Saturday March 25 - Vancouver Canucks 4 - Minnesota Wild 2
Just one day after his North Dakota Fighting Hawks were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament, 2015 first-round draft pick Brock Boeser scored the game-winning goal in his home town as the Vancouver Canucks beat the Minnesota Wild 4-2.
Here are your highlights:
For most of this season, it seemed like if the Canucks didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all. But Boeser appears to be operating on a much more serendipitous plane.
After all, he was thisclose to advancing in the NCAA Tournament on Friday. After coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the third period to force overtime against Boston University, North Dakota looked like it had the game won in the extra frame before a video review determined that the play that led to the apparent winning goal had been offside.
Nothing was decided until Charlie McAvoy finally gave BU the win at the 11:48 mark of the second OT, effectively ending Boeser's college career and making him available to the Canucks.
Michael Russo of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has the scoop on how Boeser spent the brief window of time between the end of his college game in Fargo, North Dakota on Friday evening and the beginning of his NHL career at Xcel Energy Center on Saturday afternoon:
"The easiest thing would have been to drive from Fargo to the Twin Cities with agent Ben Hankinson and get a good night sleep at the team hotel. Instead, he wanted to bus back to Grand Forks for one final team dinner. He flew to Minneapolis on Saturday morning."
That shows some character. Boeser's decision to turn pro this year also seems to come from a good place—his dad suffers from Parkinson's disease, and word is that money has been tight in his family household.
The family got the red-carpet treatment on Saturday. Boeser's parents were invited into the Canucks' dressing room to announce the game's starting lineup, where their son would make his debut alongside the Sedin twins.
"And starting on right wing, I can't believe it, Brock Boeser!"
For most of the game, Boeser took a regular shift with Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi. He played a respectable 12:44, all at even strength, and registered four shots, three hits, a takeaway—and a goal, banging in a rebound off a Bo Horvat shot to give the Canucks a 3-0 lead midway through the second period.
Richard Bachman got the nod in net and was pitching a 4-0 shutout until Minnesota cranked up the heat with two goals in the last 2:41. But even that turned out well—it meant that Boeser's first NHL goal was also the game-winner.
Hard to script it much better. The new guy offers up a big dose of hope and optimism for the last nine games of the season—no longer an abstract possibility but now a living, breathing, skating, scoring player.
I wonder if Boeser's white-glove treatment will fire up some of his teammates? Competition for jobs on the wing next year just got a lot stiffer. Reid Boucher certainly seemed to have a little extra motivation on Saturday, scoring his fourth and fifth goals of the year and showing off his cannon of a shot. At the other end of the spectrum, Nikolay Goldobin got 11:19 of ice time but was almost invisible—the only item on his stat line was one blocked shot.
When Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen were traded at the deadline, that opened up some quality ice time on right wing. Then, Loui Eriksson was injured, then Markus Granlund was shut down, then Jayson Megna was hurt, and on Saturday Jack Skille left the game with what looked like a nasty knee injury.
To put it mildly, there is ice time available right now. Who's going to make the most of the opportunity?
Sunday March 26 - Vancouver Canucks at Winnipeg Jets - 5 p.m. - Sportsnet
Vancouver Canucks: 74 GP, 30-35-9, 69 pts, sixth in Pacific Division
Winnipeg Jets: 75 GP, 33-35-7, 73 pts, fifth in Central Division
Remarkably, the Canucks have a chance to finish out their road trip with a winning record if they can take home two points from Winnipeg today. After struggling away from Rogers Arena for most of the year, Vancouver is now 4-2-0 in its last six road games.
First things first: we'll have to wait to see whether the good times keep rolling today:
#Canucks Desjardins post game said Boeser's fatigue will be evaluated when determining if he can play Sunday in Winnipeg #CanucksOn1040
In the big picture, the game doesn't mean much. Winnipeg sits four points ahead of Vancouver in the Western Conference standings and is also all-but-eliminated from the playoff picture—13 points behind St. Louis with seven games remaining.
Jets fans seem to be grappling with many of the same issues as Canucks fans these days, especially about player deployment and Paul Maurice's apparent reluctance to give opportunities to some of his younger players, like Nic Petan.
Jets are all but mathematically out of the POs. Why not start trying things like Petan with skilled players on a 3rd line?
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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