The Vancouver Canucks (36-12-6) return home after their successful five-game road trip. The Canucks went 3-1-1 and now turn their attention to the Detroit Red Wings (27-19-6) in a rematch of this past Saturday’s morning game.
Thursday will be game two of the Red Wings’ four-game road trip through the Pacific Division. They took a tough 8-4 loss to kick things off on Tuesday night in Edmonton. The Red Wings are currently holding onto a wild card spot in the Eastern Conference and have a 10-3-2 record over their last 15 games.
A lot of the Red Wings’ wins have come with Alex Lyon in net but he gave up a season-high seven goals in Edmonton, replacing an injured Ville Husso. Lyon had a 12-game run before Tuesday that saw him post a .924% save percentage and hold an 8-2-2 record over that stretch.
Red Wings Captain Dylan Larkin leads the way offensively and is the only one on the Detroit roster who is over a point-per-game player. Larkin has 23 goals and 24 assists for 47 points in 46 games. Larkin is flanked by Alex DeBrincat and Lucas Raymond on the Red Wings’ top line. The trio has played 240 minutes together and outscored their opponents 17-11 at five-on-five this season.
Defensive depth has been a key to the Red Wings’ success this season. Jake Walman plays on the top pairing with Mo Seider and the 27-year-old has eclipsed double-digit goals from the backend and is already at 11 tucks on the season. The rest of the defence corps are veterans who shore up the depth of their blue line. Ben Chiarot, Jeff Petry, Olli Maatta and Shayne Gostisbehere round out the bottom-four and have a combined 2,764 NHL games played.
The Red Wings have the second-highest shooting percentage at five-on-five this season. Their possession numbers and control of scoring chances are near the bottom of the league but their goals for and goals against at five-on-five are in the middle of the pack. Good goaltending and accurate shooting have been driving causes for their success up to this point in the year.
Quick Hits on the Competition:
- As for minute munchers and who you will see a lot of, Mo Seider is the guy on the defence corps. Seider averages 22:21 per game and is on the top penalty kill pairing as well as contributing on the second power play unit.
- The top players on the penalty kill are Andrew Copp and J.T. Compher. They eat up a ton of minutes as a forward pairing when down a man.
- Alex DeBrincat leads the power play scoring with nine goals.
- The Wings have been a second and third period team. They are top seven in the league for goals for in each of those periods while they are 12th in the league for first period goals.
Now, as we turn our attention to the league-leading Vancouver Canucks, we first want to talk about the team returning to Rogers Arena. The Canucks have 28 games left in the season and 60% of those games are at home. So far this year, the Canucks have an 18-8-2 record on home ice as well as a 6-1-0 record when they play Creed at Rogers Arena.
Elias Pettersson and Ilya Mikheyev have been the fifth and sixth most-used forward on the penalty kill over the last 26 games and they have not been on the ice for a goal against through that stretch. Pettersson has been on the ice for 31:37 of penalty kill time without allowing a goal against and Mikheyev is at 30:36.
Depth continues to be important with the Canucks and the trio of Dakota Joshua, Conor Garland and Teddy Blueger showed up big time in Tuesday’s win over the Chicago Blackhawks. Joshua had the first three-point night of his career and Garland picked up a pair of goals to bring him to 11 on the season and give the Canucks 11 double-digit scorers on their roster.
Going under the hood of the Joshua-Blueger-Garland line, they have outscored the opposition by a 21-10 count and that line has been super-boosted with the assistance of Quinn Hughes.
When Hughes is on the ice with the third line, they hold an 11-4 control of the goals scored and have had 65 scoring chances compared to 30 scoring chances against. In the 110 minutes that this quartet has played together, they hold a 66.5% Corsi and have a 70.3% control of expected goals.
We’ve got to mention Nils Höglander, who scored his 17th goal of the season on Tuesday night. All 17 of Höglander’s goals have come at five-on-five this season and when you crunch the numbers to see who is scoring the most with the minutes they get, he leads the league with 1.82 goals per 60 minutes played – Auston Matthews is second with 1.69 goals/60.
Canucks’ Top Performers over Last Five:
Filip Hronek: 1g-4a-5p
Elias Pettersson: 1g-4a-5p
Quinn Hughes: 0g-4a-4p
Conor Garland: 3g-0a-3p
Nils Höglander: 3g-0a-3p
Finally, we return to our much more comfortable 7:00 pm PT starts. You can watch the game on Sportsnet or listen to the radio broadcast on Sportsnet 650.
