Mike Sullivan sounds confident that Canucks will break scoring slump

Canucks assistant coach Mike Sullivan says his team's players just have to "stay the course", and they'll get back on track with their scoring.

"I think five-on-five, overall, the body of work this year has been pretty good up until this last little while here, when we've been struggling to score goals," Sullivan said.

He's been speaking to the media since head coach John Tortorella was suspended for six games.

The Canucks have scored just eight goals in their last seven games.

"I thought during the month of December when we went 10-1-1, we scored a fair amount of goals five-on-five and on the power play," Sullivan said. "Our power play was close to 20 percent, I think, in the month of December. So we'll continue to work with our guys to help them through the process."

He said that this can be done by getting  defencemen involved in the rush and taking bad-angle shots, which allow for scoring opportunities on rebounds around the crease.

Sullivan's comments came before Vancouver takes on the Phoenix Coyotes this evening at Rogers Arena.