Dakota Joshua wins duck hunt for Canucks

The Vancouver Canucks may have defeated the Anaheim Ducks 3-2 on Sunday afternoon, but I wasn’t thrilled with their performance.

“It wasn’t a good game,” JT Miller said frankly. “It was good to get two points.”

It wasn’t that the Canucks were terrible. They controlled puck possession against the Ducks, limiting them to just 22 shots on goal, and did enough to earn the win. At the same time, they were sloppy offensively and had some hiccups defensively, nearly losing games to lesser opponents.

“Our group performance wasn’t very good,” Dakota Joshua said. “Absolutely not. I think you can get upset after you win, and if there’s a lawsuit, that’s probably the end of it.”

The Canucks clinched a playoff berth on Saturday thanks to an upset of the San Jose Sharks against the St. Louis Blues, the only team they could theoretically catch up in the standings. Now that they know they’ve officially achieved one of their goals for the season, you have to wonder if they’ve lost sight of the day-to-day work they’ve been taking all year long.

“It means something,” Miller said of the clinch. “That’s part of the goal, but we’re not there yet. Our day-to-day mindset has been great over the past year, and it continues to be that way… We’re not thinking ahead now. We need to focus on more important things, the next game.

“If we play like we did tonight, we’re going to lose most games.”

Maybe the Canucks didn’t take their opponent seriously enough. The Ducks entered Sunday in 30th place in the NHL after losing 11 of their last 12 games. It might be understandable if the Canucks relaxed a little in hopes of an easy game.

“We had a lot of turnovers,” head coach Rick Tocchet said. “You can’t turn the puck over, I don’t care who you are. I don’t know if it’s the respect factor. We warned them: [the Ducks] I’m going to work hard. Throwing too many turnovers means you don’t respect your opponent. You have to be careful about that. ”

Dakota Joshua, top-six forward

The Canucks may be on the downs as a whole, but there is one player who will definitely make a difference. Dakota Joshua, who scored two goals in his second game back after missing six weeks with an injury, skated alongside the Canucks this time. JT Miller and Conor Garland.

“Obviously he had a big impact on the game,” Miller said. “We definitely missed him. He does a little bit of everything for us. He’s an easy guy to play with, playing with him today it was fun.”

Despite the long layoff, Joshua returned to the Canucks lineup without a break and continued his great season.

“Yogi [Canucks skills coach Yogi Svejkovsky], he does a great job,” Joshua said. “It was definitely skate boot camp…I hadn’t had a puck in a long time, so my legs were moving.”

In addition to the goal, Joshua led all Canucks forwards in penalty kill ice time with just under four minutes remaining.

“[Joshua] It’s a very, very important part, not just scoring,” Garland said. “I mean, he’s scored 15 goals, but it’s just a physical presence, a master of penalties, a master of the wall. He makes timely plays…we have a lot of time. He has to make plays, and he makes some big plays. He has the character to make plays in those situations.”

What stands out about Joshua is how much he has grown as a player since last season and throughout this season. He was voted by the fans as the team’s unsung hero after playing in the bottom six last season, but Tocchet believes he can play in the top six and challenges him to take the next step. did.

“I texted him a few days ago, you’re a top-six player,” Garland said. “After the Dallas game, you can see he’s a top-six forward and he’s playing like that. There aren’t a lot of guys his size with hands and poise. He’s a great player. , it will continue to get better.”

When I watched this fight, Joshua definitely played like a top-six forward.

• Arturs “Artie Party” Shilovs started against the Ducks and did enough to earn a second star. He didn’t have to make a ton of saves, but he showed heroics, especially in the second period, stopping all 12 shots he faced. Thatcher Demko is expected to be out for a while, so it seems likely that we’ll see Artie Party Starty again in the near future.
  
• Heading into Easter Sunday, the Canucks brought back their power play. Quinn Hughes and Brock Boeser did exactly what Rick Tocchet wanted them to do, rolling the stone from the grave and getting the puck and body into the net. Hughes took the first shot, Boeser took the shot, Lukas Dostal kicked the rebound and Boeser backhanded home the first goal.
  
• “Honestly, I’m glad we scored, but we were OK,” Miller said of the power play. “One rep couldn’t even set up. We need more urgency. I thought we had some good sides, but we needed more than what we’ve been doing. ”
  
• “You have to make those broken plays, and we didn’t have a lot of those plays,” Coach Tocchet said of Boeser’s goal. “Maybe that’s what will inspire us and get guys excited. When we get the puck, we want everybody to be excited out there. We want them to just have the puck and just pass on the perimeter. You don’t want it to just be. When you get that and you get an advantage, when the penalty guy loses position, that’s when it’s exciting.

  “The other day the twins were talking in a group and that’s when they were the most excited. It was about broken plays. Set pieces are good, but they’re one-shots. Break plays are the best, because… Because it’s a shot, it’s a pickup, it comes right back. I think that’s what’s fun about it. We have to have that mindset. That goal, maybe some players. It might set us on fire.”
  

• Joshua scored his first power-play goal of the season to make it 2-0 in the second period, and it was a great one. Pius Suter moved the puck low to Joshua, who without hesitation shoved the puck between his legs and posted it to Dostal, who fired the puck onto the top shelf. It was both a brilliant skill and a practical one, as he blocked an attempt to poke the puck off his stick with his left foot.

• “You’re going to see a lot of people trying that,” Garland said of Joshua’s goal. “I’ve never seen people do that.”
  
• “It was great,” Miller said. “I said [Joshua], I’ve never tried it. That was a hell of a play and an important play for us. ”
  
• “That goal was pretty special,” Tocchet said. “it was beautiful.”
  
• Garland almost made it 3-0 shortly after scoring a not-so-pretty goal. He found the back of the net on a shot by Noah Julsen, but his stick was completely tied up, and it looked like the puck was bound to bounce off his feet and into the net. As he crashed into the post, embarrassed by his failure to score, the puck fell down his pant leg and that was all he could do. Facepalm like Patrick Stewart.

• “It went into my pants,” Garland said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know where it went. I thought it was going to hit my pants, but it wrapped around my leg. Some years it goes in, some years it doesn’t. This is one of those years.”
  
• There were some absolutely awful penalty calls in this game that were mandatory for the Canucks. The second-half tripping penalty on Noah Juulsen angered Canucks fans the most at Rogers Arena, but it was this hooking penalty on Carson Soucy that warmed my heart the most. Tying up Jakob Silverberg’s stick in front of the goal gave him two minutes — in other words, to play defense.

• The Ducks finally solved the Shilovs in the third period when Oren Zellweger scored his first career goal on an unexpected and perfectly placed shot from a bad angle. The Ducks’ rookie defenseman jumped up from the left side and drilled the puck into the top corner of the short side as Filip Hronek cut in front of the Sirovs.
  
• “I kind of saw it on the screen, and then the shot went in, but I couldn’t get my head into the short-side corner,” Shilovs said.
  
• Just over a minute later, the Ducks tied the game. Miller was attacking Mason McTavish when Gustav Lindstrom cut at the net, but Miller was caught puck-watching and McTavish was left open at the back door. Perhaps Miller thought he was switching checks with Garland, but Garland didn’t get the memo and failed to tie up McTavish’s stick, allowing the Ducks center an open-net finish after a Lindstrom wraparound.
  
• The Canucks risked missing this game, but Garland, Miller and Joshua weren’t going to let that happen. Miller won the race to the puck on the boards and threw it low to Garland. With Cam Fowler and Zellweger chasing him down the goal line, Garland realized he had one man open in front of him and sent a smooth, spinning backhand pass to Joshua, who sent the ball wide of the net. Jesus asked him. Throw it to the other side of the boat.

• “That’s how you get the majority of your assists: you beat one guy with your foot and you beat the other guy with a pass,” Garland said. “There’s no easier game than this.”

  “I thank God Duck for burying me for me because I had so many opportunities today,” Garland added. “I missed the breakaway, I missed the backhand by about 6 inches, and I thought it was going to go in. But it ended up going in.”
  

• this is. . .was A bully on Twitter pointed it out.: Garland and Joshua were the Good Job Boys when they were together with Teddy Blueger, taking the initials of their respective last names. Now that they’re with Miller, they’ve become Good Job Man.
  
• When the final horn sounded, Mason McTavish added penalty time, earning a slashing penalty for jabbing Shilovs’ glove after covering the puck, then a roughing penalty for punching Hronek. . He was lucky not to receive further punishment. If officials had called it a grappling major and dropped his glove to hit Hronek — and added in a well-deserved instigator penalty, McTavish would have been considered for an automatic one-game suspension. It would have been. Fanning in the last five minutes of the game.

• What’s notable is that all three of the Canucks’ goals were scored right above the crease. Tocchet emphasized the need to get both the puck and body to the net, especially on the power play, so it was nice to see the Canucks score from the so-called dirty areas of the ice.
  
• “You’ll get an ice pack after the game,” Tocchet said. “If you want to score goals, you need an ice pack. If you don’t have an ice pack, I’m not saying you have to have an ice pack in every game, but it’s hard to play that style, but it’s rewarding. Especially April is the time when you can get rewards.”