Tocchet calls on 'five or six guys to get going' after Game 4 loss
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Vancouver Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet called out a section of his roster after the Edmonton Oilers earned a narrow 3-2 victory on Tuesday to even their second-round series at 2-2.
The Canucks trailed 2-0 after 40 minutes before tying the game late in the third period and were on course for overtime before Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard scored the game-winner with just 39 seconds left in regulation.
“I’m disappointed. There are too many soft plays on that (third) goal, four or five plays. You have to dig in there,” Tocchet said postgame. “I thought we had four or five guys make mistakes on that goal. You can’t do that.
"We’ve been a resilient group all year, but we need five or six guys to get going. This is the Stanley Cup playoffs. There are some guys, I don’t know if they thought it was playoffs, and we can’t play with 12 guys.
“We’ll be talking about [potential changes] tomorrow. We have some guys that might be getting in the lineup for us.”
Tocchet kept those "five or six guys" anonymous, but it wouldn't be surprising if Elias Pettersson was on the list. The 25-year-old centre has one goal in four games against the Oilers in the second round and just four points in 10 playoff games this spring after posting 34 goals and 89 points in 82 game during the regular season.
Vancouver will have to bounce back from a major emotional swing at the tail end of Game 4 when the series resumes Thursday. The Canucks scored with goaltender Arturs Silovs pulled with less than two minutes left to tie the score at 2-2. The euphoria of the goal last just one minute and two seconds before Bouchard restored the Oilers lead.
“To tie it up like that and have a great push and then to lose like that, it’s disappointing,” Canucks captain Quinn Hughes said. “But these things happen and we have to move along.
“There is a lot of belief in this room, there is no quit and obviously going into the next game, we don’t want to find ourselves in a hole. But like I said after Game 1, if it’s 4-1 or 2-1 or 2-0, whatever it is, we’re going to go to the final buzzer."
Hughes is third in scoring on the Canucks in the playoffs with nine assists in 10 games, behind team-leader Brock Boeser, who has seven goals and 12 points, and J.T. Miller, who has two goals and 11 points. Dakota Joshua, who scored late in the third period Wednesday, has eight points to tie with Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov for fourth on the list. No other Canucks players have more than four points through 10 games in the playoffs.