Vancouver Canucks vs. New York Rangers - Tuesday April 1 - 7:00 pm - TSN, RDS2, MSG
Vancouver Canucks: 34-31-11 79 points 10th in Western Conference
New York Rangers: 42-30-4 88 points fifth in Eastern Conference
It doesn't get much more blunt than that.
You won't find this quote in the video clip of John Tortorella's media availability from Monday's Canuck practice at Rogers Arena, but the coach made it crystal clear to the assembled reporters that he knows where he stands right now.
It might not mean much in the playoff race, but you can bet that Torts would dearly love to avenge the Canucks' 5-2 loss at Madison Square Garden back in November when the two teams face off on Tuesday night.
As we discussed yesterday, the Rangers are a team on the rise while the Canucks' fortunes have fallen. New York is playoff-bound and has a chance at home-ice advantage, while Vancouver will be heading for the World Championships—and the golf course.
Tonight's goaltending matchup will see Eddie Lack making his 17th straight start against Henrik Lundqvist, who was on the bench backing up Cam Talbot for the Rangers' 5-0 shutout in Edmonton on Sunday.
Puck Daddy has a wide-ranging new interview with Lundqvist today.
Click here to read.
Despite the headline, he doesn't directly contrast John Tortorella against Alain Vigneault, but this comment adds a bit more fire to our talk from yesterday about the Canucks' "slow" playing style:
We play a different system now where we play differently in our own end. I think it gives us the ability to have more speed coming out of the zone. I think this year we create more chances and score more goals, which is huge.
Also from the New York point of view,
Click here for today's column from Torts' old nemesis Larry Brooks of the
New York Post. I think you'll find his summary of Torts' shortcomings very familiar, but it's interesting to get his take on what AV has brought to the Big Apple:
Vigneault is a delegator. He operates almost as a CEO rather than a head coach. He leaned on a leadership group of veterans to communicate his message in Vancouver. That is exactly what he is doing as the Rangers’ coach. There is a distance between Vigneault and his players there was and never could be under Tortorella.
As Mr. Miyagi might have said in “The Karate Kid”: Hands off, hands on.
Minnesota came from behind to end LA's six-game winning streak on Monday night, which knocks the Canucks' playoff chances down a little more, to 0.3 percent, according to SportsClubStats.com. If you're still scoreboard-watching, Dallas visits Washington tonight while Phoenix hosts Winnipeg.
Thanks for all your votes and comments yesterday on the poll questions. (Yes, I read all the comments) The biggest takeaway I got from the poll results is that there's no clear consensus at all about who should be leading the Canucks next season. Peter Laviolette is probably the biggest name out there these days, and he's had some success, so he garnered 30 percent of the vote, but it was a crapshoot from there.
Interesting to even see the names of former Vancouver bench bosses like Marc Crawford and Tom Renney bandied about. I suppose you could say that "back to the future" strategy is working for Buffalo, who just removed the "interim" tag from coach Ted Nolan's job title—even though they're still an awful team in last place in the league.
Renney's the more intriguing option here, to me: his last two years as an assistant under Mike Babcock in Detroit start to outweigh the awful time he had here in Vancouver, as well as his bumpy rides as coach of the Rangers and Oilers. Could be worth considering.
I also enjoyed all the prospect talk in yesterday's comments, especially about the Halifax Mooseheads breakout playoff star Nikolaj Ehlers. I wrote a piece for Bleacher Report yesterday that spotlighted Ehlers and some of the other forwards who are tearing it up early all around the CHL playoffs. The first round has been fascinating, with the top prospects bumping up against a bunch of surprises at the top of each league's scoring races.
Click here to read.
After tonight's game, the Canucks don't play again until the Kings come to town on Saturday. We'll have lots of time over the rest of the week to look more closely at what has gone wrong this season, and how it can be fixed next year.
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