Wednesday April 6 - Edmonton Oilers 6 - Vancouver Canucks 2
Led by Daniel and Henrik Sedin, the Vancouver Canucks have feasted on the Edmonton Oilers at Rexall Place in recent years.
Wednesday night, though, the Canucks said goodbye to the arena with an old-school 6-2 loss that was more reminiscent of the whuppings the team endured during Gretzky's glory years.
Here are your highlights:
The first half of the game was a snoozefest, but the Oilers found their legs once Nail Yakupov opened the scoring midway through the second period. Edmonton built a 3-0 lead before Matt Bartkowski got the Canucks on the board with his sixth of the year and, after two more Oilers tallies, Bo Horvat added a beauty with five minutes to go.
Leon Draisaitl added one last goal with 1:57 to play, ensuring his place in history as the last player to score at Rexall.
Rough night for Jacob Markstrom, who got dinged for a season-high six goals against, and for the special teams. Edmonton went 2-for-4 with the man advantage while the Canucks were 0-for-4 on the power play—and were held without a single shot in their first three attempts.
So much for the magic Jannik Hansen effect—he got his chance, playing 4:01 of power-play time on Wednesday night.
Horvat finished the night as a plus-two—the only plus player on the team. Markus Granlund, on the other hand, is setting the bar low as far as our expectations when he suits up against his old team in Calgary tonight. He was on the ice for all four of Edmonton's even-strength goals.
Once again, Andrey Pedan was used sparingly, to put it mildly. After playing 8:32 against L.A., he was dropped to 7:30 on Wednesday—the only player on the team in single digits.
Even Brendan Gaunce played 12:30, including 2:48 on the penalty kill. Good night for Gaunce in the faceoff circle, where he went 11-for-17 to lead the Canucks with a 65 percent success rate. That's an area where Connor McDavid's game still needs work. He finished the night with a goal and two assists but was only 5-for-15 in the circle.
Now, on to Calgary in a rare Alberta back-to-back for the Canucks.
Thursday April 7 - Vancouver Canucks at Calgary Flames - 6 p.m. - Sportsnet Pacific, TSN1040
Vancouver Canucks: 80 GP, 30-37-13, 73 pts, sixth in Pacific Division
Calgary Flames: 80 GP, 33-40-7, 73 pts, fifth in Pacific Division
Calgary and Vancouver are currently tied in the NHL standings, but Vancouver's loss on Wednesday dropped them below the Flames: the two teams have now played an equal number of games, and Calgary holds the edge in the tiebreaker with 31 regulation/overtime wins compared to 26 for Vancouver.
Tonight's two...or three...points will go a long way to determining the final draft lottery order. Calgary's final game of the year will come on Saturday against Minnesota—with a 4 p.m. PT start, so they'll be done before the Canucks and Oilers hit the ice three hours later at Rogers Arena.
Yes, tonight will be our chance to see what kind of damage Markus Granlund and Hunter Shinkaruk can wreak against their old teams.
Granlund is 2-1-3 and a minus-2 (even after last night's minus-4) in his 14 games as a Canuck, while Shinkaruk is 2-1-3 and a minus-3 in six games since being recalled from the Stockton Heat a couple of weeks ago.
Shink took some heat for celebrating his first career goal in a blowout loss to the Anaheim Ducks on March 30, but fared a little better on Tuesday, potting his first in front of his hometown crowd in Calgary in the Flames' overtime loss to the L.A. Kings.
Bob Hartley is giving Shinkaruk plenty of opportunity to shine. He has been holding down a spot on the Flames first line and first power-play unit and is averaging 15:08 of ice time a game, so expect him to be prominent tonight.
It's hard to imagine, with the team heading for its worst finish since loser points became a thing—and, as of now, 10 points worse than the Torts year in 2013-14—that everyone will be safe at the end of the year. The big question, I think, is where the axe will fall.
But rather than end on that grim note, let me bring you up to date on today's Frozen Four schedule.
Thatcher Demko's Boston College Eagles face No. 1 Quinnipiac at 2 p.m. PT, then Brock Boeser's North Dakota Fighting Hawks play Denver at 5:30. Both games are televised on TSN2.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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