'Loose' Canucks Knock Off Nashville but Seek More Discipline Amid Strong Start

With their 5-2 win over the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night, the Vancouver Canucks capped off their month of October in impressive fashion.

With a 6-2-1 record, they sit second in the Pacific Division and Western Conference, behind only Vegas, and fourth in the overall NHL standings.

They're averaging four goals a game, which ties them for third in the league with Detroit and Ottawa, and their goals-against average of 2.33 is also fourth-best. Those numbers add up to a goal differential of plus-15. That ties them with Boston for second-best overall, one goal behind the Stanley Cup champion Golden Knights.

Elias Pettersson moved into second place in league scoring on Tuesday, now with 16 points after notching his first-ever hat trick at Rogers Arena. And Quinn Hughes is tied with Adam Fox as the points leader among defensemen following a three-assist night. 

Despite all that, the emphasis during Tuesday's post-game press availability was on the warts more than the bouquets.

"When our 'D' are moving the puck really good up the ice and the forwards are coming back and giving us options, we're playing fast, we're playing quick and predictable, and that's when we've been really good," Hughes said. "I just don't think we were very predictable in the first, and really the whole game. But we have some guys that stepped up and we were able to win."

Hughes has said he bristles at the narrative that he can't play good defense and has made it a mission to prove he isn't a liability in his own zone. After his shot attempt went off Sam Lafferty's skate and over Nashville goaltender Kevin Lankinen to open the scoring at 13:45 of the first period, Hughes was visibly dejected when he got rubbed out while trying to defend a rush play that led to Colton Sissons' equalizer just 2:25 later. 

Just 30 seconds after that, he and partner Filip Hronek were also back defending when Dante Fabbro fired a seeing-eye shot from the high slot to give the visitors a 2-1 lead.

Then, 46 seconds later, Vancouver's whole game could have unravelled when J.T. Miller was whistled for a hook on Filip Forsberg — and got an unsportsmanlike conduct minor tacked on. 

But after Vancouver's penalty-killers successfully killed off the first half of Miller's punishment, Tyson Barrie gave the puck away at his own blueline with eight seconds to go in the period and elected to hook Pius Suter rather than let him skate in for a point-blank shorthanded scoring chance.

The teams started the second frame at 4-on-4, and it took Pettersson just 53 seconds to tie the game by wiring a wrister past Lankinen as Ilya Mikheyev skated in front of the goalie to create a sneaky moving screen.

The score remained knotted at two until late in the second when a familiar sequence of events unfolded. Miller was sent to the penalty box again — this time, for letting his stick get high on Nashville captain Roman Josi. The Canucks killed the penalty successfully, but coach Rick Tocchet had seen enough. 

He stapled Miller to the bench for the rest of the period, including when the Canucks were gifted with a late power play of their own.

It took 45 seconds before Pettersson connected for his second of the night, and that proved to be the game-winner. 

Returning to the ice in the third, Miller tallied the insurance goal at 4:11 into the period, his fifth of the season. To cap off the evening, Pettersson released a shower of headgear from the Rogers Arena faithful by carefully hitting the empty net with 2:58 left on the clock. 

Once the Canucks took the lead, the final result never seemed to be in doubt, even though the underlying numbers at naturalstattrick.com dramatically favored the Predators. Vancouver was charged with nine giveaways in the game compared to just four for Nashville.

And even while Quinn Hughes' plus-11 puts him first in the league in plus/minus, and the Canucks have a whopping seven players in the top 22 at plus-seven or better, Tocchet didn't cut his players much slack after Tuesday's game.

"We're happy to win," he said. "Obviously, that's not our brand of hockey. I thought we were pretty loose ... Too many turnovers, too many people diving in. It wasn't a great game for us, identity-wise."

Even Pettersson's hat trick didn't earn him a get-out-of-jail-free card.

"He was turning the puck over a lot, though," Tocchet said. "Him getting three goals, I like that part, but he was one of the culprits of turning the puck over. He knows it. We had too many guys turning the puck over tonight."

Amid some reminiscence of when he was benched by Mike Keenan when he started his playing career with the Philadelphia Flyers in the mid-'80s, Tocchet was also frank about his decision to sit down Miller.

"I love Millsy," Tocchet said. "He's played unreal hockey for me. I felt, at the time, he needed to sit for four minutes. It could have been J.T., it could have been anybody. You know, accountability. He responds with a goal, and I think he's fine." 

Miller was out to take the opening draw to start the third period, and Tocchet said the pair talked it out during the second intermission.

"He came up to me and talked to me, you know, apologized. And I apologized to him," Tocchet said. "Yeah, we went at it. I love the kid. I've got no problem with J.T."

Even on a night when the Canucks weren't at their best, two points can make the day's issues seem a little more manageable. With a visit to San Jose on tap for Thursday, followed by two more home games against the Dallas Stars and Edmonton Oilers, Vancouver is now 5-0-0 against Western Conference opponents so far this season. 

That's 10 important points banked in a murky Pacific Division race where it's not surprising to see the Los Angeles Kings holding down a playoff spot, one back of Vancouver.

But who had Anaheim and Arizona in the wild-card spots at the end of Month 1? And with the Canucks already opening up an eight-point lead over Edmonton and Calgary, is the sun already setting on the playoff hopes of Alberta's teams?

There's plenty of runway remaining, but that old rule of thumb about playoff positioning at U.S. Thanksgiving is a reminder that in the NHL, it gets late early. 

Last year, 12 of the top 16 teams in the NHL on Oct. 31, 2022, made the playoffs. With a record of 2-5-2 for six points, the Canucks watched from afar as Bruce Boudreau's tenure wound to its inevitable conclusion.

When Boudreau was shown the door in January, Tocchet stepped in under a cloud of skepticism from the fan base — and, perhaps, the players as well. 

Give him credit. He has steadied the ship and earned buy-in from the players. Now, it's starting to come from the fans as well. 

After years of darkness, there's a ray of hope shining on Rogers Arena.