Vancouver Canucks rookie sounded like a leader in defeat
He was arguably the Vancouver Canucks’ best player on the ice on Tuesday night.
But you wouldn’t know that from his postgame comments.
Even though he scored and even though he’s on a career-best three-game point streak, Tom Willander was highly critical of himself and his team in defeat.
“I don’t think we played good anywhere today,” Willander said after a 5-2 Canucks loss. “I think pretty much every detail was bad. Can’t name anything good today.”
The 20-year-old isn’t wrong in his assessment of the team.
At five-on-five, the San Jose Sharks controlled nearly two-thirds of shot attempts. They had 56 shot attempts to just 29 for the Canucks.
Vancouver went down early and didn’t come close to making things interesting.
For Willander, though, he had the best Game Score among Canucks players, according to Hockey Stat Cards. He was also the only Canucks player, aside from goaltender Nikita Tolopilo, who didn’t have a negative rating.
However, he wasn’t overly impressed with himself.
“I didn’t like much about my game. I thought I had some poise at times, which is good, and
maybe some flashy moves at times, but I think I’ve got to be a lot harder around the sheet. Better retrievals make better plays.”
Willander also wasn’t happy about the lack of pushback from his team.
“It’s annoying,” he said. “I think, you know, at least like the last few times we had results like this, I think we did a decent job in many parts of our game.”
“But today, I thought, was awful.”
The Canucks last four games were all decided by one goal. In this contest, the Sharks went up 3-1 less than six minutes in, and they didn’t relinquish a multi-goal lead for the rest of the night.
You know the on-ice performance was bad when head coach Adam Foote didn’t even use the word “resilient” in his post-game press conference.
Willander did score the first goal of the game for Vancouver, on a seeing-eye wrist shot from the point.
Top corner Tom. šÆ pic.twitter.com/SXIZBFkAYZ
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) January 28, 2026
And, he even continued to get some time on the power play. Even then, he was critical of his 1:07 of ice time with the man advantage tonight.
“I think it’s fun to be on the power play and get that opportunity and experience, but, I mean, on power play, I thought I didn’t do a good job there.”
Clearly, the losing is wearing on everybody. Heck, a lot of NHL players don’t go through stretches like the Canucks are right now.
But, how many 20-year-olds would step up to a microphone postgame and criticize both themselves and the team?
How many rookies would blast themselves even if they were arguably the best player on the ice?
Perhaps Willander has been watching reruns of Shoresy in his spare time.
“I hate losing more than I like winning,” Shoresy infamously says in the show.
āIf youāre not pissed off when you lose, you donāt care enough.ā
Well, regardless of his television-viewing habits, Willander clearly looks like a guy who hates to lose. And that’s good news for Canucks fans.