Saturday April 6 - St. Louis Blues 3 - Vancouver Canucks 2 (S/O)
The Vancouver Canucks' 2018-19 season ended as it began—with a snipe from the right face-off dot by Elias Pettersson.
The Canucks overcame a two-goal deficit in the third period to force overtime but ended their season with a shootout loss to Jordan Binnington and the St. Louis Blues.
Here are your highlights:
It was a rousing ending to what had been a pretty sleepy game for the first 40 minutes. The Canucks managed just 12 shots in the first two periods, and the Blues beat Thatcher Demko just once—on a Brayden Schenn wrister off a nice rush play late in the first.
Tanner Pearson gave the Canucks life when he tied the game off a spectacular end-to-end rush during a power play early in the third period. Demko picked up his first NHL assist when he set up the play by corralling the puck off the Blues' clearing attempt and sending it up to Alex Edler.
I feel like the Hockey Gods have rewarded everybody involved in the Erik Gudbranson trade. Guddy's a plus-seven and playing nearly 19 minutes a game in Pittsburgh, and thrilled to be on his way to the playoffs for just the third time in his career. And Pearson has been re-born since arriving in Vancouver. He has rediscovered his scoring touch and shown a willingness to go to the net that has been lacking on the Vancouver roster. His skating didn't look half bad on that goal either, did it?
I found it interesting that Travis Green elected to give Brogan Rafferty another look on the blue line on Saturday—and he did pretty well. Playing primarily with Ben Hutton but also seeing some ice time with Quinn Hughes, Rafferty had three shot attempts and two blocks as he saw his ice time rise to 14:39—two and a half minutes more than he played on Thursday in Nashville.
The final stat line was not so good for Loui Eriksson and Tim Schaller. Schaller finished the night with just 10:51 of ice time and Eriksson was a team-low 8:48. Both also played their last shifts of the game before the midway mark of the third period, as Travis Green tried to manufacture more scoring and get his team a win.
After a power-play snipe by Vladimir Tarasenko gave the Blues a 2-1 lead, the Canucks responded on the man advantage themselves, when Elias Pettersson beat Jordan Binnington to tie the game with 2:09 left in regulation.
The goal is just his second in his last 23 games, but Pettersson finishes comfortably atop the rookie scoring race, six goals and 21 points ahead of second-place Brady Tkachuk—with both players ending the year with 71 games played.
Even with his scoring slump over the last quarter of the season, Pettersson still finished the year with a very impressive 19.4 shooting percentage. And his 22 power-play points were tops on the Canucks, just one point behind the output of Brock Boeser and Daniel Sedin last season.
If you somehow missed it, Petey wraps up his NHL year an ultra-casual display of his mad skillz:
Pettersson is now confirmed to be joining Team Sweden for the World Championship in Slovakia in May, as is Quinn Hughes for Team USA. Bo Horvat's a no—getting married—and impending RFA Brock Boeser and UFA Alex Edler will most likely decline without contracts for next season.
Other RFAs whose contract status would probably preclude them from suiting up include Markus Granlund and Ben Hutton. Jacob Markstrom is believed to be in the mix for Sweden's goaltending job, Thatcher Demko's name has been mentioned for Team USA and—to my surprise—the name of injured Chris Tanev has even come up for Team Canada. According to
Irfaan Gaffar, Tanev is expected to be medically cleared to play a couple of days before the tournament begins, so he's now deciding whether or not he wants to go.
I also wonder if Sven Baertschi would answer the call for Switzerland. He has suited up for his country at the senior men's level just once—for one game in 2014—and is probably itching to play more this year. I'm not sure of the timing, but his first child is on the way sometime this spring, so that could be a consideration.
We should get more clarity on these decisions when the team gathers for its season-ending media availability sometime in the next couple of days. Owner Francesco Aquilini is also promising to weigh in on the season soon.
There has been a ton of chatter around the league about changes at the management level, and there's word that the Canucks are looking for a president of hockey operations to augment the current managerial staff of Jim Benning and John Weisbrod. Names like Dean Lombardi, Steve Yzerman and Ken Holland are being bandied about; other teams that we know are looking to hire GMs or team presidents include Edmonton, Ottawa and the New York Rangers.
There could be more openings, too, as the postseason bloodletting kicks into high gear. It's only 10:30 a.m. on Sunday as I type this, but Florida and Buffalo have already fired their coaches. I expect there will be more moves to come.
To wrap up today, here's a quick look at the key final numbers, and how they compare to last season:
Overall record:
2018-19: 35-36-11, 81 pts, 23rd overall
2017-18: 31-40-11, 73 pts, 26th overall
Goals for/against:
2018-19: 219 goals for (26th), 248 goals against (T-17th)
2017-18: 218 goals for (26th), 259 goals against (26th)
In a year where overall scoring increased slightly from 2.97 to 3.01 goals per game, the Canucks defied the trend—just maintaining their offense, but improving defensively.
Special teams:
2018-19: 17.1 percent power play (T22nd), 81.1 percent penalty kill (11th)
2017-18: 21.4 percent power play (9th), 78.3 percent penalty kill (21st)
The penalty kill got 2.8 percent better and became a team strength this season, but was counterbalanced against a power play that was 4.3 percent worse.
The Canucks ended the year strong with the man advanage, going 4-for-5 in their last two games, but the dry spell during February and March really hurt them as they fell out of the playoff race. The power play was also where the Sedins' absence was most noticeable.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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