Canucks 4, Senators 3: Calm and confident after captain was tossed

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Turns out the reeling Ottawa Senators were exactly what the reeling Vancouver Canucks needed.

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The Senators came into the game on a three-game losing skid.

When you watched, you could see why: they struggle to create chances more than anything.

And playing against Rick Tocchet’s Canucks, that was going to be harder than ever.

For all the struggles the Canucks have had of late, they’ve still been pretty solid defensively.

And that was the base for their 4-3 defeat Saturday of the Senators at Canadian Tire Centre. They defended hard at even strength and ground hard to create scoring chances.

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The Canucks had their way much of the night — except on the penalty kill. The power play is the only thing that went right for the home team, as they scored two goals on the man advantage. The second was with the goalie pulled as well; their final goal also came with the goalie pulled.

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The final score belied the truth, though: it was a pretty comprehensive effort for the short-handed Canucks — even more short-handed than they expected, after Quinn Hughes was tossed from the game early for a hit on Josh Norris that drew blood.

Coming into the game without J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser, you knew the Canucks would have to dig deep.

And that they did. Without Hughes, the Canucks’ defence corps rose to the challenge.

And Elias Pettersson’s line accounted for three goals.

Road warriors

Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet has lamented about his team’s struggles at home more than once, especially given how they’ve played on the road.

The Canucks are now 7-1 on the road. They’ve done so playing defensively sound, stout hockey.

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That was in full evidence.

The Senators just couldn’t get anywhere near the Canucks’ net at five on five.

DeBrusk’s nose

It’s hard to say a guy who scores twice in a game isn’t doing enough — but the Canucks really hope that Jake DeBrusk will find some aggression in his game, over and above the offensive smarts he has been showing.

And we saw some signs of that, as he got two goals in tight and made a smart play to recover after his misfire off the wing before Kiefer Sherwood banged in the fourth goal of the game.

DeBrusk seems to have finally found his home on Pettersson’s wing, especially now with Sherwood on the other wing.

“Unsung”

Calling it now: Sherwood will be the unsung hero award winner at the end of the season.

Double-digit hits for the fourth time this season, second game in a row with 10.

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Hughes gets tossed

Hughes is the last guy you expect to get tossed from a game — and had Josh Norris not ended up with a bloody lip after Hughes recklessly shoved him into the dasher board, he would have stayed in the game.

But when the officials decided that Hughes deserved a boarding major for his reckless, though not vicious, shove of his friend Norris from behind, they were locked into giving him a game misconduct. That’s what the rule calls for: a boarding major that leads to a head or facial injury automatically comes with a game misconduct.

Now you could perhaps argue that the softness of Hughes’ shove probably warranted just a minor, but how would we feel about the hit were the roles reversed?

The cross-check shove into the boards is a hit the NHL has been trying to get rid of. The league is woefully inconsistent on many of their initiatives, but the crackdown on cross-checks, both in front and along the boards, has been clear for more than a season now.

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Hughes clearly didn’t mean to hurt his friend, but the way Norris’ face went into the boards was ugly, and could have ended up with a serious injury had it been any more of a shove.

Maybe that’s why it should have been only a minor. But the rule doesn’t care about what the checker does, it only cares about the player who hits the boards.

That’s what you should be debating with your friends.

New rotation

After Hughes left the game, it was going to be fascinating how the rest of the minutes would get doled out.

Would Erik Brannstrom, who had started the game in a new partnership with Tyler Myers, simply get slid up to play with Hronek? Might Carson Soucy instead get more love?

For the first period, there was no answer: there were so many power plays that Hronek didn’t have a shift at five on five.

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In the second period, he spent time on the left with Tyler Myers and Noah Juulsen, and also had turns with Soucy and Brannstrom.

At the end of the second, it was Soucy who actually led the Canucks’ defence corps in five on five ice time. For Soucy, you hope this is confidence building. He’s been struggling so much to make the right play and then everything seems to have gone in the Canucks’ net as well.

Hronek carried the load on special teams and that’s how he ended up the high-minute man on the game as a whole.

Just not enough

It’s a hard league to score goals in, Travis Green was fond of saying.

Get to the net and bang those pucks in, he’d tell his team.

Well so far this season, that message isn’t landing: this team just isn’t getting to the net enough.

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They’re playing pretty tight defensively, they’ve got a good amount of puck possession, but when it comes to getting shots from in tight, they’re one of the league’s worst.

Natural Stat Trick’s high-danger scoring chances metric is a flawed stat, but it is useful in understanding which teams are doing well getting their sticks on pucks on top of the opposition’s crease and the Senators are generating the third-fewest such chances at five on five in the NHL.

Saturday against the Canucks they struggled yet again.

Brady Tkachuk needs to give his head a shake

Tkachuk plays his game with an edge, but when your team is struggling, when you’ve lost five a row and look to be losing a sixth, you need to show some leadership.

Running around, whacking guys while the Canucks play keepaway, eventually shattering your stick on Hronek’s arm, is no way to lead.

Free advice to the Senators’ captain: focus on how games are won, less on settling personal scores.

It was a disgraceful finish to the game by the Senators.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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