Thursday September 28 - Vancouver Canucks 3 - Calgary Flames 1
The Calgary Flames iced what was essentially their opening-night lineup, but a patchwork group of Vancouver Canucks controlled the play and skated off with a 3-1 win on Thursday night at Rogers Arena.
Here are your highlights:
The players who are assured of roster spots still don't know where they'll be slotting into the lineup. The ones on the bubble are still playing for jobs. All told, that led to strong showings from just about everybody.
Let's start in net, where Anders Nilsson easily outshone Mike Smith at the other end of the ice. His positioning was excellent and he limited his rebounds. Calgary's top snipers Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau were buzzing, especially on the Flames' seven power plays. They had nine of Calgary's 31 shots between them and Nilsson stopped them all until Monahan finally beat him with the man advantage with 6:03 to go in the third—after the Canucks had built a 3-0 lead.
The defense also looked good from top to bottom.
The five-on-five pairings were:
Wiercioch - Biega
Pedan - Tanev
Del Zotto - Stecher
Playing both the PK and the power play, Del Zotto had the busiest night, at 23:46. He had four shots, three blocks and two giveaways, and scored a power-play goal in the second period.
Though they didn't collect any points, it was the Wiercioch/Biega pairing that finished with the plus-two, on the ice for both of Vancouver's even-strength goals.
Overall, I thought the D group played with better structure than we saw last season. When they lost the puck, they seemed to have a sound strategy for getting back into their own zone to protect Nilsson first, then regain possession.
The breakout also seemed more efficient. Del Zotto and Wiercioch, in particular, seemed to be making strong first passes, getting the puck successfully up the ice in a hurry.
Biega, Pedan and Wiercioch won't all be able to start the season in Vancouver. All of them made strong cases to stick around on Thursday.
Word is, decisions on those final cuts will be made today.
The forward battle has thinned out a little bit.
Scottie Upshall was a late scratch from Thursday's game, and didn't make an appearance at Rogers Arena.
This makes complete sense, as the Blues are already ravaged by injuries. Alex Steen, Patrik Berglund, Zach Sanford and Robby Fabbri are all out for significant periods of time up front—and Jay Bouwmeester's sidelined on the back end as well. Upshall spent the last two years in St. Louis and was well-liked as a bottom-six guy; the team just didn't think there would be room for him as more young players were integrated into the lineup.
Turns out, there's plenty of room now.
There hasn't been an official announcement yet from either team, but it seems like that'll just be a matter of time.
We don't have an announcement yet on Nikolay Goldobin, either, but Rick Dhaliwal is very reliable with the information he receives from player agents.
Word is that Goldobin was upset when he heard the news but with plenty of competition, I don't think he did enough to earn a spot. In four games, he had one goal and two assists, including one assist on the power play, but the intensity wasn't there.
In my
Goal Posts column for the Westender this week, I gave Goldy a 15 percent chance of cracking the lineup, so I can't say I'm surprised by this turn of events.
Jake Virtanen, on the other hand, is out to prove me wrong. I only gave him a 20 percent chance, but he was named first star on Thursday night and opened the scoring in the first period.
I have to admit, it crossed my mind at the time that maybe that goal had more to do with Mike Smith being weak than with Jake being a super-sniper.
Virtanen was also the cause of a third-period penalty for too many men, after he messed up a line change.
The rest of his stat line is not *that* exciting. He had three shot attempts, one hit and one block in 13:48 of ice time, and got a sniff of action on the power play.
I'm still not sold that he'll be here next week.
I remain intrigued by Darren Archibald, who justified my level of interest by scoring a sweet breakaway goal out of the penalty box in the third period.
Now that Upshall's out of the way, Archibald's odds of claiming that energy spot have increased—but because he's on an AHL contract, he wouldn't have to clear waivers to be assigned to the Comets. That works against him.
One other player is also out of the mix for the moment. Sven Baertschi left Thursday's game after one period due to what's being called an illness. He's not at practice today either.
There might be some clues about the next round of cuts from today's practice roster.
Interesting that Archibald is getting a regular rotation in line rushes.
The strong play of the three bubble defensemen last night may have clinched the ticket to Utica for Philip Holm.
Chris Tanev skated with the early group this morning, so there's still at least one more blue line cut to be made before Tuesday to get down to eight defensemen.
After such an encouraging outing against the Flames, it'll be interesting to see if the Canucks show better against the Oilers on Saturday after getting blown out on the road last week!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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