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Canucks eke out a character win vs. Kings, will finish Friday in Edmonton |
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Thursday April 28 - Vancouver Canucks 3 - Los Angeles Kings 2 (OT)
Friday April 29 - Vancouver Canucks at Edmonton Oilers - 6 p.m. PT
It ends tonight.
The Vancouver Canucks will wrap up their 2021-22 season on the road on Friday, with a visit to Rogers Place to take on the Edmonton Oilers.
It's part of a 15-game slate that will answer all the remaining questions regarding playoff seeding — but it's not quite the end of the season. On Sunday, Seattle and Winnipeg will make up a game that was postponed earlier this month due to weather, but has no postseason implications.
Here's what we know so far:
• Florida has clinched its first-ever Presidents' Trophy. Now, can they win their first playoff series since 1996?
• Colorado has wrapped up top spot in the Western Conference.
• All four matchups in the East are yet to be set as of Friday morning.
In the Metropolitan Division, Carolina and the Rangers will have home-ice advantage. Pittsburgh has a one-point lead on Washington going into Friday's games. Whichever team ends up finishing higher will get New York, while the lower-seeded team will land in Wild Card 2 and get the Panthers.
In the Atlantic Division, Florida and Toronto will have home-ice advantage. Tampa Bay has a one-point lead on Boston going into Friday's games. The team that finishes higher will play the Leafs. The lower-seeded team will finish in Wild Card 1 and get the Hurricanes.
• In the West, we know the 2-3 matchups in both divisions.
Home-ice advantage is still up for grabs between Minnesota and St. Louis, who sit two points apart with the lower-ranked Blues holding the tiebreaker.
The Oilers have locked down second place in the Pacific, so they'll have home ice against the Kings.
In the wild-cards, there's just one point separating Nashville and Dallas. The higher-seeded team will get Calgary, while the lower-seeded squad gets the date with death against the Colorado Avalanche.
So in terms of playoff positioning, the Oilers don't have anything to play for on Friday night. They eked out a 5-4 overtime win over San Jose on Thursday with Mikko Koskinen in net, so the Canucks will most likely see Mike Smith on Friday.
And Connor McDavid has now pulled away from the pack in the Art Ross Trophy race. He's on a five-game point streak, where he has picked up 13 points, so he's now at 123 points for the season, eight ahead of Jonathan Huberdeau and Johnny Gaudreau as we head into these final games.
That's a new career high for McDavid, who's poised to win his second-straight Art Ross and the fourth of his career. I suppose if he wants to get really ambitious, he could try for a five-point night against Vancouver to Friday to see if he can match Nikita Kucherov's 128-point season in 2018-19. He has had two four-point games this year, both against Pittsburgh.
I'm curious to see what the Canucks choose to do in net against Edmonton. Will they start Spencer Martin on the back-to-back, putting him at risk of a possible injury ahead of the AHL playoffs? Or will they tap 21-year-old Arturs Silovs to make his NHL debut?
Speaking after Thursday's win, Bruce Boudreau emphasized his goal of building a winning culture in Vancouver, and said he'd take that same attitude into Edmonton. I would guess that means Martin will get the nod again?
The 26-year-old had a little bit of a lapse in the second period against L.A. on Thursday. But he kept the Canucks alive during the first 30 minutes, where they were outshot badly as the Kings deployed the tight-checking game that is their trademark. In a two-goal hole to start the third, Brock Boeser and Alex Chiasson were able to beat Cal Petersen to force overtime, where Elias Pettersson set up Boeser in the slot for the 3-on-3 winner.
That's now 23 goals and 23 assists for Boeser, who has pushed his stat line for the year into its usual vicinity despite his ice-cold start to the season — and probably boosted his negotiating position a bit as he heads toward restricted free agency again. Those three years flew by, didn't they?
Pettersson's two assists give him 68 points for the year, a new career high. Hughes added one more assist to move to 67 points for the year. And J.T. Miller also assisted on Boeser's first goal, to get himself to 98 points. He'll aim to become just the sixth player in Canucks history to hit the 100-point mark on Friday night.
Though the team fell short of the goal of making the playoffs, the vibe around the club is still very positive. Miller is talking about how they're building something special: does that mean that he will be interested in talking contract extension this summer?
And what does the future hold for Boudreau?
Earlier in the spring, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported that his best information suggests that both sides have an option on the second year of Boudreau's contract with the Canucks.
If the organization chooses not to bring him back, he'll get a payout.
But he could also choose to leave if he sees an opportunity he likes better. In the current landscape, there will be a good number of vacancies this summer — especially if certain teams stumble in the playoffs. And after what he has accomplished this year in Vancouver, Boudreau has proven his chops yet again. He could receive a very rich offer from another organization.
After Thursday's game, he talked about how coachable this Canucks group has been, and how proud he has been of what they were able to do under his watch. Boudreau has been known as a good regular-season coach who falls short in the playoffs and at 67 years old, he'll only get so many more kicks at the can.
If he thinks this group has potential to contend for a championship, how much does that influence his thinking? Or will he prioritize one more lucrative long-term contract that could perhaps set him up for his golden years?
Or, can he get both in Vancouver?
Finally — if you only saw Vasily Podkolzin's "Bruce There It Is" clip from his pre-game media availability on Thursday, do yourself a favor and watch the 10-minute video that was posted on the Canucks' Twitter account:
In his first-ever English-language availability without a translator, Podkolzin is by turns thoughtful, humble, determined and hilarious.
He handles all the questions with confidence and also shows great personality, talking about what it means to him that Boudreau is the same coach who guided the early days of Alex Ovechkin's career, chuckling about how it was 'probably Millsy' who instructed him to dig the pucks out of the net after practice and lighting up when talking about discovering country music in Nashville.
That makes me think the guys were out on the town a bit when they were there, too, which is heartening in this post-Covid world. I'm glad they're getting a chance to share experiences and bond.
Full credit to Podkolzin for carving out his niche on this team when he doesn't even have another Russian on the Canucks to help ease his transition. It's a huge cultural adjustment, both on and off the ice, and he has handled it masterfully.
And after all the concern during his KHL days that he wasn't going to be able to produce offensively at the NHL level, a stat line of 14-12-26 and plus-8 is not bad at all, especially considering most of those points came in the later stages of the season.
Good on him for a solid rookie year. Looking forward to seeing him light it up with Abbotsford in the AHL playoffs!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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