The Vancouver Canucks received their first defeat in five matches Monday night when the Carolina Hurricanes put together a complete effort and left Vancouver with two points after a 4-3 overtime victory.

The home team was undoubtedly lucky to come away with a point for the overtime loss, and they have Kevin Lankinen to thank for that. Lankinen made 28 saves on 32 Hurricanes shots and made more than a few five-alarm saves to keep his team within striking distance all night.

The players in front of Lankinen were sloppy, and aside from a ten-minute stretch where they came back and forced overtime, the Canucks were outclassed by a sharper, quicker Carolina team.

Unsurprisingly, Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet had A LOT to say after the game. Here are some highlights.

On the overall game:

“Yes, the last 10 minutes were great, but before that you have to learn. I don’t think we were ready to play, Carolina was. They believed in what they were doing. Beat us at pucks. And we had a lot of guys early on that weren’t moving their feet, weren’t winning battles. And then we decided to do things, and we made a game out of it. So take away the positives to understand, but I still think there are lessons to be learned.

“You’re playing against a man-on-man team. So when the puck goes somewhere, you can’t watch it. You have to find your man to get the body position. I’m a big body position guy, and we don’t understand that you can’t let people jump next to you. And that’s what’s happening. That’s why Carolina was everywhere against us in the first half.

“It’s early in the season, but we need guys to take the information we give them and apply it. And we knew they were shooting a lot of pucks. As soon as they have it, they throw the ball, right? So you can’t dive. You have to be above their guy. But (what’s) frustrating for the staff is we explained that to them the last couple of days when they were playing this team, so I felt a few guys were diving into it. That’s why they had these strange rushes of men. It can’t happen anytime, but especially against Carolina, because they are very good at it.

On Pettersson’s line change and power play:

Question: The line with Pettersson, Garland and Höglander separated, it seemed, as the match went on, and even before that it was sort of the bottom line in terms of usage, five against five for 40 minutes. Just your comment on why you decided to approach your deployment this way, and what you saw from that line tonight.

Tocchet: “Obviously, when you change it, you don’t like it, right? So I didn’t like some things there. I didn’t like Hoggy at all. Petey… you know, look, I’m not going to pick on that line. I just felt like I wanted to make some changes.

Question: What did you see from your power play tonight?

Tocchet: “We are going to have to make some changes. I don’t work hard enough. Very nonchalant. This is a team under high pressure. We had rare moments where we got a few looks. The game plan actually worked when Hughes put the ball at the net, we had Millsy, he almost scored up front. That’s the key against that PK pressure, being able to make one or two plays and then score. I thought a few guys there were playing slow. You can’t play slow against a high pressure PK, you just can’t. So we’re going to have to make a few…I think I’m going to make a few changes. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.

The Canucks are scheduled to practice at noon today, and we’ll have a full practice report with more quotes from Tocchet this afternoon right here at Canucks Army.

Read last night’s edition of The Stanchies — our post-game recap by award-winning journalist Wyatt Arndt — by clicking here!