And away we go! After a longer layoff between series, the puck drops tonight in Vancouver as the Canucks host the Oilers in round two. The Oilers were one of the preseason favourites to win the Cup, the Canucks were thought of as a bubble team at best. But just like Vancouver’s dominance over Edmonton in the regular season, none of that means anything anymore. Both teams are here, both teams deserve to be here, and it’s a best of seven to see who moves on.
While Vancouver holds home ice advantage, they’re still thought of the underdogs in this series. And fair enough, when you have McDavid on the other side of the rink people will always tip things in his favor. We’ve all seen and read the chatter… but that also puts all the pressure on the Oilers, and the Canucks get to glide under that. That’s the way the team sees it too.
"I love being doubted," Tocchet said of the predictions. "I think we kind of like that underdog role. And I think players should embrace it. I really do."
The Oilers hold a major advantage at the top of their lineup: McDavid and Draisaitl have been historically good in the playoffs. Those two make the Oilers a big top heavy team that feast offensively. They score, and their power play is clicking. The Canucks, however, hold the advantage with their depth and their defense. While people like to point out to their series with Nashville as a struggle, Nashville was actually better down the stretch offensively than the Oilers were, as Ian MacIntyre points out:
From the National Hockey League all-star break until the end of the regular season three weeks ago, the Predators actually were ahead of the Oilers in scoring (3.71 goals per game to 3.62), power-play percentage (27.2 to 25.5) and shots on goal (34.4 to 33.7).
Patrick Allvin revamped the Canucks D this past year, bringing in bigger, heavier, mobile players to solidify the back end. Their bottom 4 now reads like this: Zadorov (6-6, 248 pounds), Cole (6-1, 225), Myers (6-8, 229) and Soucy (6-5, 208). That’s a lot of reach and muscle and feistiness to keep Edmonton to the outside.
“Does size matter? Sure,” Cole said. “Longer limbs, longer legs, longer reach — all these things are important for sure. But I think you need to pair that size with battle-level and desperation otherwise... I mean, there's plenty of big guys in the league. But are you able to win battles with your size? Are you able to go in hard and box out and do the things that help you capitalize on your size? And I think that's what we've done much better.”
The Canucks did a great job in round one against Nashville. They allowed just 12 goals in six games, averaged 25 shots per game against, and restricted Nashville to 40 high-danger chances at five-on-five. It was a war at times, and the Canucks did it through their structure and patience.
“Those principles that we brought into the Nashville series are our principles and how we want to play,” Cole said after practice. “Do we make adjustments and tweak little things here and there depending on who we're playing? Yeah, absolutely. We can't let McDavid pick up speed (and) dice through your neutral zone by himself and go one-on-one against a defenceman who's standing still. That can't happen.
“But there are aspects of those tweaks against Nashville that will certainly apply to this series. I think there is some crossover. Nashville was a great team. We did a good job against them and hopefully we do the same (against Edmonton). But McDavid and Draisaitl, even (Zach) Hyman, I mean, they're a different animal, for sure.”
It’s going to be a battle out there, but one the boys should embrace and enjoy. It’s been a long time coming for the Canucks, and it feels like they’ve turned a corner after some dark years. The team is ready, and after a few extra days to heal up their wounds, they should be coming out flying.
"We should be super excited. This is a rivalry that we love playing against," Miller added. "Obviously, a couple special players over there. We should take a lot of pride in these games. And I know that we have going back to Game 1 of this season. And obviously they're going to be hungry."
Keys to the game today:
1. Stay out of the box: pretty simple, the Edmonton power play is deadly. This is a series that is going to be lost easily if it’s filled with trips to the sin bin, so playing on the right side of that aggressive edge is going to be paramount. The Canucks penalty kill has been great, but it’s not worth it playing with that kind of fire.
2. More than one line: The Miller line was fantastic and dominant against the Preds, and they need that to continue through this series – especially if they’re going to be matched up against McDavid. But, if the Canucks want to win this, they’re going to need to get their other lines going. One big weakness to exploit on Edmonton is their bottom of the line: the Canucks have a clear advantage with the Lindholm line out there, so if the top lines can cancel each other out, the bottom of the lines can swing it for Van.
Petey was absent from practice yesterday as he was ill, so hopefully he’s ready to go for tonight.
3. Embrace it: the arena is going to be rocking, so the boys are going to have to ride those emotional waves. It will be a good test for Silovs to see how he does after coming in as relief in the first series to being the main guy in the second.
Canucks Projected Lineup
Suter-Miller-Boeser
Mikheyev-Pettersson-Höglander
Joshua-Lindholm-Garland
Di Giuseppe-Blueger-Lafferty
Hughes- Hronek
Soucy- Myers
Zadorov- Cole
Šilovs
DeSmith
Oilers Projected Lineup
Janmark- McDavid- Hyman
Nugent-Hopkins- Draisaitl- Kane
Holloway- McLeod- Perry
Foegele- Ryan- Brown
Ekholm- Bouchard
Nurse- Ceci
Kulak- Desharnais
Skinner
Pickard
Puck drop today is at 7:00 PST.
And comment away:
(Quotes from MacIntyre, and CBC)
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