. “But I mean, it seems completely unnecessary. There's five minutes left and to kind of follow through on that?”
“We just don't love the hit,” Garland said. “It's 6-2 and the game's pretty much over with. I understand Dickey's got a job to do and be physical and do that kind of stuff. I just don't love it, especially (against) one of our top guys and with where we are in the standings.”
The team is currently in a playoff position, but have some tough games coming up. They play Utah tonight, a team trying to hunt them down for the last playoff spot. They know they need to elevate their game the rest of the season.
“Those guys really have done a great job for us all year long and I'm glad they got rewarded, and we're going to need them to keep going,” said Quinn Hughes. “We got 16 (games) left now, and it's going to have to be all of us.”
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