Thursday February 21 - Vancouver Canucks vs. Arizona Coyotes - 7 p.m. - Sportsnet Pacific, Sportsnet 650
Vancouver Canucks: 60 GP, 26-27-7, 59 pts, fifth in Pacific Division, 12th in Western Conference
Arizona Coyotes: 60 GP, 27-28-5, 59 pts, fourth in Pacific Division, 11th in Western Conference
With just over one quarter of the regular season remaining, the Vancouver Canucks get back to work in a game with massive playoff implications when they host the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday at Rogers Arena.
Earlier this week, the Coyotes lost to Calgary before beating Edmonton in a shootout. That moved them into a tie with Vancouver in the Pacific Division standings with 59 points. With one regulation/overtime win, Arizona currently holds the edge in the tiebreaker.
The Canucks headed into their four-day break on Sunday in ninth place but have since been bumped down to 12th—also passed by the surging Chicago Blackhawks and the Colorado Avalanche, who have come out of their slumber this week with two impressive wins.
And don't look now, but the left-for-dead Anaheim Ducks have won three out of four since Bob Murray took over behind the bench last week. Despite a league-worst goal differential of minus-50, they're now just two points behind Vancouver and four points out of that last wild-card spot.
We're into the home stretch before Monday's trade deadline and the Western Conference playoff picture is as muddy as ever.
As Travis Yost points out in this article, now that the St. Louis Blues have blasted their way from the bottom of the standings all the way into third in the Central, taking themselves out of the wild-card race, the Blackhawks and Coyotes are the only teams currently in the mix that have averaged better than a point-a-game since January 1. With injuries a factor once again, the Canucks have collected just 17 points in 18 games since New Year's and have strung together back-to-back wins just once—against Buffalo and Detroit during that homestand in January.
Yost also did a
strength of schedule analysis in mid-January that projected a particularly friendly March for Vancouver, with lots of home games and generally not-too-tough opponents. But St. Louis has won 10-straight games this month despite supposedly having the toughest schedule in the league in February and Arizona has moved up despite their schedule being ranked third-toughest, while Minnesota has hit a wall with the second-easiest schedule this month—so these numbers don't seem to be great predictors.
Over at The Athletic,
Dom Luszczyszyn went through a similar exercise a week ago. He shows Vancouver with the third-easiest schedule the rest of the way based on his model, but the Canucks are sandwiched just below Arizona and just above Chicago and Edmonton, with Anaheim and Colorado not much further behind. Minnesota and Dallas look like they have the toughest road ahead.
My guess: what will probably end up mattering more are the moves that these teams make by the deadline—and how the roster changes end up affecting team chemistry. As we've seen many times, big additions don't necessarily pay instant dividends—and sometimes even addition-by-subtraction can have a positive impact.
St. Louis general manager Doug Armstrong was on The Athletic's Two Man Advantage podcast last week. He thinks that one of the reasons why his team is playing so much better now is because it took his core players some time to adjust to the new bodies he brought in over the summer. According to Armstrong, new guys like Ryan O'Reilly, David Perron and Tyler Bozak all delivered as expected at the beginning of the year. But their arrivals thrust the team's existing players into some different roles, and ice time was allocated differently, so there was an adjustment period. The Blues' coaching change and the arrival of Jordan Binnington in net certainly also helped, but Armstrong feels the secret to the Blues' current success is the fact that they've finally gelled as a group.
Teams making moves at the deadline don't get that three-month adjustment period. Core players need to find chemistry with new arrivals in a hurry—the way that John Carlson and Michal Kempny clicked as a defense pair for Washington last year.
With that long preamble, we should expect to see two players make their Canucks debuts on Thursday against the Coyotes. Ryan Spooner should get a look with Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser, while Ashton Sautner takes over on the left side with Erik Gudbranson.
We may see Tim Schaller draw in after seven healthy scratches. Trade showcase?
Hopefully Spooner finds a way to stand out as much on the ice tonight as he did in the Canucks' Dice and Ice team photo!
Other than Thatcher Demko, it doesn't sound like the Canucks will be getting any of their injured bodies back into the lineup anytime soon.
If you missed it, Michael Leighton did clear waivers and has now officially been assigned to the Utica Comets on his new two-way contract. And naturally, the Flyers put Mike McKenna on waivers as soon as the Leighton situation was settled. McKenna cleared today and has now been assigned to the AHL Phantoms.
As for the Coyotes, their list of injuries remains just as long as Vancouver's but there is some hope on the horizon for them. Richard Panik is expected to return to the lineup on Thursday after missing the last two games with an illness. Christian Dvorak is skating with the Tucson Roadrunners on a conditioning assignment as he recovers from a preseason pectoral injury that was expected to keep him out all year, and Jason Demers and Michael Grabner are now practicing with the team in non-contact jerseys as they recover from long-term injuries.
Goaltender Antti Raanta is still expected to be out for the rest of the season, so it should be Darcy Kuemper vs. Jacob Markstrom in net tonight.
Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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