The Vancouver Canucks are practicing at Rogers Arena today ahead of their weekend games against the Chicago Blackhawks and New Jersey Devils.
Thanks to wins last night by both the San Jose Sharks and Arizona Coyotes, Vancouver has now been bumped down to fourth place in the Pacific Division. With the Western Conference wild card spots occupied by Minnesota and Chicago of the Central Division, that bumps the Canucks down to 10th in the conference, and they're now just two points ahead of Anaheim.
The conventional wisdom states that teams in playoff positions on U.S. Thanksgiving have a good chance of earning playoff spots next spring. With the holiday on the horizon next Thursday, the Canucks' current swoon means they'll be in tough to land on the positive side of that cut line.
If you've been reading this blog regularly, you know that I support the "rebuild on the fly" strategy. I'm happy that the team is integrating young players—who are showing a lot of promise—while still trying to make the playoffs.
On Wednesday, key pending UFAs Radim Vrbata, Brandon Prust and Yannick Weber were all absent from the lineup against Winnipeg, which got me thinking about how this team would look if one or more of them—or Dan Hamhuis—was traded before the deadline.
Click here to read my thoughts on this topic in my new Canucks Army piece. I found myself wondering if the team will get out of its current tailspin when Brandon Prust brings his two-way game back into the lineup this weekend—and how they'd possibly fill the hole left by Dan Hamhuis if he gets dealt.
Here's the early word from practice today:
Ben Kuzma also reports that Vrbata did take to the ice before practice. So, it sounds like he's not too badly hurt but I'd guess that he won't play on Saturday.
Chris Higgins has flipped over to the right side in Vrbata's absence.
A couple more quick updates:
I think this tweet is meant to sound optimistic, but I'm not sure I like the phrasing:
"Not long term" sounds much more ominous to me than "day-to-day," yes?
One of Sutter's strong points when he was acquired was his durability. He played 80 of 82 games last season for a Pittsburgh Penguins team that was annihilated by injuries and illnesses throughout its lineup and had missed only one other game in his previous four seasons dating back to 2010-11.
Now, he has missed four games and counting for the Canucks, which is pushing Bo Horvat into bigger minutes and, probably even more importantly, tougher matchups. Horvat has been torched defensively in the last three games—minus-2 in each of them.
Every team has injuries, but if you take a look at the latest graph from the
Man Games Lost website, you'll see that the Canucks aren't too far away from the dreaded upper-right corner, where the team missing high-impact players for significant amounts of time.
It looks like only Edmonton, Detroit and St. Louis have been more seriously impacted by the loss of important players than Vancouver has been so far. I think what we saw on this road trip is that, with young players already in key roles, the team doesn't have enough depth right now to fill those gaps.
Speaking of young players, there's one other name to add to the list of absent players at practice this morning:
Hutton also saw his responsibilities increase during the road trip, and is quickly working his way up the power-play depth chart, but was also a minus-five in the last three games of the road trip. Hopefully today's just a rest day for the kid that's used to playing less than 40 games a season in college hockey.
As for the Blackhawks, they're currently on a three-game winning streak. With his legal troubles now behind him, Patrick Kane is on a 14-game point streak and leads the league with 30 points and 13 goals in just 19 games.
The Canucks will be catching Chicago on a back-to-back. The Blackhawks play the Flames in Calgary tonight.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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