The Vancouver Canucks had their chances, had their looks, but couldn’t convert when it mattered most in game two against the Predators.
Head Coach Rick Tocchet said his group was reluctant to shoot the puck in the first period and said it’s a learning lesson for the team to take the shots they’re given. He gave credit to his team that they had good opportunities on the power play and it’s just a matter of finishing them.
“Give them [the Predators] credit. They hung in there. They blocked a lot of shots. And they scored when they had to score. But you know, we're not changing too much. I mean, there's a few tweaks here and there. But it's about some execution. We need some guys to execute some plays for us,” Tocchet said.
The Canucks had 84 shot attempts, 18 of those were on net and 31 of them were blocked, and went 0-for-4 on the power play.
“The power play could have done it for us today. We did have a lot of chances five-on-five that just missed. We need to break through, and we still had a couple we still had some off the post, Petey had the one. It's not all bad passing up a couple of shots here and there. But they got bodies in the way sometimes and it's hard, that's the difference, I feel like we didn't give them hardly anything today and they made our mistakes count and we didn't,” Miller said.
Nashville had 16 shots on goal, Casey DeSmith stopping 12 of the shots he faced.
“I thought we limited them to not a lot of looks and shots and we had our looks but just didn’t score,” Quinn Hughes said.
As the team heads to Nashville tomorrow, Tocchet says he has confidence in his group that they’ll be able to bounce back as he’s seen that resiliency from them all year.
“Looking at the third we had the puck the whole time and guys are trying. You just can't get frustrated after a loss. We have some guys that want to play better, they want to execute, they just have to breathe and relax and have a good practice, get a good meal in them, go for a walk and then just be ready,” he said.
Game Summary
Anthony Beauvillier scored at 1:14 in the first period to give the Predators an early lead.
Vancouver had three opportunities on the man-advantage, but Nashville held onto the lead, up1-0 going into the first intermission.
The Canucks had 20 hits after the first period, which was the exact same number of hits after the first in game one.
In the second, Filip Forsberg and North Vancouver’s Colton Sissons potted goals for the Predators, but Nikita Zadorov belted a shot from the left circle for the Canucks’ first goal, Nashville leading 3-1 going into the second intermission.
Kiefer Sherwood scored an empty netter to extend the Preds’ lead, finishing game two with a 4-1 win.
The Canucks will travel to Nashville for game three at Bridgestone Arena Friday, April 26th at 4:30 p.m. PT.
