J.T. Miller knows he has to raise his game. He hopes his teammates know that, too. Plus, the Canucks’ special teams are a total disaster.
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Raise your game. Work hard. Be ready to play teams that are chasing all manner of goals.
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That’s J.T. Miller’s answer to his team’s struggles this week.
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“Every single team we’re going to play moving forward is playing for something. You got guys playing for jobs, you know, playing to win the division, playing to win the President’s Trophy, playing to win to get into the playoffs,” Miller said Saturday.
“Like there’s something, there’s a reason for everybody to be playing hard this time of year. There are no easy games.”
The Canucks play Buffalo on Tuesday. The Sabres were barely hanging on in the NHL playoff chase before Saturday’s 4-1 loss to the Red Wings. They’re probably cooked now … you’d hope the Canucks would want to strike back from Saturday’s ugly 2-1 loss to the Capitals and hit the Sabres hard.
Canucks Report
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“We’re not guaranteed anything right now. And I think it’s important I think if you look at past history, the teams that usually play well down the stretch, do well later in the in the season,” Rick Tocchet said before the game.
He wants his team to be peaking as the season end.
It’s not exactly a PDO crash
The Canucks have only won nine of the 19 games they’ve played since the all-star break.
For much of the season, they were riding absurdly high shooting and save percentages playing five on five. Those have come back to Earth some, but the Canucks’ struggles, writ large, go beyond that. Saturday’s loss was about poor five-on-five play, but the overall story is actually rather different.
At five on five, they are still scoring at a decent clip — they’ve scored on 9.26 per cent of their even-strength shots — but their goaltending and defence are in a slump. (That said, this “slump” is barely one — their 91.3 five-on-five save percentage since the break is merely 14th-worst in the league, so basically dead in the middle.)
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The real story here is special teams. The Canucks’ power play since the all-star break is shooting just 9.8 per cent, fourth-worst in the NHL.
And the penalty kill is also bleeding goals: The team’s save percentage on the P.K. is also fourth-worst in the NHL.
That’s a bad combination.
The elusiveness of prospects
The Canucks made a minor-league trade this week, shipping low-end prospect Quinn Schmiemann to Syracuse.
The Abbotsford Canucks had a log-jam on the left side of defence and Schmiemann was at the end of a two-year AHL deal.
But here’s an interesting note: Schmiemann has outscored Akito Hirose this season — but it’s Hirose that has played NHL games.
As noted by Abbotsford watcher Cody Severtson, Schmiemann was creating more offence, too.
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It’s a reminder of the narrow gap that separates most prospects. Hirose was signed to be a defensive stalwart, but has had a mediocre, injury-filled season.
Schmiemann was signed as a long-shot, and was unlikely to ever “make it” but still, it stands out that he’s arguably outplayed a guy that’s supposed to be close to an NHLer.
Hirose isn’t there to put up points, but even the most-defensive minded prospects need to show some offensive game in the minors. It’s not just that Hirose hasn’t, it’s that he’s been outscored by a low-end, depth prospect.
That’s your measuring stick.
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