The Vancouver Canucks got back to their winning ways Saturday night at Rogers Arena, downing the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1.
Head coach Rick Tocchet saw improvement from the team in tonight’s game and sees it as something for them to build on.
“That power play goal relaxed some of the guys. After that, I liked our game. We’ve obviously got to work on some stuff, but I thought for the most part, guys hung in there, had some possession time. I thought [Danton] Heinen had a really good, strong game for us, guys like that, with the fourth line throughout the game, gave us some juice,” Tocchet said.
Tocchet felt the fourth line (Heinen, Aatu Räty, and Nils Höglander) was a key piece in the win, putting pressure on the Blackhawks.
“Rats had a bunch of hits, I think he was 6-0 in the faceoffs early, that was big. I thought Heinen was good on the walls. Höggy had some good possession time. They all did the right thing in the sense that they were connected. And they had some really good possession time,” Tocchet said.
Elias Pettersson felt it was a good bounce-back game from Thursday night’s loss to the Islanders, and after securing the win tonight they’re looking to make it two in a row tomorrow.
He liked that the group stayed the course in the first and found their game in the middle frame.
“I think we got we got too stale and in the neutral zone we didn't come with speed, when we got the puck deep, they were breaking it out easy, so we had some more speed through neutral zone [in the second period] and that changed a lot for us,” Pettersson said.
A ‘Let’s Go Petey’ chant broke out in the crowd after Pettersson’s tying goal and to hear that from the Canucks faithful made him smile. “Feels good,” Pettersson said.
