from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

The word of the day Thursday for the Vancouver Canucks was egregious.

Coach Rick Tocchet used it five times in the opening two minutes of his post-game press conference to describe his team’s mistakes.

Oxford reminds us that egregious means appalling, horrifying, terrible and shocking.

All of these words except the last one applied to the Canucks in their 5-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings, a potential first-round playoff opponent for Vancouver. But, really, after the slide in the Canucks’ play the last couple of weeks, there was nothing shocking about their failure against the Kings.

Vancouver may still lead the Pacific Division, but they are 1-5-1 in its last seven games against Western Conference contenders and other teams desperately trying to get into the National Hockey League playoffs.

The Kings had just been swept in Alberta, losing 4-2 against both the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames, but they barely allowed the Canucks an offensive sniff. The Canucks lost most of the puck battles, were unable to work through the Kings’ heavy board work and were more or less checked into submission once they fell behind 2-0 in the first 25 minutes.

“I don't think we gave them a lot but what we gave them was egregious,” Tocchet said at the start of the post-mortem. “I mean you look at the goals, we're all in (gambling), pushing the chips in. We've got a day off tomorrow; some guys need it. We've got to recharge and we've just got to get our mind right.”

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