Post-Game Talk: WCSF GM7 | Canucks lose to Oilers | 2-3 (Garland & Hronek) | Season Over

[biturbo19]

You must have me blocked then.

Understandable.

I don't think i have anybody blocked tbh. Unless i did it by accident. Which is possible.

 

[CpatainCanuck]

The difference between how the canucks played in game 5 vs game 7 is a bit unsettling. Yes, they lost Boeser, and yes, the Oilers played better in game 7. But it went from comfortably outshooting and outplaying the Oilers in game 5 to the ice completely tilted against the canucks in the 1st two periods of game 7.

 

[alicia]

I don't want to dig into how we lost the last two games. I just want to reflect on what an incredible season that was. We can only go up from here. Proud of the team, and just want to say how fun it is to be back on HFBoards for the first time since I joined here. Love you all so much, and here's to next year

 

[bbud]

Doesn't that guy wear the jersey of the team he thought played better? He comes across as a genuine Canucks fan to me. But he tries to stay impartial in his videos. Guys running a hockey youtube channel not a Canucks fandom channel, just to play devils advocate.

He sucks for who wins Boston fan from Vancouver wants our clicks and all he does is read everyone who is a reporter insider info and sells it .
Being from van the oiler gear is a bad move hes too after a buttman vlog gig to give a damn about Vancouver so f..k him
He lives in a basement full of nhl jerseys with his cats and does on Vancouver fans watching his YouTube if you love Boston and Edmonton move there let those fans buy your crap lol

 

[CanucksSayEh]

When dump and chase gets put to the test, it becomes dump and change.

 

[HockeyWooot]

Joshua is not a keeper

He will drive us nuts

Wakes up when he feels like it and then goes back to sleepwalking

He reminds me of Kane. Does zip for long stretches and wales up once in a while

its a shame as he was quite consistent during the season.

 

[DFAC]

So hockey guy - Shannon from Vancouver apparently a fan 2 losses in a row wearing oiler gear.
Trying to be a big time YouTube boy lol more an asslick bucking for an NHL vlogger gig hate sellouts claiming to be fans worse than anything lol told him off ignore the canuck hater)

He’s a good guy, leave him alone man. This toxic Canuck fan narrative needs to stop

 

[DimitriL07]

Boys just wanna say what a season. Nobody could have expected that to start the year. It’s sad man, we’ve had laughs, optimism and continuing to prove haters wrong all year. I’ll miss random cold days in Jan watching this team or coming into the threads and talking with people on days leading up to the deadline and speculating with excitement on who we might get. The little things like those moments where we can shut off the brain from everyday life and just enjoy good hockey. We will be back starting in a couple months. It’s been real y’all this year.

 

[kanucks25]

Did the fatigue set in at the All-Star break?

The fatigue probably stops the forecheck, but the default is to turtle because they've become comfortable doing it. Tocchet is comfortable with them sitting back and getting sub20 shots a game. It's a part of his formula to win: Low Event Hockey. If he instead incentivizes the opposite, the opposite would occur, even while fatigued.

As to being outmatched, maybe. The Canucks swept the season series and had 2 games to oust the Oilers, yet failed. I don't think there's a compelling case to be made there.

I'm not sure trying to run & gun with the Oilers is the best idea. They have 2 cheat codes on their side and most of our scoring chances seem to be on the sticks of guys like Suter, Mikheyev and Lafferty. One of these guys needs like 6 chances to bury 1 and the other two may never score an NHL goal again the way they are going.

I don't think Tocchet is purely about "low event" hockey. It's just...very heavily dependent on structure creating counter-attack opportunities. Which was working just fine against the Oilers early in the series.

Problem is...By Game 6 the Oilers adjusted and shifted more toward what the Preds were doing to stymie everything. They started making far less risky breakouts. Putting pucks deep and forechecking more aggressively to create offense that way. Clogging up the neutral zone defensively which just exposes the lack of speed that the Canucks have up front. When they can't move the puck East-West to "climb the ladder"...it's glaringly obvious that they're a very very slow team up front especially. And they don't have the personnel or system to flip that and stretch the neutral zone North-South.


Part of it is definitely on RikTok. But part of it is just...you can only work with the tools you've got. And they simply did not give him the horses to run wild and take the neutral zone by themselves. They need more speed up front. They need more size up front. They need more puck-moving ability on the back end to be able to pivot and play the game in a different way. Tocchet simply didn't have the right tools available to him even if he did make the right adjustments. He didn't...but it's a bit of a "chicken or the egg" question. If you don't have the players to execute a change...why would you bother?

Yeah, you just have to take an objective look at the roster and realize you can only squeeze so much juice out of a lemon. Look at how many 12th/13th forwards we were icing, look at how many players on the roster had a ridiculous "0 goals in last X games" or "1 goal in last X games" stats. We had Blueger playing important minutes for us, some as the 3rd line center... he was a healthy scratch for the Cup winner last year. I think that's rather telling.

Thinking this team had the tools to be a legit contender and make it much farther is being pretty wishful. I guess you can say we were just a few bounces away from being in the final 4 but it's clear Edmonton was the better team in this series and we likely didn't have much of a chance against Dallas anyway especially without Boeser.

Team simply ran out of gas. I think fans should be happy that they emptied the tank, though, as most teams bow out without doing so.

 

[Sergei Shirokov]

Am I crazy here? Seems like Zadorov makes no attempt to move. Tocchet mentioned this first thing post-game.

Z looks right at him & stands still, defeated mentality? Skinner sucks, if that gets through we're probably tied...

Maybe a mistake putting Z in that spot if he doesn't wanna do the job.

 

[Shareefruck]

The difference between how the canucks played in game 5 vs game 7 is a bit unsettling. Yes, they lost Boeser, and yes, the Oilers played better in game 7. But it went from comfortably outshooting and outplaying the Oilers in game 5 to the ice completely tilted against the canucks in the 1st two periods of game 7.

It's important not to forget to factor in the degree that Edmonton played exceptionally poorly in game 5. Just because the team managed to play a certain way in one game, doesn't mean that they SHOULD be able to get a similar result regardless of how the opposition plays.

 

[Zaddy91]

Hughes and pettersson era wont do shit.

 

[Shareefruck]

Yeah, I feel like Tocchet neutered this team a bit, maybe it was due to Demko going down but either way, I wasn't a fan of the Travis Green strat

Pretty sure Tocchet has clarified numerous times that he opposes and never advocates for the turtling strategy, if anything directly criticizing it. Based on that, it appears to be the players who end up doing it due to panic/lack of confidence or whatever. I suppose he shares some blame for not being able to convince them not to, though.

 

[VanJack]

By all measures, this was a breakthrough year for the Canucks.....but they can't stand pat. And they won't be able to given that nine guys are impending UFA's.

When you break down this roster, particularly the bottom of the roster, most of the guys arrived via trades or UFA signings. You can fill in your roster that way, but it's hard to build a contender.

Until the Canucks have prospects pushing from below, it just too hard to have to re-make your roster every summer. You need prospects outperforming their ELC's at the NHL-level, to round out your lineup.

So I suspect three or four guys from Abbotsford will a long look in September. And the
Canucks may have to make at least one more major trade to acquire the guys they need.

 

[KasperKyle]

Long time reader, first time writer. I've been lurking Vancouver forums, while following Latvian players (Remember Ronalds Kenins?) and i fell in love with this team and this community. What a season this was! Really think future is bright with this core, but there's lot of job to do with roster management offseason. Have a nice summer guys and gals!

 

[Cancuks]

I'm not optimistic about the future of this team at all. Miller had a career year which he's unlikely to repeat as he gets older. Boeser probably never hits 40 goals again, especially if he isn't healthy. Unless Pettersson finds new chemistry with a Guentzel or a player acquired in an expensive trade then he's not likely to improve his totals much. Hughes is great but if the others are declining his numbers are going to drop as well. This season looks like an outlier and I'm concerned management is going to go swining for the fences and signing guys like Lindholm and Hronek to awful extensions. Expectations are going to be high but when you have deep teams like Dallas with a veteran core and more young guns on the way and Anaheim, and eventually the Hawks and Sharks who are racking up top 3 picks then there's no hope for a Cup unless they plan to sign McDavid as a UFA in a couple years.

 

[LordBacon]

Long time reader, first time writer. I've been lurking Vancouver forums, while following Latvian players (Remember Ronalds Kenins?) and i fell in love with this team and this community. What a season this was! Really think future is bright with this core, but there's lot of job to do with roster management offseason. Have a nice summer guys and gals!

Welcome bro.
I just have two questions for you:
1. Whos your favourite poster here?
2. Why is it M2b?

 

[Bleach Clean]

I'm not sure trying to run & gun with the Oilers is the best idea. They have 2 cheat codes on their side and most of our scoring chances seem to be on the sticks of guys like Suter, Mikheyev and Lafferty. One of these guys needs like 6 chances to bury 1 and the other two may never score an NHL goal again the way they are going.

Yeah, you just have to take an objective look at the roster and realize you can only squeeze so much juice out of a lemon. Look at how many 12th/13th forwards we were icing, look at how many players on the roster had a ridiculous "0 goals in last X games" or "1 goal in last X games" stats. We had Blueger playing important minutes for us, some as the 3rd line center... he was a healthy scratch for the Cup winner last year. I think that's rather telling.

Thinking this team had the tools to be a legit contender and make it much farther is being pretty wishful. I guess you can say we were just a few bounces away from being in the final 4 but it's clear Edmonton was the better team in this series and we likely didn't have much of a chance against Dallas anyway especially without Boeser.

Team simply ran out of gas. I think fans should be happy that they emptied the tank, though, as most teams bow out without doing so.

VAN ran out of gas because they turtled. Any team, even DAL, would look gassed if the opposition was allowed to continually reload and attack from a dump in. EDM was not required to work on the defensive end.

The objective take here is one that incorporates the reality of the situation, which was: VAN was 7-3 against the Oilers prior to Game 7 while the Oilers had an edge at the very top of the roster (on paper). The impact of that edge resulted in 29 shots for EDM to 17 for VAN, but VAN bested EDM in HDCFs/HDCAs (11-6). Of the main forwards, Draisaitl and Lindholm each finished with an assist. McDavid and Miller, goose eggs. The margins were close even if the run of play made it seem otherwise.

I get it though, the stark difference from Game 5 to Game 6 has people thinking the teams were worlds apart, when the overall play was relatively even to that point. Knoblauch made an adjustment and Tocchet accepted his team retreating further and further back. The rest is history.

 

[ScottishCanuck]

So hockey guy - Shannon from Vancouver apparently a fan 2 losses in a row wearing oiler gear.
Trying to be a big time YouTube boy lol more an asslick bucking for an NHL vlogger gig hate sellouts claiming to be fans worse than anything lol told him off ignore the canuck hater)

He does this for everyone to be fair to him.

I’m not a fan of his channel as the recaps are as dull as dishwater, but the jersey thing I can’t really have a go at him for.

 

[ellja3]

Not even angry about the fact that Canucks lost, but the way it happened. Absolutely heart breaking and I'm not sure I want to even check the scores for remainder of playoffs (altho life as a PHI fan should had already made me numb towards heartbreak).

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

Honestly I’m not one bit upset. So many great things came of this season. I think the new generation of fans is enthusiastic maybe as ever.

@MS @Mr. Canucklehead @ChilliBilly

Any of you folks get a 91-92 vibe or a 19-20 one and does that or how much of that depends on the summer?

 

[DarrenX]

Well, that season greatly exceeded expectations and it will be interesting what they do in the off season, who stays, who goes, and who replaces them. My number one worry is that EP is going to brutally underperform his contract.

I'm missing orcatown's amazing game summaries. Hope things are alright.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

When dump and chase gets put to the test, it becomes dump and change.

It’s one way to beat yourself when you’re essentially playing fetch against a heavy Oilers defense

 

[Oilers in NS]

Great series Canucks fans. Future looks really bright in Vancouver. Your goaltending with Demko and now Silovs will be the envy of the league.

 

[pitseleh]

Quinn Hughes had a 59% 5v5 CF% in the playoffs. No regular player had a CF% above 50% when Hughes was not on the ice. And he was clearly banged up. Just remarkable.