HC Rick Tocchet hails Vancouver Canucks’ play despite struggle against special teams in loss to Stars

The Vancouver Canucks may have fallen short against the Dallas Stars on Friday night, but head coach Rick Tocchet couldn't help but praise his team's overall performance despite the 5-3 defeat.

The Canucks outshot the Stars 29-14 but struggled on special teams, going 1-for-5 on the power play while Dallas converted one of their two opportunities. Despite the special teams' shortcomings, Tocchet said:

"I was proud of the team, I thought they played really well. It's a good hockey team over there, you know, kept them low amount of shots, you know, especially special teams won the battle, they got the power play goal and we couldn't get it, but I thought for the most part the guys played hard."

Conor Garland, Carson Soucy and Jake DeBrusk scored for the Canucks. Thatcher Demko made 11 saves in goal. Jason Robertson (two goals), Roope Hintz (two goals) and Oskar Back scored for Dallas. Jake Oettinger has 25 saves.

Defenseman Tyler Myers agreed with Tocchet:

“I thought the guys played a really strong game tonight. I thought we did a lot of good things. We’ll look at ways to always get better. Guys played hard tonight.

"It was a close game. A couple of emptynetters at the end made it look, the score didn’t really match how the game was.”

The Canucks' loss dropped them to 23-18-10 on the season. They're now a point out of a wild-card spot.

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Game Recap: Canucks 5-3 loss to Stars

Dallas took a 1-0 lead in the first period when Oskar Back scored from the low slot. Vancouver responded early in the second, with Garland tying it 1-1 on a 3-on-2 rush. Jason Robertson put Dallas back ahead 2-1 with a power-play goal at 16:29 by back-to-back passing from Wyatt Johnston and Matt Duchene in the slot.

Roope Hintz extended the lead to 3-1 early in the third, beating the defense and scoring five-hole on goalie Demko. He later added a short-handed empty-net goal to make it 4-1.

DeBrusk cut the lead to 4-2 with a power-play goal, but Robertson scored an empty-netter with 53 seconds left. Carson Soucy scored in the final seconds, making it a 5-3 final.

Next, Vancouver will face the Detroit Red Wings on Sunday.