Thursday March 27 - Colorado Avalanche 3 - Vancouver Canucks 2 (OT)
The Vancouver Canucks left the playoff-dreamers and the draft-position hopefuls all unsatisfied when they dropped a 3-2 decision to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday. Here are your highlights:
Twitter was buzzing last night with Torts' benching of Nicklas Jensen. After drawing the first assist on Yannick Weber's power play goal to open the scoring, he was in no-man's land when Gabriel Landeskog gave the Avs a 2-1 lead midway through the second period.
Jensen played three shifts after the goal, but once Zack Kassian tied the game late in the second, Jensen didn't see another shift.
I'm going against the grain here, but I don't have a big problem with this move. With Daniel Sedin and Ryan Kesler back in the lineup, there are not as many spare top-six minutes to fill. Jensen can't automatically be expected to slot into a top-line role at the expense of the team's veteran stars—even when Daniel has only one goal this year. Also, the Twitterverse failed to make mention of the fact that Jensen was a minus-two on Wednesday in Minnesota; that'd be both Wild goals.
It feels weird to be defending a Torts decision where he's mostly getting torched but in this particular case, I'm okay with it.
With the single point, the Canucks move into a tie with Dallas with 79 points, though the Stars still have the three games in hand. Phoenix beat New Jersey, so eighth place is now five points away, dropping Vancouver's playoff odds back to 3.6 percent.
What's interesting is that Minnesota lost again on Thursday, to St. Louis, and their lead over the Coyotes for seventh place has now been cut to just one point. The Wild are the team that's losing momentum—they're just 3-4-3 in their last 10 games and their goaltending situation is dicey. Could they be the Toronto Maple Leafs of the West—dropping enough to give another team an opportunity?
I'm really looking forward to the Canucks' home game against Anaheim on Saturday. The Ducks have also fallen back to earth since the trade deadline and are dealing with some key injuries, so I don't expect to see the same team that laid out that 9-1 drubbing back in January. This is their first visit to Vancouver this season; they'll also be back on April 7.
I'm curious to see if the Canucks look any better against a California team than they did earlier in the season, and also curious to see how Anaheim looks as they make their playoff push. After being so good for so long this season, are they setting up to be the victim of yet another first-round upset? Or are the Canucks going to be humbled once again as they go up against an NHL powerhouse?
Luongo Lingers:
It'll take some time for us to stop talking about Roberto Luongo here in Vancouver.
@strombone1 has gone sadly silent since Don Cherry's ridiculous outburst a couple of weeks ago, and the man himself was knocked out of Florida's game on Thursday with an upper body injury after a collision in the crease. No word yet on the severity of the injury, but it's being reported that won't play in Florida's next game on Saturday.
Meanwhile, if you missed it, Deadspin published
this long missive on Luongo's significance in Vancouver earlier in the week.
I thought it was just me; I had a hard time getting through this piece and didn't feel like the author was driving towards any real conclusion, except that the Luongo days were an important and dramatic slice of Canucks history.
Felt a little better when I read Botchford's "Provies" from Wednesday night
and saw some of the reaction tweets that he included.
I was at that fateful season-ticket holder meeting when Brian Burke first coined the "Goalie Graveyard" catchphrase. My friends and I were very clear on the fact that Kirk McLean was a generally decent goaltender who got very hot at the right time in '94, and that his stand-up style was unsustainable as the game started to change. Those wraparound goals were becoming so painful!
We were sad, but relieved, when he was traded to Carolina in early 1998.
The chew 'em up and spit 'em out situation that saw the team burn through guys like Corey Hirsch, Sean Burke and Felix Potvin during that time was vastly different from the love/hate/love relationship that fans developed with Luongo. I've said this before—I have buckets of empathy for Luongo and wish him all the best, but it was definitely time to end the toxic relationship between the goalie and the team and let everyone make a fresh start.
OHL Playoffs:
Our latest Canuck prospect update from the OHL playoffs comes courtesy of Nucker101:
Canucks OHL prospects in playoffs:
Gaunce: 5GP, 4G, 4A, 8P, +2, 6PIM
Fox: 5GP, 6G, 6A, 12P, +4, 6PIM
Horvat: 4GP, 4G, 4A, 8P, +5, 2PIM
Cassels: 4GP, 2G, 7A, 9P, +/-0, 6PIM
Nice to see these guys stepping up when it really matters.
Horvat's London Knights swept the Windsor Spitfires to advance to the second round, while Dane Fox had a hat trick and added an assist on Wednesday, then posted two assists on Thursday when the Erie Otters knocked out the Saginaw Spirit with a 4-1 series win.
Gaunce also plays for Erie, while Cole Cassels' Oshawa Generals are through to the second round after sweeping the Mississauga Steelheads. All our boys have more hockey to play this year.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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