The Vancouver Canucks’ playoff hopes are hanging by a thread.
With 19 games remaining, the Canucks trail the Calgary Flames by one point for the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference and also have to contend with the St. Louis Blues and Utah Hockey Club.
A big reason why the Canucks are not in a playoff position is that their goalscoring has abandoned them. They’re the lowest-scoring team in the NHL in the second half of the season and it’s been 15 games since the Canucks last scored more than three goals in a game.
That’s why it was eye-opening to see some of the Canucks’ top-scoring forwards play so little against the Dallas Stars on Sunday in a game where the team scored just one goal and were trailing by one going into third period.
“That’s how you win Stanley Cups”
Jake DeBrusk, the team’s leading goalscorer, was the low-minute man through two periods and finished under 13 minutes, while star forwards Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser played around 16 minutes each.
Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet didn’t pull his punches postgame, hammering a simple message home in his press conference.
“You’ve got to earn your ice time,” said Tocchet. “You’ve got to earn your ice time around here. That’s how you win. You guys can stir it up all you want; you have to earn your ice time. I don’t care how long you’ve been here, you’ve got to earn your ice time. That’s the way it works. That’s how you win Stanley Cups.”
It was a candid statement and it remains to be seen how his players will respond to it in the coming days. For now, they’re taking it in stride.
“That’s what a coach does,” said Boeser. “You’ve got to earn it each and every night and you’ve got to show up to the rink each and every day being ready to go and working on your game and trying to get better. It doesn’t surprise me at all and it’s definitely something I’m aware of.”
Pettersson said that it was not a tough message to hear, saying, “Every coach believes in things like that.”
When asked what went wrong against the Stars after he had a strong start, hitting the post on an early 2-on-1, Pettersson was blunt in his assessment.
“Didn’t work hard enough,” he said.
As for DeBrusk, on Monday he noted that the tough love continued when they went over video.
“We had a good video session today and you don’t necessarily like what you see out there,” said DeBrusk. “When you come home after a game like last night, you already know; you feel it. You’re excited to get back out there and do better.”
DeBrusk has made it clear: he may be on pace for a career year, but .
“At this point, there’s no room for error,” said DeBrusk. “I’ve got to generate more chaos. In general, when I was on the ice, it felt like I was just waiting around. I’m kind of done with that.”
“I hate the word entitlement”
As Boeser and Pettersson noted, all coaches preach that you have to earn your ice time or the equivalent in other sports. That’s nothing new.
“If you want to change culture and you want to win and be a winning organization, you have to earn it,” said Tocchet on Tuesday. “That’s the way you live, that’s the way it is. You can’t hand stuff for stuff that’s happened in the past. Let’s face it: we’re trying to become a winning club. Everybody’s got to earn their way.”
Top players typically get a little bit more rope or leeway because even when they have a bad game, they can create something in a key moment to make up for it. Pettersson and Boeser have done that for the Canucks in the past but have struggled to score this season. Boeser is miles away from the 40 goals he scored last season, while Pettersson had three straight seasons with 30+ goals before this season and will be lucky to reach even half that total.
So, even if you were going to give them more rope for what they’ve done in the past, they’re at the end of that rope by now.
Then there’s DeBrusk, whose lack of consistency is the biggest issue. He’s had stretches where it seems like he’s the only Canuck scoring goals and then stretches where he can’t find the back of the net with a map. Right now, he has just one goal in his last six games. He knows he needs to do more and so does the coaching staff.
For Tocchet, there’s no resting on past laurels; they need more in the here and now.
“I hate the word entitlement — there’s no entitlement around here,” said Tocchet. ”I didn’t call out those three just because they had low ice time. I felt that, at that time, we weren’t getting much from them. It was a tight game, I thought some other guys were really working hard.
“But listen: if we’re going to go anywhere, those guys have got to play, don’t get me wrong. They’re going to play. They’re going to get played tonight. Hopefully, they respond.”
Tocchet also made it clear that the responsibility for creating offence doesn’t fall solely on the players.
“It’s on me and our staff,” said Tocchet. “I’ve got the [Sedin] twins, I’ve got Yogi [Svejkovsky], Sergei Gonchar is a Hall-of-Fame-type defenceman…You can’t make a guy into a pure goalscorer but you can make him into a guy that can up his offensive game and it’s on us to make that.
“I do like the way we’re playing without the puck, we’ve just got to create. If you get a 2-on-1, we’d like to score on our 2-on-1s, we’d like to score on the odd break. Those are the ones that separate. You look at Dallas, they didn’t have much going on. Boom, one rush chance and it’s in the net. Those are the moments we’re looking for.
“We’ve got to keep pounding into the group that we can do it. You’ve just got to believe in yourself.”
