Canucks suffer worst home defeat of season in drubbing against Kings
The Vancouver Canucks were thoroughly outplayed on Thursday night at Rogers Arena. The Los Angeles Kings imposed their will on their way to a 5-1 win, the worst home defeat of the season for the Pacific Division leaders.
The Canucks failed to muster much offence throughout the entire game. They finished with just 23 shots, many of them coming from non-dangerous areas. The Kings scored five goals on just 20 shots.
“I didn’t think we gave up a lot but what we gave them was egregious,” said head coach Rick Tocchet after the game. “We are lacking some staples.”
A Brock Boeser power-play goal in the third period brought the Canucks within one and pumped some life into the building. However, the comeback was quickly thwarted as Kevin Fiala restored the Kings’ two-goal lead minutes later off a beautiful feed by Anze Kopitar.
holy hell this pass by Kopitar pic.twitter.com/jmwP6kq6EG
— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) March 1, 2024
“I think that the probability he made that play was quite low,” said Ian Cole ā the player caught out of position on the play ā after the game. “You’re trying to read and make decisions as best you can. I thought the chance of him rimming that down below to Fiala behind the net was quite high so I went to go cut it off. He made a nice play.”
The Kings added a few more insurance goals throughout the third period to create the lopsided final score.
Elias Pettersson finishes the month of February with just two goals, a far cry from the 14 he scored in January. The Swedish centre started his post-game media availability by declaring he would only answer questions about the game. His name has been in the news all day as reports surfaced that he’s close to a monster extension with the Canucks.
He was partially responsible for one of the goals against when he turned the puck over in the defensive zone.
“I was going to pass to Myers, they got a stick on it, I missed my pass to Myers,” the Swedish superstar explained after the game when describing the play.
“I thought he tried tonight. I think he’s going to have to change a few things, hold onto some pucks there. I’m sure he wanted that one back, he threw it away. That’s the stuff that usually he doesn’t do, he holds onto it, makes the right play,” said Tocchet when discussing Pettersson’s play tonight and over the past month.
“He’s struggling in certain parts of his game but he’ll come out of it. I think he’s too good of a player not to come out of it.”
Both the forward lines and defence pairings were put into a blender in hopes of finding a spark. This led to Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek playing together for part of the game, even after starting on separate pairings. The coach was not happy with their performance.
“They’ve got to play better, they know it. The best solution is they’ve got to play better,” Tocchet said when discussing the duo. “I don’t care who they’re playing with, you’ve got to be able to defend. Maybe we’re playing them too much. They’ve got to defend better, I think.”
#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Vancouver Canucks on 2024-02-29:#Canucks pic.twitter.com/lQGC5CAscc
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) March 1, 2024
The Canucks finish February with a 5-6-2 record, the worst month of their season thus far. They still have the solo lead in the Western Conference.
This was the first of four games between these two teams over the next handful of weeks. They’ll play their next contest on Tuesday in Los Angeles.
The Canucks will have Friday off to rest up for the upcoming road trip.