The Canucks got a pair of goals from Elias Pettersson — shorthanded and on the power play — plus those from Quinn Hughes, Ilya Mikheyev and Dakota Joshua.
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For the second time in three games, the Vancouver Canucks and their new coach Rick Tocchet faced one of the league’s worst teams.
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And to their credit, they did plenty right in both those games.
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Friday’s installment at Rogers Arena saw the Canucks easily skate past the tanking Columbus Blue Jackets 5-2.
They also beat the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday, another team built to win as little as possible.
Over the rest of the season, wins aren’t the point. How they play is.
Tocchet said so himself.
A team identity is what he wants to develop, he said after the morning skate.
“That’s my big thing, when you play the Canucks, what type of team are they? Hard team to play against? Smart team? Selfless team? Those are the attributes you want, that I want to find for the Canucks logo,” he said.
The Canucks out-paced the Blue Jackets all night.
“I liked the resilience. In the NHL, you had to be a resilient team, you know, obviously being a stinker in Seattle,” Tocchet said post-game.
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“I think everybody contributed. It’s hard to go through the list but everyone contributed. We got a little antsy there sometimes,” he added. “We got to work on our wall play. That’s one thing I’ve noticed, we got to get better at when teams put pressure on us, I’d like to see us better along the wall to handle pressure. But other than that, I thought it was a solid effort.”
They got a pair of goals from Elias Pettersson — shorthanded and on the power play — plus those from Quinn Hughes, Ilya Mikheyev and Dakota Joshua.
The big picture, though, is not great. The Canucks are a long way off the pace and there will be no playoff chase, Canucks GM Patrik Allvin admitted post-game.
“What are we, 27th in the league? And really bad in a lot of underlying metrics,” he said. “We have a long way to go here.”
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NEXT GAME
Monday, Feb. 6
New Jersey Devils vs. Vancouver Canucks
7 p.m., Prudential Center, TV: TSN Radio: AM730
A final goal
No one in the crowd or the press box knew it at the time, but Ilya Mikheyev’s goal in the first period was very special for the Russian: it was the last goal of the 2022-23 season for him.
He’s having surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee last week; He damaged his ACL in pre-season but was able to play this season by having his knee heavily taped and wearing a brace.
He was emotional talking about the goal post-game.
“Tough moment,” he said of scoring the goal.
Mikheyev’s teammates were notably thrilled about the tally, knowing this was his last game of the year.
“Everyone on the bench was pretty excited. You saw him celebrate the way he did; it was a good moment for him. We all knew his last game we wanted to battle for him,” Tyler Myers said.
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Rick Tocchet paid tribute to Mikheyev’s desire.
“He wants to keep playing but it’s not the right thing to do. We care about the person and it says high character guy, for him to be emotional just shows you what kind of caring,” he said. “We’ve all been there before. He wants to help out.”
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Four assists!
Bo Horvat, who could be traded any day, picked up assists on the first three Canucks’ goals. He’s not just a goal scorer!
The first was a lovely setup of Pettersson on a short-handed breakaway just 1:25 into the game.
Horvat laughed about Pettersson finally scoring on a short-handed breakaway.
“I think he’s had about six already,” he said with a smile.
The latter two were secondary assists, although the first of those was an excellent pass to JT Miller, who made a nifty behind-the-back pass to Hughes, who hammered home a slapshot that Columbus goalie Joonas Korpisalo should have stopped.
His fourth assist of the game was a cross-ice feed to Dakota Joshua, who then tried to feed the puck to the back-door of Korpisalo’s net for Brock Boeser.
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Four assists is a career-high for the Canucks’ captain, who acknowledged his not known for setting up goals too often.
“But it definitely feels good to see them go in when I do,” he said.
Watch your feet
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That was not a penalty on Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
Goals are comin’
It took Hughes 30 games to get his first goal of the season.
He’s scored five goals this season.
“It’s something at the beginning of the summer I wanted to work on and I thought coming in here that I was going to be able to get in the double digits and obviously the start wasn’t great but feeling good about it and just trying to find myself in good spots where I can score,” he said.
A first!
We’ll see if it stands, but Pettersson’s third-period tally on the power play is his first of the season on the man advantage.
Now the question is, did it get over the line before Andrei Kuzmenko pushed it fully into the net?
For now, it’s Pettersson’s.
“I should keep the puck now,” Pettersson quipped post-game. He also thought that Kuzmenko’s final touch came before the puck was over the line, but he was happy to be credited with another goal.
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GM watch
Generally it’s a fool’s game to figure out why certain scouts are at any given game, but when there’s a pattern, it’s at least worth noting.
With the CHL Top Prospects game being played in Langley earlier this week, it was inevitable a number would show up at the Canucks game last Tuesday.
What was worth watching for was if anything showed up again on Friday.
Toronto’s Kyle Dubas did. So did a handful of other top officials from other teams as well.
Was Dubas here to watch Luke Schenn?
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The Old Name
There were a few Bruce There It Is chants late in the game, further tributes to the departed coach.
One wonders how often that chant will keep being heard? For some time yet, you’d suppose.