Thursday March 3 - Vancouver Canucks 3 - San Jose Sharks 2
The Vancouver Canucks' inability to close out games cost them again when the San Jose Sharks erased a 2-0 deficit to earn their second win in five days against the Canucks on Thursday night.
Here are your highlights:
Adding Brendan Gaunce to the lineup led to a shuffle in the lines. Gaunce played with Bo Horvat and Linden Vey, which led to Jake Virtanen joining up with Markus Granlund and Sven Baertschi and left the fourth line of Dorsett, McCann and Burrows unchanged.
The first period was excellent for the "Abbotsford line," featuring Abby native Virtanen and two former members of the AHL Heat in Baertschi and Granlund. Jake opened the scoring with his sixth of the season on a nice bank play off the wraparound at 7:41, then Baertschi increased the lead to 2-0 at 18:31.
All told, the Canucks outshot the sluggish Sharks 15-7 in the first, but the tide turned when the teams came back to start the second period. San Jose took control in the middle frame, outshooting Vancouver 16-8 and narrowing the lead to one goal on a controversial play that Ryan Miller was convinced was a high stick by Tomas Hertl.
As the high stick rule currently stands, I can see how there's no conclusive camera angle to definitively show that Hertl's stick was above the crossbar when it made contact, but I bet Miller could see it clearly from where he stood.
We haven't heard Miller go on one of his rants for awhile. In terms of team morale, if he needs to blow off steam at this point in the season, the officiating system is as good a target as any, I'd say.
For my money, this was the best moment of the second period:
Daniel totally caught Joe Thornton by surprise as he casually stripped him of the puck with a blistering hit!
Carrying a 2-1 lead into the third period, the Canucks did the one thing they do better than any other team this season—turn it into a loss in the third period. Vancouver's record when leading after two is now 14-4-7 for a .560 points percentage—miles below the 29th place Detroit Red Wings who are at .667 at 16-1-7.
By contrast, the Pittsburgh Penguins (of all teams!) are a perfect 26-0-0 when leading after two and are one of eight teams in the league that doesn't have a single outright loss when taking a lead into the third period. It's a bugaboo that has plagued the Canucks for the entire season and is probably the single biggest reason why we'll spend most of our time watching the standings as these last 19 games play out.
The kids showed some good jump on Thursday. Brendan Gaunce had three shots and two hits in 13:36 of ice time, but ended the night as a minus-one after a miscue on what turned out to be the winning goal.
Gaunce night:Mixed. nice touch pass, good O. zone shift down low & on cycle, but bad decision along wall on winner, didn't hustle back.
So, the Canucks' tidy little three-game losing streak is allowing some other teams to catch them in the standings. Sports Club Stats now pegs Vancouver's playoff chances at 0.6 percent—which still ranks them third among the Canadian teams. Montreal leads the Canadian pack at 2.4 percent, followed by Ottawa at an even 2.0 percent. Winnipeg's at 0.2 percent and Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto are already at zero.
No practice today. The Canucks and Sharks are both headed down to San Jose for Game 3 of their series on Saturday night. Vancouver will also visit the Kings on Monday before heading back to Rogers Arena to face the ice-cold Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday.
Arizona has now lost seven straight games and has been even with Vancouver at 60 points for over a week. The other teams that have now hit the 60 point mark are Columbus and Buffalo, while Edmonton's current three-game winning streak has them knocking on the door at 57.
The Canucks currently have games in hand on most of the teams below them in the standings, but they also have the second-worst score in regulation/overtime wins, so they'd be able to beat (or is it "lose to?") any team other than Toronto to secure a lower ranking in the draft lottery order if they're tied in the standings at the end of the season.
In addition to next week's Coyotes game, the Canucks still have six other four-pointers against other teams that are currently equal to or below them in the standings. These are now the must-see games!
• Edmonton - 3 games
• Winnipeg - 2 games
• Calgary - 1 game
Canucks Town Hall
The Canucks took a different approach to their Town Hall meeting for season-ticket holders this time around, holding it in the morning, and without a livestream.
Jim Benning and Trevor Linden talked about the frustrations of the trade deadline and beat the drum of drafting and developing, as one might expect.
The team's Twitter feed contains most of the key nuggets. I feel like this one has Milan Lucic's name all over it:
"We're in good shape cap-wise next year. We've already identified who we have interest in to use that space on" - Benning
I've found two other Twitter feeds are filled with lots of additional quotes that are worth scrolling through if you're so inclined. Here are a couple of other intriguing soundbites:
There is a special website that all GM/AGM in league have access to - if you have players available, you 'put them up there' - Benning
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