Canucks have obvious New Year's resolution heading into 2023
The Vancouver Canucks have a simple resolution heading into 2023.
Win.
More.
“More wins,” captain Bo Horvat said bluntly Saturday morning. “We brought ourselves back to getting to .500 and we keep teetering on that line. I think if we can stay above .500, that should be one of our New Year’s resolutions. That’d be good for our club.
“We did our good job getting ourselves back to this situation. That means nothing if we can’t capitalize on these chances.
“We’ve got to stay consistent in our game and get more wins.”
The Canucks, despite a louder-than-most start to the season whose latest distraction coming courtesy J.T. Miller, are far from sunk in the 2022-23 season, sitting 12th overall in the Western Conference with 35 points in 35 games, but are just seven points back of the Edmonton Oilers for third in the Pacific Division with two games at hand.
Vancouver is six back of the Calgary Flames for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the West, with a pair of contests at hand.
They can close that gap to four while maintaining that two-game advantage when they play the Flames at the Saddledome on Saturday night’s New Year’s Eve tilt.
Surely a good time for a resolution.
“To win more games than we lose,” Canucks defenceman Luke Schenn said.
“I don’t know if I’m a resolution guy, but every year you stay in the league and you always want to improve and get better and other teams around you are. If you stay the same then you’re kind of getting worse. We need to definitely improve.
“It’s a day-by-day thing for us.”
"As a D your job is to always try to pick up sticks in front the net and take away bodies…be strong in front of the net, that's where the game is won and lost."
š£ļø Luke Schenn on facing a high volume shot team like Calgary.@theprovince | #Canucks pic.twitter.com/r4ZYO27Asg
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) December 31, 2022
Vancouver could pledge to continue it’s Pacific dominance, too.
The Canucks are 10-2-0 against opponents in their division this season, helping keep the playoff hopes alive in British Columbia. Holding true with that trend could go a long way to keeping the playoff push alive into the spring.
But the bottom line comes back to the simple resolution from the Canucks, who ninth-worst league wide with a -18 goals differential and sit tied for 21st with 16 victories with one game to go before flipping the calendar to 2023.
Win. More.
Head Coach Bruce Boudreau discusses tonight's game against Calgary.@theprovince | #Canucks pic.twitter.com/QFzD96pe3O
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) December 31, 2022
“The resolution is to separate ourselves from being a .500 hockey club. I think that’s probably fair to say and you can tie everything into that,” forward Curtis Lazar said.
“We’re at the point now where it doesn’t matter what’s going on, there’s going to be noise and I think we understand that playing in the market that we’re in, but we need to come together internally to right the ship.
“I’ve always said winning fixes everything. To play well for three games and lay an egg, if we can squash that and lay the foundation of being a hard team to play against, consistently working…it’s not always going to fall into your favour but consistently working each and every day, then people have something to build off of.”