The Vancouver Canucks are well into the second month of a major slump that’s officially knocked them out of a playoff spot.
Bouncing back won’t get any easier against the visiting Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night.
The Canucks have dropped five of their past six games (1-3-2) and haven’t won two in a row since Nov. 29 and Dec. 1.
Vancouver most recently lost 6-1 at the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday to cap a five-game road trip.
“I’ve got to get the guys committed,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said. “It’s on me.”
Vancouver beat the Kings 4-2 in their first meeting on Nov. 7 in Los Angeles. That propelled the Canucks to a 7-2-3 start to the season, but that was also the last time they won three games in a row.
“It’s hard to be consistent, right?” Tocchet said. “It’s hard to do the right things all the time. It’s hard. It’s hard to go through people. It’s hard to serve properly. It’s hard to reload properly. It’s hard to get the pucks out when you need to do it. It’s hard to take pucks to the net, and you can’t do it once in a while if you want to be a good team.”
Vancouver’s top three goal scorers from last season, J.T. Miller (37), Elias Pettersson (34) and Brock Boeser (40), have been slow to heat up during the 1 1/2-month long cold spell.
Boeser has one goal this month after scoring eight in December, Miller has two goals in 16 games since returning from a leave of absence for personal reasons, and Pettersson has three goals since the end of November while also missing six games in that span with an undisclosed injury.
The Canucks will be up against a hungry Los Angeles team that will be trying to avoid losing three in a row for the first time since Oct. 12-16.
“We’re playing good,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said after the third contest of the five-game trip. “We’ll be fine.”
The Kings have combined for one goal during the skid, most recently losing 1-0 at the Edmonton Oilers on Monday. In the past four games, they’ve combined for five goals.
“It’s just we’ve got to find a way to score the goals,” Kings defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov said. “We had our chances (against the Oilers), so we’re creating enough, I would say, to score a goal. We’ve just got to find a way and we’ll be fine.”
Hiller said playing three road games in four nights is one of the toughest things to do in the NHL, especially on the defensive end of the rink.
“Sometimes, you get offensively gifted players that make the game a little bit easier for themselves,” Hiller said. “We’re playing hard, we’ve had lots of chances, Calgary game and (Edmonton). Can’t be frustrated with the guys for that, for not scoring.”
After the Kings play the Canucks, they finish off the road trip at the Seattle Kraken on Saturday night, return home for two games and then set off on another five-game trip.
–Field Level Media
