Sunday November 7 - Dallas Stars at Vancouver Canucks - 7 p.m.
After their 3-2 loss to the Nashville Predators on Friday, the Vancouver Canucks will finish their seven-game homestand with a record below .500.
They're now 1-4, with just two games to go — Sunday against Dallas, then Tuesday against Anaheim.
All five games have been decided by one goal, and the simple explanation for the poor record is special teams. The Canucks were 0-for-5 with the man advantage against the Predators on Friday, while giving up two power-play goals on three Nashville opportunities.
They've now gone four games without a power play goal — 0-for-17 through that stretch — while giving up seven goals on 15 shorthanded situations.
The power play is now down to 14% efficiency, 25th in the league, and the penalty killing is 29th at a 66.7% kill rate.
Of the six power-play goals that Vancouver has scored in its 11 games this season, Alex Chiasson leads the way, with two. J.T. Miller has four points, while Chiasson, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes each have three.
Saturday was a team day off for the Canucks after the loss to Nashville. Not surprisingly, we're seeing some changes to the power-play groups at Sunday's morning skate — including a Vasily Podkolzin sighting.
All this appears to be facilitated by the return of Justin Dowling, who has missed the last five games with an undisclosed issue. That bumps Chiasson into the extras. And on the blue line, Brad Hunt is skating in Luke Schenn's spot on the left side of the third pairing.
Perhaps Dowling's return will help the penalty kill, where he was averaging 1:09 a game before he was sidelined, and which has gotten worse while he has been absent. This could be even more of a Matthew Highmore problem. He has now been absent for three games, and the P.K. has given up two goals a game in each of those contests.
Here's the rest of the roster info from Sunday's morning skate.
When you're as low as the Canucks in the league's special teams rankings, nearly any opponent is going to have better numbers. And the Dallas Stars do. Generally speaking, Dallas has struggled to score this season. But Rick Bowness recently put his big line of Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Alexander Radulov back together and Dallas scored four goals for the first time all year when Benn popped the overtime winner in Calgary on Thursday night.
It was the first win in five games for the Stars, who are wrapping up a three-game Canadian road trip on Sunday. Last Tuesday, they rallied from a 3-1 third-period deficit to grab a point in Winnipeg, before falling in the shootout.
As for their special teams, Dallas' power play is heating up, with goals in each of its last three games, and is now ranked 11th overall at 24%. Penalty killing is a little shakier, ranked 21st at 78.8%, and has given up four goals in the last three games.
Will Sunday be a revenge game for Braden Holtby? The Canucks cast him aside after just one season, but Holtby has rebounded nicely in Dallas. With Ben Bishop's health still an issue and Jake Oettinger still waiver exempt, the Stars inked Holtby to a one-year free agent contract at $2 million after he was bought out by Vancouver. And while the Stars are still sputtering along with a middling 4-4-2 record, Holtby has grabbed the No. 1 job, starting 7 of 11 games so far, and has dramatically outperformed Anton Khudobin with a .924 save percentage and 2.46 goals-against average.
As I write this on Sunday morning, Dallas hasn't declared a starting goaltender, and I'm seeing different projections on a couple of the fantasy sites that log this information. But it may not matter whether it's Holtby or Khubodin in net. Even though the Canucks haven't faced the Stars since the 6-1 loss in Dallas on Nov. 19, 2019, I remember that I've been writing for years about how the Stars seem to own the Canucks — especially at Rogers Arena.
According to the
Stars' website, the club's longest active road point streak is against Vancouver — 9-0-2 in its last 11 visits. So with the Canucks once again struggling to find a winning formula this season, Dallas is not likely to be the opponent that will unlock the club's untapped potential.
Ugh. Barely 10 games in and I'm already bracing for a long night ahead. And the Canucks are going to need to start making hay soon if they want to keep pace in the Pacific Division standings. Already two games below .500, they're sitting seventh as we head into Sunday's games — four points behind third-and-fourth-place San Jose and Anaheim, with the Ducks and the fifth place Vegas Golden Knights also in action.
The season started a little later than usual, but we're just a couple of weeks out from American Thanksgiving, when about two-thirds of the playoff positions will be set. Is it a Yogi Berra-ism to say that it's getting late early this year?
Speaking of divisional rivals — and former Canucks goalies — can you believe that Jacob Markstom has now become Mr. Shutout?
It took Markstrom until age 27 — nine NHL seasons and 115 starts — to earn his first clean sheet with Vancouver, a 3-0 shutout of the Carolina Hurricanes on Dec. 9, 2017 — off goals from Derrick Pouliot, Nikolay Goldobin and Thomas Vanek, to remind you of how long ago that was.
By the time he left Vancouver at the end of the 2019-20 season, Markstrom had five career shutouts, in 229 games with the Canucks.
With Calgary, he's already up to seven in just 52 games. He logged his fourth in nine starts this season against the New York Rangers on Saturday night. I'm a believer in Thatcher Demko, but Markstrom's .942 save percentage, 1.65 GAA and 5-1-3 record are nearly as eye-popping as that shutout number, especially since I wasn't expecting anything from the Flames this year.
Maybe they'll cool off by the time they finally face Vancouver? Remarkably, the two teams won't meet until just before the All-Star/Olympic break, on January 29th, 2022.
The Flames' farm team got the upper hand this weekend, though, with a pair of one-goal wins over the Abbotsford Canucks. The Stockton Heat earned a 3-2 victory on Friday with Mikey DiPietro in goal for the Canucks, then a 2-1 win on Saturday with Arturs Silovs in net.
With the wins, Stockton improves to 7-0-1 on the season, while Abbotsford's record drops to 3-4-2. The Baby Canucks are now home for the next two weeks, with pairs of games this weekend against the San Jose Barracuda and next weekend against the Bakersfield Condors.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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