VANCOUVER — Meanwhile, in other Vancouver Canucks news, the team played one of its wildest games of the season on Saturday, rallying three times to tie the Ottawa Senators before losing in overtime for the seventh time in 10 tries.
None of these events, however, distracted a captivated market from the ongoing gossip about the relationship between Miller and Pettersson and whether it is ruining the National Hockey League team.
In real news, the Canucks did not lose 5-4 to the Ottawa Senators because Miller and Pettersson are not Facebook friends, but because Miller was a step slow on Jake Sanderson’s winning goal off the rush in overtime and because Vancouver was awful at situational hockey, including a momentum-zapping power play late in the second period and the 15 seconds it took the Senators to score in OT.
And if you want to blame Miller and Pettersson, teammates the last 5½ seasons and so antagonistic to each other they became linemates, All-Stars and willingly signed lucrative contracts to stay in Vancouver, blame them for underperforming while the Canucks are paying their top two centres nearly $20-million per season.
Saturday was some kind of day for the Canucks.
The media availability after the morning skate featured long answers by coach Rick Tocchet and captain Quinn Hughes about the Pettersson-Miller story, partly because no one thought to ask to speak to Pettersson or Miller.
Then the Canucks lost for the sixth time in eight games — half of the losses coming at three-on-three — before the night was capped by Pettersson’s reaction to all the conjecture about his relationship with Miller and its impact on their team.
“I don’t know why people still try and make s— up, excuse my language,” he told reporters. “That’s my response.”
Well, s— floats and generates clicks. It sells.
“To be honest, I didn’t really know there’s a story,” winger Brock Boeser, the longest-tenured Canuck, said after the game. “I’m not on Twitter or anything, so I don’t see that stuff. I heard some rumblings of that stuff. But, no, you know, we’re here to win hockey games. They both know that. I think the communication has gotten better. We’ve got to stick together and worry about winning hockey games. Like, that’s all our worry should be right now. We’ve got to come to the rink, we’ve got to work harder. And that’s really it, right now. We’ve got to work ourselves out of this little slump.”
The problem is the little slump is starting to get bigger.
The Canucks are 2-3-3 in their last eight games and 9-8-4 since peaking in the standings on Nov. 7.
They’ve dealt with a lot of absences by key players, although everyone but 23-minute defenceman Filip Hronek has been back for the last 10 days.
Miller, who declined to speak to the media after Saturday’s game, had an assist Saturday for his first point in four games, but made key coverage mistakes on the final two Ottawa goals and hasn’t scored since returning from a personal leave of absence six games ago.
Pettersson went pointless for a sixth straight game and has one goal in 12 games.
Boeser, however, ended his four-game pointless streak with a pair of goals, including a rebound marker with 4:50 remaining in regulation time to earn the Canucks one point. And Jake DeBrusk scored on a bounce at the top of the crease for his first point in five games. And Conor Garland’s assist was his first point in six games, although the play-driving dynamo has now gone 11 games without scoring.
Hughes, of course, was simply brilliant again, scoring one goal and setting up two others to hit the 40-point mark in his 33rd game. Shots were 14-4 for the Canucks at five-on-five when Hughes was on the ice. The Senators generated only 11 five-on-five shots in the game, but Canucks goalie Kevin Lankinen was beaten five times on 21 shots overall.
Hughes doesn’t look distracted.
“Not to beat around the bush, you know, everyone knows what the reports are out there,” he said after the morning skate when asked about Miller-Pettersson. “I think that, you know, everyone expects a lot from each other. There’s times where, you know, I get upset with Millsy, there’s times I get upset with Petey, there’s times I get upset with Hronek. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love those guys and vice-versa.
“Over the course of playing together for six years, I think that those things are normal, and they’re going to happen. And as far as my leadership, I think just continue to keep everyone on the yellow brick road. And what our ultimate goal is. . . short term, having a good game tonight, and long term, being a successful team and getting in the playoffs.”
So the relationship is workable?
“A hundred per cent I believe it’s workable, and I know it’s workable,” Hughes said. “I mean, we saw it last year, (it was) very evident. I think that both of them have been going through their own struggles this year. And I believe in both of them. I think they’re great players, great people. Like I said, there’s times where we all get into it, but it is a family in here.
“We’ve just got to continue to, you know, push forward and play the way we want to play. If there’s a positive, looking forward from this, I think Petey and Millsy would both say that they haven’t played their best hockey this year, and we’re still where we are in the standings (16-10-7). And I think that that’s a positive thing that we can look at, that two of the best players out there can be better.”
But there is no masquerading Miller’s mistakes that allowed Sanderson to win it, and Josh Norris to score shorthanded and make it 4-3 at 15:30 of the second period when the Senators attacked from a defensive-zone faceoff. Miller peeled away from his check in the neutral zone, and Boeser was a split-second behind Norris when he converted Claude Giroux’s net-front pass.
“That’s Millsy’s guy,” Tocchet said. “That’s his guy if he just stays back. He’s got to be focused at all times.”
No matter what is being said about him.
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