Secret sauce revealed for Vancouver Canucks to beat out Edmonton ...

National Hockey Leagues coaches are notoriously close-mouthed. They hesitate to reveal their line combinations or starting goalie until they absolutely have to do so. If they’re forced to admit a player is injured, largely because he’s not going to play in a game, they almost never admit what specific injury the player has.

But if you listen closely they sometimes reveal exactly the strategy their team must employ if they’re going to win a game. I’ll suggest Vancouver Canucks coach Rick Tocchet did just in his post-game interview after his team lost 4-3 to the Edmonton Oilers on Friday night.

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The Canucks were beat in Game Two by Edmonton’s star players They formed a five-man unit on the ice, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman at forward, with Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm on defence. Together one or two or all of this fivesome played a major hand in 17 of Edmonton’s 18 Grade A shots in the game.

They dominated, and not just on the power play as they’d previously done in the playoffs, but also at even strength, with McDavid especially becoming far more active. All game he was moving his feet and attacking the net, as opposed to his more stationary stance in Game One, where his passes were often picked off.

In his post-game press conference, Tocchet mentioned how he felt Canucks defenders had backed off from checking McDavid and Draisaitl in the corners, an apt critique of his team.

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But he also revealed the mental strategy his team will need to beat back the McDavid line in Game Three.

The secret sauce? Composure with the puck.

Tocchet started out his press conference with this nugget about his team: “Too many guys were flipping pucks when they didn’t have to. That’s the only thing I didn’t like about our team in the third (period). I guess that’s playoff experience. You have the puck, you have somebody on your back, skate with it. Keep your heart rate down. I just felt as soon as somebody got it, they flipped it. Like everybody. I think there was plays to be made. We didn’t give them anything to defend. And that’s what happens.”

And he returned to it a few minutes later. “When they made the press in the third period, I just thought we were a little hot potato with the puck. For me, Sid Crosby was the best at this, we used to talk about it, when somebody is on your back, your heart beat should never be 200, it should be the same. Because you have possession. Just skate with it. I think we were hot potato-ing it. Especially in the third. We got to make sure that going into Game Three we got to be composed with that puck. They’re going to get their (line) match-ups in Edmonton. So we got to make sure that everybody, they do that.”

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1. A lot is made of offensive, n-zone and d-zone formations. F ans and pundits are forever going on about optimal lines and defence pairings for the team. All these things are indeed vitally important, but I’ll suggest the psychological aspect of the game is often over-looked. But not, evidently, by Tocchet.

2. Tocchet nails it here. For the Canucks to win, they have to adopt a more calm, confident and assertive attitude when they have the puck — and this is the most important change he needs to see from his team if it’s going to win Game Three.

Forget everything else. If they don’t simmer down and make up their minds to make plays, they’ll lose. Simple as that.

I expect this will be the Canucks main focus until the next game starts.

Of course, the Oilers will combat this with their own intense focus on making plays with the puck. You will recall that the main thing that Paul Coffey has stressed since he took over coaching the Edmonton d-men is that he wants them to make plays, not simply throw away the puck up the boards.

Evan Bouchard, Mattias Ekholm and Brett Kulak have all excelled in this category in the playoffs.

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3. Fans and pundits on both teams are both worried about the lack of forward depth outside of the top lines on both teams right now. This is a valid concern about both teams.

Perhaps Tocchet and Kris Knoblauch of the Oilers can find some combinations of forwards that will work better. Or maybe they will tweak ice-time or match-ups to get more out of their own teams. This happened in Game Two, with Knoblauch evening out the icetime of his second and third defensive pairings.

Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci had struggled in Game One. The two were on the ice and often at fault for four of the five Vancouver goals against.

There had been about a four-minute gap at even strength between the Nurse-Ceci pairing and the Oilers third pairing of Brett Kulak and Vincent Desharnais.

In Game Two, Knoblauch played the second-paring a bit less at even strength, with Nurse at 17:20 and Ceci at 16:58. The third pairing  played a bit more, Kulak at 16:59 and Desharnais at 16:34.

It was a reasonable move by the Oilers coaches, though I should say this change-up in strategy was so obvious that many fans and pundits, including me, had been calling for it after Game One. Something had to give. And it did give.

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P.S. While the Oilers won the game, I have to give Canucks fans the win when it comes to coming up with the best hype video of the series. This video has me laughing out loud every time I watch it.

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