Sunday January 12 - Vancouver Canucks 4 - Minnesota Wild 1
The Vancouver Canucks vaulted themselves back into the thick of the Pacific Division playoff race on Sunday thanks to a tidy road win over the Minnesota Wild.
Here are your highlights:
My broad impressions of the Wild, who we saw for the first time this season on Sunday — undisciplined, and not much of an offensive threat.
The Canucks' power play may not have looked all that sharp, but it had plenty of time to work on a season-high eight opportunities that spanned 9:52 of playing time. By comparison, they had nine power-play chances, total, in the first three games of this road trip.
The Wild also took themselves off power plays of their own three times during the game — once in each period.
Elias Pettersson's 21st goal of the year opened the scoring midway through the second period, just after the Canucks got the man advantage when one of those 4-on-4 stretches concluded.
Officially, it was Vancouver's first power-play goal in five games — and their only one of the game. They're now 1-for-20 since January 4 — that's a 5.0 percent conversion rate. They've now slipped behind Colorado into second place in the league in penalties drawn, and are also behind the Rangers in penalties drawn per 60 minutes. And the power play has slipped a bit —down from fourth in the league at 26.4 percent at the end of December to fifth at 24.1 percent after Sunday's game.
Though the Canucks carried the play in the game, they found themselves in a 1-1 tie with 8:02 left in the second period, after Marcus Foligno went to the net to pick up his eighth of the year.
It was impressive to see the Horvat line go to work after that goal. After Bo won the draw, Loui Eriksson took a shot that was blocked, then Tanner Pearson got the puck on net before Horvat tapped home the loose puck — all in the span of 13 seconds.
That's the type of quick-strike response that we don't often see from the Canucks. When Troy Stecher extended the lead to 3-1 just 1:12 later, the already rather lacklustre effort from the Wild seemed to dip even more.
Antoine Roussel seemed especially feisty on Sunday, taking two penalties and still managing to play a season-high 15:44. Perhaps that energy carried over from his years as a Central Division player in Dallas?
Never trailing in the game, Travis Green was able to balance his players' ice time pretty effectively over the back-to-back games. With a team-leading 6:13 of power-play time, Quinn Hughes still played a whopping 23:40, but only two other players finished with more than 20 minutes of ice time — Tyler Myers at 21:08 and Chris Tanev at 20:36. Alex Edler was a plus-two despite playing just 19:10, which I believe is his lowest ice time of the year other than the two games during which he was injured.
With every point so important right now, I wasn't surprised to see Jacob Markstrom get the start in back-to-back games after facing just 28 shots in Buffalo on Saturday. He had a relatively easy outing on Sunday, too, seeing just three Wild shots in the first and nine in the second. Markstrom's best work came as he preserved the 3-1 lead while Minnesota tried to score with the extra attacker on the ice in the dying minutes. Horvat sealed the win with his second of the game, into an empty net with six seconds left on the clock.
The Wild finished the game with just 24 shots on goal — tied for the third-fewest allowed by Vancouver in a game this season.
In his homecoming to Minnesota, Brock Boeser was held off the scoresheet — but I suspect he'd declare himself a winner anyway.
Brock's mom admitted to
Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet that Duke Boeser has faced some new challenges since his summer heart attack, and that he's currently taking medication that will hopefully slow the spread of his cancer.
"It’s kind of the cognitive part, he’s not back to where he was. And he can have some mood changes that we didn’t see before," said Laurie Boeser. "It seems to be aligned with fatigue, we’re figuring out, where he can become agitated. He didn’t have that personality before. Sometimes it’s hit and miss depending on the day. Some days he’s sharp, and sometimes he’s a little more scrambled. We’re just thankful he’s with us."
Though Brock signed a three-year, $17.625 million contract in September, Laurie continues to work Monday through Friday. A caregiver is now at the house to tend to Duke while she's away. Through it all, her stoicism continues to blow me away.
"I know there are families, people in this world who have gone through the same trials and tribulations we have," she said. "I know that, for sure."
It was nice to see Boeser pick up some points this week — and for people to notice that even though he isn't scoring as spectacularly as he did in his rookie season, his 43 points in 46 games put him comfortably on pace for a career high this season — and have him keeping pace with his more lauded Lotto Linemates Pettersson (48 points) and J.T. Miller (44 points). Boeser's currently tied for 23rd in league scoring with Jake Guentzel, Mark Stone and Teuvo Teravainen. Not bad at all.
But given everything he's dealing with, it's not surprising to hear that he didn't take his brief demotion to the third line in practice last week too personally.
"I’m not saying hockey’s not important, it is important," he told MacIntyre. "I want to win and I want to make the playoffs, and the game has already given me so much. But life … there’s so much more after hockey. Family is more important than hockey. I understand there is more to life than just the game."
With his two goals on Sunday and 12 points in his last seven games, Bo Horvat is heating up and also cracked the 40-point plateau. He's now on pace for 72 points this season, which would also be a career high, and is continuing his trajectory where his offense has improved every season that he's been in the league.
After Sunday's win, the Canucks briefly moved up to second place in the Pacific with their 54 points. By the end of the night, they'd slipped back to third after the Arizona Coyotes picked up a point in their 4-3 shootout loss against Pittsburgh.
The Calgary Flames took over first place in the division on Saturday and are riding a five-game winning streak after their emotional win over Edmonton in the Battle of Alberta on Saturday night. Also currently with 55 points, they can expand their cushion on Monday as they start a road trip in Montreal — the only game on the five-match schedule of any real consequence to Canucks fans.
Also — I should officially mention that Quinn Hughes did earn the Pacific Division's 'Last Man In' vote, so he'll be joining Elias Pettersson and Jacob Markstrom at All-Star Weekend.
Perhaps it's just as well that Travis Green didn't earn the coaching position? It sounds like Gerard Gallant is going to have a bit of an internal war on his hands.
Yup — Matthew Tkachuk and Mark Giordano will be repping the Flames next week in St. Louis. Too bad we don't have Drew Doughty in the mix, too!
According to Sunday's Sportsnet broadcast, Quinn's addition to the Pacific roster marks the fourth time in franchise history that the Canucks have taken three players to the All-Star Game — and the first time since the 3-on-3 format was introduced. The last occasion was in 2012, when the Sedin twins and Alex Edler took part.
Just one team in each division has at least three players on the roster. Each of those teams got a Last Man In vote, and is sending a goalie.
In the Central, understandably, the Stanley Cup winners and All-Star hosts from St. Louis have a league-high four players on the roster: Jordan Binnington, Alex Pietrangelo, Ryan O'Reilly and Last Man In David Perron.
In the Metro, it's Washington, with Braden Holtby, John Carlson and Last Man In T.J. Oshie. Without Alex Ovechkin, the Metro has no captain; it also has four defensemen on its nine-skater roster, while the other three divisions all have just two.
In the Atlantic, the Leafs are sending Freddy Andersen and Auston Matthews, with Mitch Marner as the Last Man In. I guess all is forgiven with the voters after Marner's offseason contract standoff?
Click here to see the current rosters. With 10 days' worth of games before the break, more changes could still happen.
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