Jan. 5 should have been an all-day hockey buffet, with the medal games at World Juniors and the Canucks hosting the New York Islanders.
Instead, of course, the cancelled World Junior tournament is already a distant memory and the Canucks are taking Wednesday off after a couple of intense, conditioning-based practices to start the week.
The club is still missing a handful of players who are in Covid protocol, so I wouldn't read too much into these lines and defense combos. It is interesting to see that Bruce Boudreau has — for now — split up his effective pair of J.T. Miller and Tanner Pearson.
Boudreau has also used this window to put his players through a couple of conditioning skates at the end of practice.
He sees this as preparation for the tough stretch of upcoming games that begins next week with a five-in-eight road trip with all the games against formidable foes:
"If we’ve got back-to-back games coming up, once we start the Florida run and you’ve got 11 games in 22 days, you’ve gotta be in … I always think we’ve gotta be in the best shape, then we’ll usually be better than other teams and will work harder,"
Boudreau said. "That’s what we’re trying to get this week while practising."
One other practice note that I've seen mentioned a few times — Elias Pettersson has been working hard, often staying after practice along with Nils Hoglander. Is the Swedish connection taking hold?
Speaking of Swedes, Oliver Ekman-Larsson got a nice shout-out in the latest edition of
'32 Thoughts':
21. Vancouver’s Oliver Ekman-Larsson is the only player to be on-ice for more than 500 minutes at 5v5 and fewer than 10 goals against (9).
I know there's still a lot of runway left on his contract, but OEL has been such a solid addition for Vancouver this year. And I had a little chuckle when I looked at the post-game boxscore for Arizona's 3-1 loss to Winnipeg on Tuesday night.
Loui Eriksson looked sharp when he came to the rink, then completely disappeared. Not a single entry on his stat line in 12:31 of ice time.
All told, Loui's at one goal and six points in 29 games this season. Averaging just over 12 minutes a game, his ice time is about the same as the last year he played as a regular with the Canucks. But his production has dipped a bit more, even, from then — he had six goals and 13 points in 49 games in 2019-20.
In '32 Thoughts,' Elliotte Friedman also acknowledges that there isn't much more time available for game postponements, no matter what attendance restrictions might be in place in Canada. He says the league is still hoping to finish the season by the end of April, as originally planned, and that some teams that have already had quite a bit of time off will probably play a pretty regular workload through what would have been the Olympic break in February.
At this point, All-Star Weekend is still on for Vegas on Feb. 4-5 — a Friday/Saturday setup instead of the Saturday/Sunday event we've seen in the past.
Voting for division captains is open until the end of this week. J.T. Miller, Conor Garland and Quinn Hughes are your choices from the Canucks roster.
As of Monday, Connor and Leon were leading the way in the Pacific voting:
I have to admit, I was excited to hear that Owen Power is expected to suit up for Canada at the Olympics. Federations now face a near-impossible task of assembling rosters and getting everyone safely to China for a tournament that is set to begin on Feb. 9.
Scott Wheeler of The Athletic unveiled some other names under consideration for Team Canada on Tuesday — but Darren Dreger of TSN cautioned on Wednesday that not all of these players would qualify to participate, as some are under NHL contracts.
Quite a few ex-Canucks — although I have to admit, I was a bit startled to see Jake Virtanen's name.
The more kids, the better, I say. Let's see how much of the spirit of World Juniors can get re-captured!
Finally — one place where there will be hockey this week is in Abbotsford, where the Baby Canucks are set to play their first home games since Dec. 5.
Their upcoming schedule has been tweaked slightly, and now features four games in five nights against the Bakersfield Condors, starting Thursday. Abbotsford Centre will be operating at 50% of capacity, and tickets are still available, starting from $25.
Abbotsford's last games were on Dec. 18 and 19, when they managed a split on the road against the Henderson Silver Knights. Since then, the club has gone through a significant Covid outbreak, but we haven't heard any real details about who has been impacted. Perhaps we'll learn more once they're back in game mode and doing regular media?
Despite all the postponements, Abbotsford hasn't fallen too far behind other Pacific Division teams in terms of games played. The Colorado Eagles are the outlier, at 28 games. Abbotsford, San Diego, Bakersfield and Tucson are all at 22.
Based on points percentage, Abbotsford currently sits fifth in the nine-team division, with a record of 10-9-2-1 for 23 points and .523.
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