The Vancouver Canucks travel to Calgary for a one-game road trip to face the Flames on Saturday night.
After a mini, two-game homestand that saw the Canucks pick up a 3-1 win over the Anaheim Ducks and then fall to the Vegas Golden Knights by a 4-1 count, the team packs their bags and set sail to meet up with new Canuck Nikita Zadorov in Calgary as they highlight the nightcap on Hockey Night in Canada.
The Flames are amid their longest homestand of the season. The Canucks are coming to town and will be their third game of a six-game stretch at the Saddledome. So far, the Flames have been perfect in this run of home-ice play. They picked up a 2-1 overtime win over the Golden Knights on Monday before a 4-3 overtime win over the Dallas Stars on Thursday.
After a slow start to the season, the Flames have found their groove. They hold an 8-3-2 record over their last 13 games and have seen their top players step up to the plate over their recent stretch of strong play.
Nazem Kadri leads the way for the Flames with four goals and seven assists over the 13-game stretch. Jonathan Huberdeau and Blake Coleman have each contributed 10 points through the same number of games. Elias Lindholm and Martin Pospisil have been all around the net of late and each has three goals through the past baker’s dozen games.
As a little bit of a surprise, the leader at finding the back of the net during their 13-game heater was Noah Hanifin. The 26-year-old left-shot defenceman has five goals in his last 13 games and that tops the Flames over that stretch of games.
Jacob Markstrom has led the way in terms of starts between the pipes this season, but Dan Vladar has had a decent run over the past three weeks. Markstrom started on Thursday and is expected to be in the crease for Saturday night, but the Flames have run with Vladar lately and he could be in after Markstrom allowed three goals on 16 shots this past Thursday.
The Flames have 22-year-old rookie Connor Zary in their top-six this season and the former Kamloops Blazers’ captain has had a decent start to the season with three goals and seven assists through 13 games. Zary is also getting time on the second power play unit and has been averaging 15:24 of ice time this season.
We will see one BC-born player with the Flames on Saturday night. Dillon Dube of Golden, BC has been playing on the Flames’ fourth line of late and can contribute on both the penalty kill and power play units in a pinch. Dube played five seasons and over 200 games in the WHL with the Kelowna Rockets. At 25 years old, Dube has made a solid NHL career for himself and has scored 18 goals in each of the previous two seasons.
J.T. Miller has been the most productive offensive player over the Canucks’ last 10 games, picking up four goals and adding 11 assists. The more notable stat from that 10-game run has been that 10 of Miller’s 11 assists have been primary assists. In case you didn’t know, assists come in two forms, primary and secondary. A primary assist is for the last teammate to touch the puck and make a pass to the goal-scorers without a change in possession while a secondary assist comes to the second-last player to touch the puck without a change in possession.
To simplify, Miller’s 10 primary assists over his last 10 games are showing how well he is driving the offence and being a primary creator of scoring chances this season.
Nils Höglander has been excellent at five-on-five lately. Through his last nine games, he’s picked up four goals and throughout the season, he’s third in high-danger shot attempts per 60 minutes played at five-on-five. Höglander leads the team in five-on-five goals/60 with 1.85/60. His offence helps this next stat but his defence is also needed to help maintain his high control of the goal share. 77.8% of the goals scored while Höglander is on the ice are in the Canucks’ favour. They’ve outscored their opponents at five-on-five by a 14-4 rate this season with Höglander on the ice and recently, head coach Rick Tocchet spoke about getting the young Swede a few shifts higher up in the lineup.
“He's chipping away his game,” said Tocchet when asked about a quarter-season review of Höglander. “He corrected himself last game. Twice. I could see he wanted to do the old habit then he put the brakes on it. So that's the next step. Like now it should be habitual for him where he knows where he has to be. I saw that last game where he corrected himself. If he can get to that level, he’s a damn good player.”
In net, Thatcher Demko has a .927% save percentage over his last five starts and Casey DeSmith is no slouch either – he holds a .902% save percentage through his seven starts this season. The Canucks will have some options for Saturday night.
Of great interest to fans for Saturday night is the arrival of the newest Canuck, Nikita Zadorov. The 6’6”, left-shot defenceman was acquired on Thursday afternoon in exchange for a 2026 third-round pick and the 2023 fifth-round pick that was picked up by the club in the Anthony Beauvillier trade on Tuesday.
Zadorov is expected to make his debut in a Canucks jersey on Saturday night.
Saturday’s game is scheduled for 7:00 pm PT. You can watch the game on Hockey Night in Canada and listen to the radio broadcast on Sportsnet 650 with Brendan Batchelor, who is a play-by-play extraordinaire.
