Thursday April 14 - Vancouver Canucks 7 - Arizona Coyotes 1
The Vancouver Canucks kept their faint playoff hopes alive but lost captain Bo Horvat to injury when they completed their season series sweep of the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday night at Rogers Arena.
First, the good news. Bruce Boudreau said after the game that Horvat is expected to be okay.
The 7-1 win was a step up from the previous two games against the Coyotes this year, both 5-1 victories.
J.T. Miller earned first-star honours thanks to five assists — a career high for him. He set up two goals apiece for his linemates Alex Chiasson and Vasily Podkolzin, and drew the secondary helper on Elias Pettersson's second period power-play goal.
With seven games left on the schedule, Miller is up to 91 points for the year — tied for seventh in NHL scoring with Mitch Marner and Kirill Kaprizov. As a reminder, Marner's cap hit is $10.903 million and Kaprizov's is $9 million — and both those deals came out of long, tough negotiations.
Miller's 91 points also tie him with Patrik Sundstrom (1983-84) for the ninth-best season in Canucks history. And he can move up before all is said and done. Henrik Sedin's 2010-11 season (94 points) and Todd Bertuzzi's 2002-03 campaign (97 points) are within reach.
At the top of the heap, Henrik's 2009-10 campaign, where he won the Art Ross Trophy with 112 points. That record is probably safe.
Asked about hitting the milestone, Miller picked up on a thread that Elias Pettersson started on Tuesday:
Quinn Hughes also picked up three assists. That gives him 58 points for the year and moves him into sole possession of third place on the Canucks' single-season scoring records for defensemen. Doug Lidster sits first, with 63 points in the 1986-87 season, and Dennis Kearns is second with 60 points from 1976-77. And both those marks were reached in 80 games.
Hughes has played just 69 games so far this season, and has seven to go. It's very possible that he'll set a new franchise record in just his third full season — and his first full 82-game campaign — at age 22.
Another detail stands out when looking at the
NHL Stats page.
We know, in abstract, that the Canucks weren't very good in the seasons where Lidster and Kearns set their records. In 1986-87, the Canucks finished last in the Smythe Division with 66 points in 80 games. There were ties back then, so no loser points. They missed the playoffs and didn't get to pick in the first round, after having dealt that pick to Boston in the Cam Neely/Barry Pederson trade. The Bruins took Glen Wesley third overall.
Pederson finished second in scoring for the Canucks that year, with 76 points — his best year in Vancouver. Tony Tanti led the way offensively with 41 goals, the fourth of five straight years where he scored 39 goals or more.
In the 1976-77 season, the Canucks finished fourth in the Smythe Division, with 63 points in 80 games. They were tied with the third-place Chicago Black Hawks, but slotted into fourth place by virtue of one fewer win. At that time, only the top three teams in each division made the playoffs, so Vancouver missed out due to that tiebreaker. They drafted fourth overall that summer, selecting winger Jere Gillis.
Kearns' 60 points were good for second in team scoring that year; 20-year-old sophomore Rick Blight led the way with 28 goals and 68 points, which turned out to be his career highs.
That year, Kearns was a minus-25. Lidster was minus-32 when he set his record. So it's impressive to see Hughes sitting just below them with a plus-eight. He vowed before this season that he was going to do better at playing both ends of the ice. His career offensive year has come alongside stronger defensive play. Last season, he had 41 points in 56 games, but was a minus-24.
And after seeing his numbers dip slightly as he has logged a heavy workload over the past couple of months, Thatcher Demko has now given up eight goals in total in his last four starts — all wins, as part of the team's current five-game winning streak. Demko's save percentage was at .908 when Bruce Boudreau took over, and basically hasn't dipped below .914 since then. It's now up to .918, three points better than last season. And his goals-against average has dropped from 2.85 last year down to 2.64 this year, while his Goals Saved Above Average number has risen from 8.2 to 18.6, good for ninth overall in the league according to
Hockey Reference.
Chiasson and Podkolzin have made the most of their opportunities to play in the top six while Brock Boeser and Tanner Pearson have been sidelined. Boeser has now missed five games — John Shorthouse said on Thursday's broadcast that the injury is to his elbow, and he might be close to returning soon. Pearson has been out for three games with what is simply termed an upper-body injury.
Playing on a line with Miller and Chiasson and seeing ice on both the power play and the penalty kill, Podkolzin logged his first career three-point night on Thursday. Of his 23 points this season, six have come in the last four games. Six have also come against the Coyotes — he had one assist in the home win in early February, and two assists last week in Glendale.
The Canucks' winning streak coincides with a robust five-game point streak for Chiasson — five goals and four assists. He's at 21 points for the year, so he has nearly doubled his output in the last two weeks.
I had forgotten that Chiasson has a Stanley Cup ring from his year with the Washington Capitals in 2017-18. He has never been a big playoff contributor — seven points in 37 career postseason games — but it feels like the 31-year-old is becoming a wise voice of experience as the Canucks try to navigate this treacherous path to hockey in May.
The out-of-town scoreboard was a mixed bag on Thursday night. Dallas lost in overtime, so the Stars got just one point. Nashville lost, and L.A. got crushed on Wednesday. But Vegas turned back to Logan Thompson in net against the Flames in Calgary on Thursday — and rode the unheralded rookie to a 6-1 win. If Thompson can keep doing what he's doing, that complicates matters considerably for Vancouver.
As of Friday morning, the Canucks' 84 points have them four points behind L.A. (88 points, third in Pacific), with a game in hand for Vancouver. Nashville and Dallas are sitting in the two wild cards at 89, each with one fewer game than Vancouver. And Vegas is now at 87, with the same number of games played as the Canucks.
SportsClubStats shows that the Golden Knights increased their playoff prospects by 17.4% on Thursday night, to 58.7% in total. L.A. dropped by more than 10%, to 50.4%. Dallas and Nashville also dropped, but are both still over 90%. And Vancouver held steady, with a 10.1% chance of making it happen.
The Canucks now have three days off before they face Dallas on Monday night.
Just two games on the calendar on Friday night: the important one is Winnipeg at Florida.
On Saturday, Chicago is in Nashville, Vegas is in Edmonton, San Jose visits Dallas and Los Angeles hosts Columbus.
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