Tocchet: 'You hate to call your team soft, but it was soft tonight'
Published
After posting a win in his opening game behind the bench, the Vancouver Canucks suffered a 6-1 blowout loss to the Seattle Kraken in Rick Tocchet's second game on Wednesday.
The Canucks were outshot 35-20 in the loss and 18-6 in the first period alone. Tocchet gave the Kraken credit for their play, but made it clear he was not happy with the effort from his new team.
"That's a good team right there," Tocchet said. "I thought the anxiety caught up with some of the guys, with the emotion of last week, but that was bad.
"That was bad. … Soft. You hate to call your team soft, but it was soft tonight. We didn't participate in the wall battles; we didn't get a rim out. We knew what they were going to do. This is a good team. We didn't play predictable. Old habits came [back].
"I wish I had like 10 practices because it shows tonight we've got a lot of work to do.”
Tocchet was named the 21st head coach in franchise history on Sunday, replacing Bruce Boudreau after weeks of speculation. The team defeated the lowly Chicago Blackhawks 5-2 on Tuesday in his opening game as head coach.
Wednesday's loss dropped the Canucks to 19-26-3 on the season and the team enters play Thursday sitting 14 points back of the Calgary Flames for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
The Kraken picked up their first-ever win against Vancouver in seven tries with Wednesday's victory and moved to the top of the Pacific Division standings.
"We haven't liked the results, obviously," Seattle head coach Dave Hakstol said. "I said before the game the results from last year mean nothing to this group. I maybe overstated that a little bit.
"They're the nearest team, but the most important thing is, this is game three this year, and we [hadn't won]. We had one point up in Vancouver. These are a critical two points."