Canucks revert to form, lose to Seattle, 6-1

In Seattle, perhaps the true Vancouver Canucks showed up on Wednesday night.

One game after getting their first win under new coach Rick Tocchet, the Canucks dropped a miserable 6-1 decision to the Kraken.

Seattle took a 5-0 lead in the game before getting on the board in the middle frame.

Martin Jones made 19 saves in an easy effort for the win.

“We played 60 minutes and made it hard right away from the start,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “We played a real direct game, did everything pretty quick. We sustained that through, for sure through the first 40 minutes, and you know for the majority of the 60 minutes we didn’t give up very much because of that.”

Seattle improved to 28-14-5.

Conor Garland was the lone striker for the Canucks, his second period goal “trimmed” the Seattle lead to 5-1.

“That’s a good team right there,” Tocchet said. “I thought the anxiety caught up with some of the guys, with the emotion of last week, but that was bad. That was bad. … Soft. You hate to call your team soft, but it was soft tonight. We didn’t participate in the wall battles, we didn’t get a rim out. We knew what they were going to do. This is a good team. … Old habits came.”

Oliver Bjorkstrand scored the first of his two goals on the night in the first period for a 1-0 lead to the Kraken.

“We wanted to be ready from the start,” Bjorkstrand said. “I thought we were. They’re coming off a back to back. We hadn’t played a game for I think three days (2-1 shootout loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday), so we should be fresh, and I thought we showed that we were.”

Alex Wennberg hit off the power play for a 2-0 advantage headed to the second period.

Seattle scored three straight in the second starting with a power play goal from Jared McCann.

Vancouver dropped to 19-53-3.

“They move their feet well. We got stuck chasing them all night,” Canucks forward Curtis Lazar said. “That’s an area we know we need to work and improve.”

Seattle capped their scoring run in the period on strikes from Eeli Tolvanen and Bjorkstrand’s second.

“We haven’t liked the results, obviously (Seattle is 1-5-1 against Vancouver in its history),” Hakstol said. “I said before the game the results from last year mean nothing to this group, I maybe overstated that a little bit. They’re the nearest team, but the most important thing is, this is game three this year, and we [hadn’t won]. We had one point up in Vancouver. These are a critical two points.”

Seattle’s Ryan Donato scored early in the third period for the 6-1 final.