"Fans have got something to be proud about, and it's all because of the players," coach Rick Tocchet said after the Vancouver Canucks fell one win short of eliminating the Oilers.
The words on the wall at the entrance to the Vancouver Canucks' dressing room say 'Meet Pressure With Pressure.'
All season long, the team has talked about being resilient and never giving up. And in the playoffs, they turned those words into reality more than once — most notably when Brock Boeser scored twice in the last three minutes to erase a 3-1 deficit and set up an overtime win in Game 4 against Nashville, and when the Canucks charged back to turn a 4-1 deficit into a 5-4 regulation win in Game 1 against the Edmonton Oilers.
But when they needed just one more win to send Edmonton to the golf course last Saturday, Vancouver couldn't summon that comeback energy and faltered in a 5-1 loss.
Back in Vancouver for Game 7 on Monday, it looked like the same story through 50 minutes, with the Oilers building a 3-0 lead and the Canucks' power play flat as a pancake — again — as the team struggled to get shots on Stuart Skinner.
Then, Conor Garland threaded a puck into the net, re-igniting the crowd and his teammates. Filip Hronek followed up with his first goal of the playoffs, and for the last 4:36 of the third period, another comeback seemed well within reach.
As Canucks coach Rick Tocchet pointed out after the game, things might have ended differently if J.T. Miller's shot with 13 seconds left hadn't rung off the skate of Nikita Zadorov in front of the net.
In the end, the hive of pundits who picked the Oilers to win can rest easy, and Leon Draisaitl's 'Cup or Bust' declaration is still in play.
But the team that finished with 83 points after hiring Rick Tocchet midway through the 2022-23 season should be pleased, not only with a regular-season improvement of 26 points but also with the change in mindset that Tocchet has preached and the players have bought into.
As the coach put it on Monday, "They put respect back to this city and this jersey... Fans have got something to be proud about, and it's all because of the players."
The fans did their best to make up for not having being live witnesses of their team's surprise run in the 2020 bubble, which ended at the exact same point — one win away from the Conference final, with the Dallas Stars waiting as the next opponent.
Rogers Arena was as loud as ever for home games and road viewing parties, and other gathering opportunities popped up across the region in a post-pandemic world where people are more eager than ever to share communal experiences.
At the beginning of the year, team president Jim Rutherford sounded bold when he declared that the Canucks could make the playoffs 'if everything goes right.' They cleared that bar easily, even though a few things went wrong.
It's devastating that the team's two longest-serving players, Thatcher Demko and Brock Boeser, were both pulled out of action after waiting so many years for a chance to have a full playoff experience. But their absences alone didn't spell the end for the team. As Tocchet always says, the next-man-up mentality is the only way to approach a playoff run.
Throughout his career, Rutherford has been known as a manager who isn't shy about shaking up his roster in search of the right combination of talent. And during the season, he and GM Patrik Allvin found ways to make moves when other teams were paralyzed by salary cap constraints.
This summer, there's more wiggle room, which should make things more interesting all around the league. July 1 is barely a month away, and don't be surprised to see management make more unexpected moves to try to take their team to the next level.
The Canucks lost with honor on Monday. That mindset and the track record of Rutherford, Allvin and Tocchet so far should keep fans hopeful through the summer months.
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