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Canucks jump to 2nd place in the Pacific with 5-2 win over listless Flames |
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Sunday December 29 - Vancouver Canucks 5 - Calgary Flames 2
For the first time in Travis Green's two-and-a-half years behind the bench, the Vancouver Canucks have strung together a five-game winning streak.
With Thatcher Demko seeing his first action since December 7, the Canucks finished off their weekend back-to-back by cruising to an easy win over the Calgary Flames.
Here are your highlights:
As well as Demko's solid 23-save performance, the two key storylines were Tyler Myers' offense and the return of the power play. It went 2-for-5, with both goals coming from the second unit. Myers effectively replaced Alex Edler in the point position on that unit while Edler was injured, and has kept his spot since Edler returned to the lineup. With his three-point performance on Sunday, Myers now has 13 points on the season — and nine of them have come in December, since his deployment has changed.
For his part, Edler logged just two seconds of ice time with the man advantage on Sunday. Considering that he's still Vancouver's ice-time leader at 23:29 a game, taking him off the power play will certainly hurt his offensive numbers, but it should also help keep the 33-year-old a little fresher when he's needed for key defensive matchups.
Myers had nine goals and 31 points in Winnipeg last season — despite averaging just 1:07 of power-play time per game over the season, well behind Dustin Byfuglien, Jacob Trouba and Josh Morrissey. He had seven power-play assists but none of his goals came with the man advantage — eight were at even strength and one was shorthanded.
On Sunday, Myers certainly got an assist from a very shaky performance by Calgary's David Rittich, who got the hook after giving up three goals on seven shots in just 10:24 of action in the first period. But now that Myers has his first power-play marker with the Canucks, hopefully that's something that he can build off.
Jake Virtanen's 12th of the year also came with the man advantage — and was the goal that earned Rittich his hook. He also picked up an assist, so he has been producing at a point-a-game rate over his last eight games, with 5-3-8. His 11 points in 13 December games are actually second on the entire team behind Brock Boeser (14), and one point ahead of Elias Pettersson and Tanner Pearson, each with 10.
For his part, Pearson also had a three-point night on Sunday, with two goals and an assist. He's now up to 11 goals for the year and on pace for 56 points his season, which would be a career high.
On the cusp of the halfway mark of the season, the Canucks now have six 10-goal scorers — Pettersson (18), Miller (14), Boeser (13), Virtanen (12), Pearson (11), Horvat (10).
Last season at this time, they had four — Petey (19), Horvat (17), Boeser (14) and Virtanen (11).
The key for Virtanen will be to see if he can keep it going in the second half this year — he ended last season with 15 goals. And while it seems like Pettersson and Boeser have matched their outputs from last year much more quietly this season, perhaps that's because the Canucks aren't such a one-line team this year? Sunday's game was a perfect example of other players stepping up to drive the bus.
By beating Calgary, the Canucks jumped over them in the Pacific Division standings. Arizona and Winnipeg also lost on Sunday, so Vancouver wakes up Monday morning in second place in the Pacific — and just two points behind Vegas, with two games in hand on the Golden Knights. The impact of the winning streak has been turbo-charged by the fact that four of the five victories have come against divisional opponents — Vegas, Edmonton, L.A. and Calgary.
Four of the wins have also been in regulation, so the Canucks' 15 regulation wins now compare pretty favourably to the rest of their Pacific rivals. That could be important if playoff position ends up coming down to a tiebreaker in April.
The only team that's currently hotter than Vancouver is St. Louis, which won its eighth-straight game on Sunday with a 4-1 victory over Winnipeg and sits first in the Western Conference, one point out of first overall. Quite a change from last year!
The Canucks don't play again till Thursday, so they're taking Monday off. There's just one game on the schedule on Monday night but plenty of New Year's Eve action which could shuffle the standings on Tuesday, so I'll hold off on looking too closely at year-end numbers for now.
As well as feeling good about turning around a month of December that started 3-5-0 to finish up 8-5-0, the Canucks can also feel good about a pretty decent schedule in January.
Yes, there's a five-game road trip, including one back-to-back with daytime games in Buffalo and Minnesota, and they'll spend more time on the road (six games) than they do at home (five games). But in addition to their current three-day break, they'll get another two days off before they start that trip in Tampa next week, and have another eight days off over their All-Star Break/bye week later in the month.
Of their 11 January games, seven will also be against teams that are currently out of playoff position — Chicago, the Rangers, Tampa Bay, Buffalo, Minnesota and San Jose twice. Given how tight the standings are in both conference, those positions could change, however.
The most important game of next month may turn out to be the January 16 contest against the Arizona Coyotes at Rogers Arena — the team Vancouver is currently tied with in the standings, but which has struggled of late, now on its first three-game losing streak of the season.
OK - let's do the World Juniors check-in and get on with the day...
• Nils Hoglander picked up a goal and an assist as Sweden cruised to a 6-2 win over Kazakhstan in the early game in Trinec on Monday.
Looks like he didn't even have his feet set when he shot.
The Swedes currently lead Group A with a 2-1-0-0 record for eight points, and Hoglander's six points in those three games have him one point off the overall tournament scoring lead — although I think Trevor Zegras will have something to say about that once this USA/Czech game is complete.
• After two periods, Zegras has two assists as the U.S. team leads the Czechs 3-2. Canucks' prospect Karel Plasek has been moved up to the top line for this game and played a solid 13:17 through two periods. He earned his first assist of the tournament on Czech captain Libor Zabransky's power-play goal.
That's quite a leap in role for Plasek, who didn't get onto the Czech roster until Jakub Lauko was injured in the team's first game.
• Vasily Podkolzin's Russian team and Toni Utunen's Finns both have the day off.
On Tuesday, Russia will face Germany and Sweden plays Slovakia in the early games, then the Finns take on Switzerland and Canada meets the Czechs in the late games that will determine the final round-robin standings.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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