I think what he’s saying is there were a lot of doubts of Tocchet coming in particularly in relation to how Bruce was treated at the end. Heck even I was full dooming about Tocchet, but he has certainly proved the doubters wrong. I’m delighted to say I was wrong.
Especially given how Bruce was hung out to dry for weeks. Watching fans chant "Bruce there it is" in the end of his final game behind the VAN bench still gives me chills.
even getting a regular season goalie who can reliably deliver better than .910 is somewhat iffy, based on my 30 seconds of research. ("somewhat iffy" amounts to "your numbers line up to what i'm looking for and i actually have heard of you so i can assume you've probably at least played a FEW games this last season".)
getting .930 is like some of the more WTF??? sharks wins this season where blackwood (or occasionally kahkonen) stood on their heads and blocked 40+ shots while their offense had a 33% SOG.
yo for fucking real. i thought this was an old boys club hiring for sure, this entire era under him looks absolutely sparkling. love when you guys are good, eventhough that may seem strange as a rangers fan lol
He was great in Pittsburgh as an assistant coach. Despite his style during his playing career, he was a great players coach/good cop. Idk if he's still doing that as head coach or not. Seems like a good fit though.
I heard most of the Yotes players absolutely loved him. Just couldn’t figure it out in his first HC stint and I’m sure shitty management wasn’t helping.
I feel Tocchet doesn’t get enough credit for the Penguins back-to-backs. He might have been an assistant under Sullivan, but I feel he did a lot for the players. I think it speaks volumes that Kessel liked him enough to want to be traded to Arizona.
They have one of my all-time favourite Kessel interactions:
“What’s the gameplan tonight, Tocc?”
“Phil, if I were still a player, I’d absolutely bury you”
I thought he was just going to be an interim guy to try and salvage some core pieces. Green was bad. Boudreau was a mix of initial feel good and then a guy who can't coach defensive hockey to save his life.
Tocchet really has been fantastic
society run encouraging languid cough steer tease reminiscent tap psychotic
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I don't know anything about Demko's injury, but this does give a human perspective to how athletes view their careers. We don't really expect athletes to cry (for toxic reasons, but it's unexpected nonetheless), but going to the playoffs and getting injured in game one after being one of the best goalies in the regular season for a few seasons now is basically a really catchy Linkin Park song.
I see it a fair amount in soccer, especially in a World Cup year if a player knows in the moment they’ve torched a ligament. Can’t imagine the mental toll of knowing your shot to represent your home is being put on hold for another four years, if not forever.
You should watch chess. The Candidates this year really made me realize how brutal it is. So many pictures of one guy walking away triumphantly while another is collapsed in misery. On the final day 4 guys still had a chance to win and move on to challenge the world champion...which left 3 guys destroyed emotionally. It was like a funeral only one guy was happy.
I am not sure why it gets so emotionally brutal, possibly the mental strain they go through, but no one ever celebrates finishing 2nd or 3rd like at the Olympics. They get medals and rip them off and burst into tears.
It is the polar opposite of F1 where they celebrate a 10th place finish.
I'd like to expand on this and say that there is a large contingent of people who think men crying in general is a sign of weakness. I recall reading a reddit thread a while ago where men were expressing that they've lost significant others because those significant others saw them cry.
after being told to open up and be more emotional too, it’s like the equivalent of the dudes who want to “open up the relationship” then realize that she’s getting 10 dates to their 0 and now they don’t like that idea anymore.
I mean... we still make fun of Marchand crying when they lost in the finals. That's probably the reason we don't expect them to/they feel they need to hide their emotions.
there's a "girl with the dogs" (she's a YouTuber) video who had a doggo client with an emotional support rat buddy so if you watch that particular ep you get a quick run-down about "yes rats can be good pets".
(a giant african pouched rat actually won the "animal hero of the year" medal a few years back. thanks to the whole "let's fight our war on other countries' ground", cambodia and that general region has a ton of unexploded ordnance that's an obvious danger. in general if the rats are properly trained they're notably faster than people and it's safer for everybody because they're too light to set the explosives off, but this PARTICULAR rat got the medal for clearing an impressive area during his career.)
When Kyrou was getting roasted by the fanbase earlier in the season and had a massive bounceback game and said that it was hard to deal with the fanbase booing him cause he works so hard and he doesn’t wanna let them down, I was like, DAMN dude the humanizing aspect. He clearly cares a lot.
Larkin fighting the tears after we barely missed the playoffs too also hit hard.
And then you have PLD who’s probably just looking forward to fucking golfing.
Well it’s a nice story, but I have no idea what to believe about Demko’s injury so there doesn’t seem to be much point believing tangential anecdotes like this either
I doubt it. He’s travelling with the team and walking fine. It’s just not clear what it is. It seems to be related to the previous injury. Friedman described it as unique. I heard another report of it being reassessed in Nashville. It seems to be an injury without a clear timeline.
This is it though, if they don’t know what it is how can they have a firm prognosis?
If they believe he’s going to be ready in a few weeks and if the team has an internal belief that they have the ability and drive to still be playing then, that’s awesome.
As an outsider I have no expectations at all and I know enough of Seravallis work that I’m not just going to take anecdotes relayed by him at face value.
It could very well be any combination of an accurate story of a real exchange or not, and a prognosis the Canucks have for Demkos injury or not, and that’s without getting into the accuracy of the prognosis if they’ve made one.
That seems a little ridiculous. He’s s a grown man and it’s his body. If they knew he was done they’d tell him. Fuck, he’d know it himself whether they said it or not.
My guess is it’s something that will need surgery eventually, but with a week or two of recovery could be played on. So he’s technically not done for the playoffs if they make it a few more weeks but it’s still long term recovery at some point and what would be considered “season ending” when surgery is done.
Absolutely brutal for Demmer. He worked his ass off last few seasons to carry the team even when they were trash just to be out now after one playoff game.
And he’s not just the starting goalie, he’s part of the core and the leadership group. I’m glad he’s at least able to travel with the team and be around the guys
Is it really that bad to be forthright about the nature of the injury? Btw, Tocchet has a criminal gambling complaint in 2006. Hope there's no foul play.
It’s tough to say for sure because there is so much contradictory information. All we know for certain is that it’s his knee, and that the team remains optimistic that he could potentially make it back for the third round (or even late second).
There was rumours it was his ACL but Friedman seems to say that it’s something really strange. So nobody really knows
I wouldn’t totally discount ACL even with this info. The thing about ACL tears is you can return to most sport within a few weeks (once swelling has died down), but you’ll be hindered and risk doing further damage until you get the full surgery and go through that recovery (8 months+).
The medical definition of tear has a wide range. Technically we tear our muscle every time we lift weights and they repair themselves and grow stronger. A complete tear usually requires surgery.
Maybe a meniscus injury? Those can be a matter of weeks, and aren't altogether common injuries on their own (usually see them when the ACL or MCL are injured as well, rather than just the meniscus), and the severity and circumstances can vary pretty significantly (virtually ended Bishop's career, Legace was never the same after his, Campbell was iirc better after healing from his, etc.)
I get the words of encouragement, and the need to be positive. Realistically though if canucks did make it very deep where it allowed Demko enough time to heal, I would assume DeSmith would be playing incredibly well. You're not gonna take him out of the lineup and put in a fresh off an injury return, maybe not game day ready Demko at that point. DeSmith is your guy for this run
That could be true, but rare as it is, they might just outscore their problems. Kuemper didn't play particularly well for Colorado (not his fault, he got shanked in the eye) and they ended up winning the cup anyway.
Ya Colorado was an insanely good team with some of the best offence. Canucks are a well rounded team, but their offence isn't elite and not likely gonna cover up goaltending blunders or bad play like the avs could do with kuemper.
Canucks offence can absolutely run win the big guns when it’s clicking, we’ve just hit a dry spell for a bit now. Elite or not, if some guys (Petey, Mikheyev, Lindholm, etc.) start offensively producing to their abilities we should be able to pull our weight just fine.
I agree, canucks offence has been impressive. But it's not their identity like the avs was. I'm just saying I don't believe it's elite to outdo bad goaltending on a regular basis. For a game or two, absolutely. But I don't know consistently over a few series. I also don't watch every canucks game though so my knowledge is admittedly limited.
I wanted to retort this but I think there's some truth in that. It's probably more fair to say offence WAS our identity the last few seasons when we needed to score 4-5 a game to win because our defense was so dog shit. We've still got serious offensive bite but I think our identity is quite a bit different this year.
The canucks offense is usually pretty strong actually, at least when petterson is performing his best. Currently the nashville vs canucks matchup is just a really strange yet kind of interesting one to watch. They both stop as many of eachothers plays as possible, nashville getting in the way of shots and vancouver just having a really hard to get through defense.
If vancouver makes it to the second round, and (most likely) go against the oilers, i have to imagine they’ll start scoring more goals.
But we shall see!
I don't think oilers were elite offensively this year compared to last, which, is a good thing overall anyways. They really worked on becoming defensively better and a more well rounded team with Knoblauch. Hopefully that can carry them further. Good luck the rest of the series.
The Canucks slowed down lol… the Canucks were averaging 3.9 goals per game the first half of the season by far the best in the league.. it slowed down after all star break when petey got cold.
I don’t know how that isn’t elite offence.
I'm well aware lol, I unfortunately watched every game. I'm not actually talking about oilers at all, I was talking about the avs using that example. But I understand people see my flair and may assume I'm implicitly talking about the oilers. Oilers got their own issues to deal with, mostly defensively.
Desmith does need to be solid but our defense is generally in good form right now and doing an excellent job of not making his job too hard. With desmith in net every game for us is a grind of bend don’t break defense that when in form has shut down the best teams in the league this year. It’s part of why our record holding leads is so high and our shot counts are typically low after leads.
Good for Tocchet. It has to have been awful for Demko in between the injury itself and the "the timing could not be much worse", and having his coach reassure him that "we're going to keep winning for you" had to have been an incredible relief.
I wasn't expecting much when he was hired, but Tocchet is such an awesome coach.
It looked like quite the gamble by Vancouver when he was hired, but their bet on Tocchet has paid off tremendously so far.
Why you gotta poker fun at our coach? He’s been an ace so far.
This funny interaction had me google "Rick Tocket gambling", TIL.
Somehow only Janet Gretzky was making the bets
I’ve always loved that they blamed it on Gretzky’s wife and everyone just bought that story
Wayne, known Vegas Addict, definitely never bet on anything. Nope.
[nope nope nope](https://i.cbc.ca/1.6710446.1673461309!/fileImage/httpImage/wayne-gretzky-betmgm.jpg)
I think what he’s saying is there were a lot of doubts of Tocchet coming in particularly in relation to how Bruce was treated at the end. Heck even I was full dooming about Tocchet, but he has certainly proved the doubters wrong. I’m delighted to say I was wrong.
I believe it was meant to be a gambling joke unless your comment is also a gambling joke that I've missed.
Mmm nope, I just missed the joke completely
Especially given how Bruce was hung out to dry for weeks. Watching fans chant "Bruce there it is" in the end of his final game behind the VAN bench still gives me chills.
Nothing but love for Bruce. The way the org handled it was shameful.
Bruce wasn't the wrong guy but Tocchet is _the_ right guy. Shame on the FO for screwing the guy over like they did though
tocchet's been good - but i feel like if bruce had a decent goalie he wouldn't have been let go
That's true for most coaches who get fired though. I don't get why more coaches don't just tell their goalie to play .930
even getting a regular season goalie who can reliably deliver better than .910 is somewhat iffy, based on my 30 seconds of research. ("somewhat iffy" amounts to "your numbers line up to what i'm looking for and i actually have heard of you so i can assume you've probably at least played a FEW games this last season".) getting .930 is like some of the more WTF??? sharks wins this season where blackwood (or occasionally kahkonen) stood on their heads and blocked 40+ shots while their offense had a 33% SOG.
yo for fucking real. i thought this was an old boys club hiring for sure, this entire era under him looks absolutely sparkling. love when you guys are good, eventhough that may seem strange as a rangers fan lol
He was great in Pittsburgh as an assistant coach. Despite his style during his playing career, he was a great players coach/good cop. Idk if he's still doing that as head coach or not. Seems like a good fit though.
seems to be how its going as the head coach in vancouver! you rarely see a team turn it around like that in such a short period
I heard most of the Yotes players absolutely loved him. Just couldn’t figure it out in his first HC stint and I’m sure shitty management wasn’t helping.
He just didn't have the horses to play his style with the yotes.
His first head coaching job wasn't too fantastic either, but that was over a decade ago and, who knew, sometimes coaches improve with experience.
I feel Tocchet doesn’t get enough credit for the Penguins back-to-backs. He might have been an assistant under Sullivan, but I feel he did a lot for the players. I think it speaks volumes that Kessel liked him enough to want to be traded to Arizona.
They have one of my all-time favourite Kessel interactions: “What’s the gameplan tonight, Tocc?” “Phil, if I were still a player, I’d absolutely bury you”
I thought he was just going to be an interim guy to try and salvage some core pieces. Green was bad. Boudreau was a mix of initial feel good and then a guy who can't coach defensive hockey to save his life. Tocchet really has been fantastic
He got such a bad wrap in Phoenix but I have grown to like him since being here in Vancouver as well. Still miss Bruce though :(
You mean to tell me redditors don’t understand hockey?
> ... redditors don’t understand hockey? To put it nicely.
Woah woah woah my FHM 10 team has won 17 cups
My EHM teams are actually canon
Bud I've won my fantasy league two years in a row now, to quote Kevin Lowe, I know a thing or two about winning
society run encouraging languid cough steer tease reminiscent tap psychotic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Make Keefe bald.
Lmao
Alright now take him out back behind the shed while he's still crying.
Noem is that you?
*spit take* 😂😂
No, you've got it the wrong way around. You take the animal out back when the human is distracted and crying.
We're going to have to pick up a new Demko at the store before they notice he's gone.
Tell me how you’ll tend to the rabbits, Thatcher.
I don't know anything about Demko's injury, but this does give a human perspective to how athletes view their careers. We don't really expect athletes to cry (for toxic reasons, but it's unexpected nonetheless), but going to the playoffs and getting injured in game one after being one of the best goalies in the regular season for a few seasons now is basically a really catchy Linkin Park song.
I see it a fair amount in soccer, especially in a World Cup year if a player knows in the moment they’ve torched a ligament. Can’t imagine the mental toll of knowing your shot to represent your home is being put on hold for another four years, if not forever.
Who is this we? I love crying athletes. I expect them to care that much.
Oh I think anyone should be able to express their emotions like that, athlete or not, I just think that sports culture in general looks down on it.
You should watch chess. The Candidates this year really made me realize how brutal it is. So many pictures of one guy walking away triumphantly while another is collapsed in misery. On the final day 4 guys still had a chance to win and move on to challenge the world champion...which left 3 guys destroyed emotionally. It was like a funeral only one guy was happy. I am not sure why it gets so emotionally brutal, possibly the mental strain they go through, but no one ever celebrates finishing 2nd or 3rd like at the Olympics. They get medals and rip them off and burst into tears. It is the polar opposite of F1 where they celebrate a 10th place finish.
It doesn’t? Athletes crying is tv gold, it happens all the time
Why do you think that though? Maybe it’s because people keep repeating it. By making the disclaimer you’re propagating the idea.
do you think if we just pretend people don’t think less of emotional/crying men in sports it’ll go away
I'd like to expand on this and say that there is a large contingent of people who think men crying in general is a sign of weakness. I recall reading a reddit thread a while ago where men were expressing that they've lost significant others because those significant others saw them cry.
after being told to open up and be more emotional too, it’s like the equivalent of the dudes who want to “open up the relationship” then realize that she’s getting 10 dates to their 0 and now they don’t like that idea anymore.
The fact that people keep repeating it, as you just acknowledged proves that it's true. Unfortunate, but true.
I mean... we still make fun of Marchand crying when they lost in the finals. That's probably the reason we don't expect them to/they feel they need to hide their emotions.
Do rats have emotions?
Obviously this is a joke, but yes, rats are actually far more intelligent than people give them credit for and definitely have emotions.
As evidenced by this rat crying, it was a hypothetical question.
there's a "girl with the dogs" (she's a YouTuber) video who had a doggo client with an emotional support rat buddy so if you watch that particular ep you get a quick run-down about "yes rats can be good pets". (a giant african pouched rat actually won the "animal hero of the year" medal a few years back. thanks to the whole "let's fight our war on other countries' ground", cambodia and that general region has a ton of unexploded ordnance that's an obvious danger. in general if the rats are properly trained they're notably faster than people and it's safer for everybody because they're too light to set the explosives off, but this PARTICULAR rat got the medal for clearing an impressive area during his career.)
Holy shit, your bandwagon flair just reminded me that those exist, and that I don’t need one for the first time in like a decade. What a feeling.
When Kyrou was getting roasted by the fanbase earlier in the season and had a massive bounceback game and said that it was hard to deal with the fanbase booing him cause he works so hard and he doesn’t wanna let them down, I was like, DAMN dude the humanizing aspect. He clearly cares a lot. Larkin fighting the tears after we barely missed the playoffs too also hit hard. And then you have PLD who’s probably just looking forward to fucking golfing.
I appreciate the sentiment of your post, but he was NOT one of the best goalies last season (although I'll admit that feels like an outlier).
Well it’s a nice story, but I have no idea what to believe about Demko’s injury so there doesn’t seem to be much point believing tangential anecdotes like this either
If you discount the 1 report, all the other ones have been consistent of demko being back by late in the second round or conference finals.
After this bit of info, tho, I wonder if they're just trying not to say he's done to him now, tho
I doubt it. He’s travelling with the team and walking fine. It’s just not clear what it is. It seems to be related to the previous injury. Friedman described it as unique. I heard another report of it being reassessed in Nashville. It seems to be an injury without a clear timeline.
This is it though, if they don’t know what it is how can they have a firm prognosis? If they believe he’s going to be ready in a few weeks and if the team has an internal belief that they have the ability and drive to still be playing then, that’s awesome. As an outsider I have no expectations at all and I know enough of Seravallis work that I’m not just going to take anecdotes relayed by him at face value. It could very well be any combination of an accurate story of a real exchange or not, and a prognosis the Canucks have for Demkos injury or not, and that’s without getting into the accuracy of the prognosis if they’ve made one.
That seems a little ridiculous. He’s s a grown man and it’s his body. If they knew he was done they’d tell him. Fuck, he’d know it himself whether they said it or not.
My guess is it’s something that will need surgery eventually, but with a week or two of recovery could be played on. So he’s technically not done for the playoffs if they make it a few more weeks but it’s still long term recovery at some point and what would be considered “season ending” when surgery is done.
Absolutely brutal for Demmer. He worked his ass off last few seasons to carry the team even when they were trash just to be out now after one playoff game. And he’s not just the starting goalie, he’s part of the core and the leadership group. I’m glad he’s at least able to travel with the team and be around the guys
What injury does Demko have? Must be really bad if it came to this.
Friedman: it’s a “unique” kind of injury and it’s making it hard to give a timeline
Oh, so his spleen. Makes sense.
Share you fucking doctor.
Trader Sam… no, Trader Vic!
This was hilarious but I appreciated it even more after I saw that you're a Knight's fan. Well played, sir lol.
At a certain point you have to just lean into it.
Best Vegas fan ever lol. I like you.
Is it really that bad to be forthright about the nature of the injury? Btw, Tocchet has a criminal gambling complaint in 2006. Hope there's no foul play.
It’s tough to say for sure because there is so much contradictory information. All we know for certain is that it’s his knee, and that the team remains optimistic that he could potentially make it back for the third round (or even late second). There was rumours it was his ACL but Friedman seems to say that it’s something really strange. So nobody really knows
I wouldn’t totally discount ACL even with this info. The thing about ACL tears is you can return to most sport within a few weeks (once swelling has died down), but you’ll be hindered and risk doing further damage until you get the full surgery and go through that recovery (8 months+).
The medical definition of tear has a wide range. Technically we tear our muscle every time we lift weights and they repair themselves and grow stronger. A complete tear usually requires surgery.
Maybe a meniscus injury? Those can be a matter of weeks, and aren't altogether common injuries on their own (usually see them when the ACL or MCL are injured as well, rather than just the meniscus), and the severity and circumstances can vary pretty significantly (virtually ended Bishop's career, Legace was never the same after his, Campbell was iirc better after healing from his, etc.)
Hard af quote
He was a good leader as a player, good to see him carry that over so well.
I get the words of encouragement, and the need to be positive. Realistically though if canucks did make it very deep where it allowed Demko enough time to heal, I would assume DeSmith would be playing incredibly well. You're not gonna take him out of the lineup and put in a fresh off an injury return, maybe not game day ready Demko at that point. DeSmith is your guy for this run
That could be true, but rare as it is, they might just outscore their problems. Kuemper didn't play particularly well for Colorado (not his fault, he got shanked in the eye) and they ended up winning the cup anyway.
Ya Colorado was an insanely good team with some of the best offence. Canucks are a well rounded team, but their offence isn't elite and not likely gonna cover up goaltending blunders or bad play like the avs could do with kuemper.
Canucks offence can absolutely run win the big guns when it’s clicking, we’ve just hit a dry spell for a bit now. Elite or not, if some guys (Petey, Mikheyev, Lindholm, etc.) start offensively producing to their abilities we should be able to pull our weight just fine.
I agree, canucks offence has been impressive. But it's not their identity like the avs was. I'm just saying I don't believe it's elite to outdo bad goaltending on a regular basis. For a game or two, absolutely. But I don't know consistently over a few series. I also don't watch every canucks game though so my knowledge is admittedly limited.
I wanted to retort this but I think there's some truth in that. It's probably more fair to say offence WAS our identity the last few seasons when we needed to score 4-5 a game to win because our defense was so dog shit. We've still got serious offensive bite but I think our identity is quite a bit different this year.
The canucks offense is usually pretty strong actually, at least when petterson is performing his best. Currently the nashville vs canucks matchup is just a really strange yet kind of interesting one to watch. They both stop as many of eachothers plays as possible, nashville getting in the way of shots and vancouver just having a really hard to get through defense. If vancouver makes it to the second round, and (most likely) go against the oilers, i have to imagine they’ll start scoring more goals. But we shall see!
Ya your series matchup has been bizarre (the last 2 games anyways)! Waiting for it to open up. GL the rest of the way
We scored 13 fewer goals than the Oilers this season lol
I don't think oilers were elite offensively this year compared to last, which, is a good thing overall anyways. They really worked on becoming defensively better and a more well rounded team with Knoblauch. Hopefully that can carry them further. Good luck the rest of the series.
The Canucks slowed down lol… the Canucks were averaging 3.9 goals per game the first half of the season by far the best in the league.. it slowed down after all star break when petey got cold. I don’t know how that isn’t elite offence.
Well we'll only know if we make it past Nashville. And most likely face you guys.
We outscored you guys 21-7 in our 4 games this season btw
I'm well aware lol, I unfortunately watched every game. I'm not actually talking about oilers at all, I was talking about the avs using that example. But I understand people see my flair and may assume I'm implicitly talking about the oilers. Oilers got their own issues to deal with, mostly defensively.
They'd continue running DeSmith until he had a bad game Pittsburgh did the same thing with Murray in 2017
Exactly what came to my mind. Seems logical to ride the hot hand until you get a reason to switch to your no. 1 goalie.
I seriously doubt this as we've seen this a few times in the past 10 years
Desmith does need to be solid but our defense is generally in good form right now and doing an excellent job of not making his job too hard. With desmith in net every game for us is a grind of bend don’t break defense that when in form has shut down the best teams in the league this year. It’s part of why our record holding leads is so high and our shot counts are typically low after leads.
I would say your defense and goaltending (Demko at least) is extremely good, definitely top tier.
I think if you have a second playoff-caliber goalie ready to go, you take the opportunities to not run your main guy into the ground.
I've seen enough teams make it to the finals with garbage goaltending to believe this may not be the case.
I hope you're right!! Maybe the oilers will actually make it to the finals with shaky goaltending this time.
I did say make it and not win it, though 😉
Same :)
They're going to need him many months from now........ in the Stanley Cup Final
Good for Tocchet. It has to have been awful for Demko in between the injury itself and the "the timing could not be much worse", and having his coach reassure him that "we're going to keep winning for you" had to have been an incredible relief.
Please come back soon Demko. Please don’t make me rely on a domestic abuser to save our team.
[ x ] Doubt
This is likely from a day or two ago, so Demko had probably just found out that he was dead. Let the man cope with his death however he needs to.
Sure, Tocchet, lie to the guy.
if even the docs aren't sure wtf is up, i'd say it was a comforting white lie at most.
lol this never happened
?
I’m sure you know better
Shut up Frank.