The Vancouver Canucks hit the road in search of more wins with three games in four nights including a back-to-back against the Minnesota Wild and Colorado Avalanche on Monday morning and Tuesday evening.
With their 18 road wins on the season, the Canucks rank second in the league for picking up victories away from home and are looking to continue to pick up points in other buildings aside from Rogers Arena.
Monday’s game is an 11:00 am PT start time with the Family Day holiday in British Columbia and Presidents’ Day down in the United States. The Wild and Canucks both saw a three-game winning streak snapped on Saturday night. The Wild fell to the Buffalo Sabres on home ice via a 3-2 overtime loss. On the season, the Wild hold a 25-23-6 record and are four points out of a wild card spot in the Western Conference.
This will be the third and final matchup of the season between the Canucks and the Wild. Casey DeSmith picked up a 26-save shutout on December 7th in a 2-0 victory. The Canucks fell to the Wild 2-1 in a shootout on December 16th. If the upcoming game resembles the prior two, we should expect another defensive battle between these two clubs.
Offensively, the Wild are led by Kirill Kaprizov, who has 20 goals and 31 assists for 51 points in 47 games this season. Kaprisov joins Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy on the top line and that trio has been very successful this season. All three players on the top line have 40 or more points and the trio has been on the ice for 15 goals scored and just six goals against.
On defence, rookie Brock Faber currently sits second to Connor Bedard in rookie scoring – he’s picked up four goals and 29 assists this year and is averaging a whopping 25:05 per night. He has been efficient on the first power play unit and will see time with Jonas Brodin as the top defence pairing for penalty killing.
Between the pipes, Filip Gustavsson and Marc-Andre Fleury are in a 1A-1B situation with Gustavsson picking up 31 starts to Fleury's 22. The duo has save percentages right around .900 but Gustavsson has picked up a couple of shutouts this season and Fleury has one of his own.
Quick Hits on the Competition (MIN):
- Joel Eriksson Ek will be shooting the puck and he will be doing it often. Eriksson Ek leads the Wild with 199 shots on net this season and he also leads the Wild in power play goals with 10.
- Speaking of the power play, the Wild sit 17th in the league with a 20.7% conversion rate.
- On the other end of the special teams, the Wild have the 28th-ranked penalty kill and are clicking at 75.1%.
- The Wild are still without their captain Jared Spurgeon, who is out with a left hip and back injury.
- Joining Faber in the youth movement are Matt Boldy and Marco Rossi. Both are 22-year-old forwards who have found their scoring touch this season. Boldy has 19 goals and 21 assists for 40 points while Rossi has picked up 14 goals and 16 assists for 30 points this season.
Shifting gears to Tuesday, the Canucks will battle with the Colorado Avalanche in Denver for the second of their back-to-backs.
Tuesday is back to a more routine start time. Puck drop will be 6:00 pm PT as the Canucks battle the Avalanche for the second time this season. The Canucks fell 5-2 back in November and will look for revenge on a game that got away from them.
We will get a chance to see the NHL’s second leading scorer and this game will feature four of the NHL’s top-ten scoring leaders as well as the league’s top two scoring defencemen.
Nathan MacKinnon has been on an absolute tear this season and has 28 multi-point games including 10 games with three or more points. He’s scored 32 goals and has 25 of them at even strength. MacKinnon will play on a line with Mikko Rantanen and Jonathan Drouin. The duo of MacKinnon and Rantanen have been on the ice for 48 five-on-five goals this season and continue to be one of the most dangerous forward pairings in the league.
The Avalanche currently sit with a 33-18-4 record and hold onto the third playoff spot in the Central Division. The Avs possess the best home-ice record in the league and are 20-5-0 at Mile High.
They just wrapped up a six-game road trip in which the team struggled and went 1-4-1. They will play the Arizona Coyotes on Sunday and have a day off before the Canucks get there on Tuesday.
Quick Hits on the Competition (COL):
- As much as there’s an argument for the Devon Toews and Cale Makar pairing to be one of the best in the league, they hold a negative control of the goal share this season and have been on the ice for 29 goals against and only scored 28 at five-on-five this season.
- Makar picks up a ton of his points on the power play and has five goals and 22 assists for 27 power play points this season. Filip Hronek has more even strength points than Makar this season.
- No goaltender has played more than the Avalanche’s Alexandar Georgiev. The 27-year-old has started 44 of the Avs’ 55 games this season and Georgiev has a 28-13-3 record with a .897% save percentage.
- The Avs have the seventh-best power play in the league and are running at 24.3%.
- As for the penalty kill, they rank ninth in the league with an 81.5% kill rate.
Getting back to the Canucks, the pairing of Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek continues to be a top-tier defence duo in the league. Through 56 games, the pairing has been on the ice for 60 goals scored and only 32 goals against. That gives them a 65.2% control of the goal share at five-on-five and no pairing is really close to being on the ice for as many goals scored. The next closest is the pairing of Brent Burns and Jaccob Slavin, who have been on the ice for 44 goals scored at five-on-five.
It’s more than likely that we will see Casey DeSmith get back into game action over one of these two games, the Canucks’ backup has a 7-3-5 record this season and continues to pick up points for the team in his starts.
J.T. Miller has been all over the scoresheet this season but we haven’t really spent much time talking about his faceoff prowess. He’s now up to seventh in the league for faceoff attempts and holds a 54.9% winning percentage in the dot.
Quietly, over his past 10 games, Sam Lafferty has been effective in his own zone. Lafferty has not been on the ice for a five-on-five goal against in 10 games and his fourth-line linemate Nils Aman has only been on the ice for one goal against over his last 10. The fourth line is doing their job of winning the night at five-on-five over the last few weeks.
Canucks’ Top Performers over Last Five:
Elias Pettersson: 1g-6a-7p
Filip Hronek: 1g-4a-5p
Conor Garland: 3g-1a-4p
Nils Höglander: 3g-1a-4p
Elias Lindholm: 2g-1a-3p
Monday’s 11:00 am start will be the second-last early start for the Canucks this season. They will have a 12:30 pm PT start on Sunday, March 31st but aside from that game, the earliest remaining start of the season will be 4:00 pm PT.
Both games can be viewed on Sportsnet or listened to on Sportsnet 650 and the Sportsnet Radio Network.
A final friendly reminder for times before we get out of here:
Monday is an 11:00 am PT start.
Tuesday is a 6:00 pm PT start.
