Thursday February 6 - Minnesota Wild 4 - Vancouver Canucks 2
It's been a tale of two road trips.
After coming out of the gate hot with wins against the Sharks and Islanders, the tide began to turn in Carolina. After the Canucks were shut out in Boston and laid an egg in the first period in Minnesota, they come home with a just-OK record of 2-2-1.
Here are your highlights from Thursday's loss at Xcel Energy Center:
The big news at puck drop was Elias Pettersson's late scratch after he'd taken the pre-game skate. It came as a surprise — he'd also practiced in Minnesota on Wednesday and spoken to the media afterward. While Travis Green didn't provide many details after the game, he did confirm that that Petey's absence was due to the controversial hit he took in Boston on Tuesday.
The first indication that there might be trouble came when Zack MacEwen joined the group for warmup, skating as a 13th forward. He did indeed draw in, so Adam Gaudette moved up and Brandon Sutter shifted back to the middle.
Here's how Travis Green deployed his lines to start the game:
Despite his new deployment, Gaudette still played just 11:24. Green had plenty of juggling to do throughout the game, due to penalties and injuries.
As often happens when things go sideways, Bo Horvat had a busy night. He finished with 23:05 of ice time and took 28 of the game's 57 faceoffs. Sutter's 18:29 was also his highest ice-time total in the eight games since he returned from his injury.
It was surprising to see Jake Virtanen drop the gloves with Jason Zucker just 2:32 into the first period — two unlikely combatants, as it was just the third fight of Jake's NHL and the second for Zucker, who's listed at 5'11" and 192 pounds.
Not long afterward, Jay Beagle was sent to the penalty box for tripping speedy Mats Zuccarello. Without their most reliable penalty killer available, the Canucks survived, but Brad Hunt got the Wild on the board four seconds after Beagle returned to the ice with a shot through traffic from the point that eluded Jacob Markstrom.
Four minutes later, Ryan Hartman picked up his seventh of the year after Markstrom misplayed the puck off the end boards. A little later, after Loui Eriksson went to the box for another trip on Zuccarello, Kevin Fiala made it 3-0 before the first period ended as he scored his 12th of the year.
The Canucks did get 10 shots on Alex Stalock in the first, but had nothing to show for their efforts until midway through the second, when a J.T. Miller blast off the rush on the power play narrowed the lead to 3-1.
He looks like Bobby Orr from this behind-the-net angle!
Markstrom settled down after the first period, making some good saves to keep the score close. But without Pettersson, the offense sputtered. The only other goal came in garbage time, with 1:31 left in the third, after the Wild had gone up 4-1.
In addition to missing Petey, a number of other players had injury issues during the game.
In the third period, Oscar Fantenberg was knocked out of the game with an upper-body injury. No further details were provided postgame.
Jay Beagle also missed about eight minutes of action in the third after yet another shot block off his wrist, but did return to play two shifts. And Jake Virtanen also missed some time in the third, but came back and finished the game.
In his first NHL game since December 12, MacEwen finished with a respectable 12:44 of ice time, despite spending seven minutes in the penalty box.
He held his own in his third-period tilt against tough Marcus Foligno...
...and helped inspire these awesome comments from his opponent after the game...
The Canucks got a power play out of that skirmish, as Jared Spurgeon was also sent to the box for slashing MacEwen. That led to Miller's power-play goal.
Bottom line — a much better effort from the Wild than last time the Canucks came to town, when they cruised to a relatively easy 4-1 win in January.
The Canucks are still 14-5-1 since they started their turnaround just before Christmas, and they now have most of their heavy travel out of the way. With a little less than two months still to play in the season, they're now home for six straight games before their last big trip of the year takes them through to Eastern Canada...and Columbus, on March 1.
Once that's done, they'll have 10 home games and seven road games to close out the season, and won't go further afield than Dallas.
And despite having picked up just one point in their last three games, the Canucks haven't lost much ground to their Pacific Division foes. Vegas won big in Florida on Tuesday and moved into second place, two points behind Vancouver, but Edmonton, Arizona and Calgary all lost.
Last night, I saw someone on Twitter suggest that both the Oilers and Flames are sagging after all the emotion and intensity of last week's Battle of Alberta drama. I buy that — and it could help Vancouver. The Flames are now on a three-game losing streak, and missing their captain Mark Giordano, as they arrive at Rogers Arena to play the Canucks on Saturday.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes....
Pierre LeBrun lit a fuse on Thursday when he suggested that the Canucks might be pursuing Wayne Simmonds as a possible trade deadline acquisition.
If you subscribe to The Athletic, LeBrun leads with the Simmonds story in his latest column.
Basically, Vancouver's interest boils down to whether or not Micheal Ferland will be available for the stretch drive and a possible playoff run. Jim Benning said last week that Ferland was skating and would soon be heading to Utica for a conditioning assignment, but that hasn't happened yet. It's not clear if that's because the Comets had a very light schedule this week and Ferland wouldn't get much game action, or if he may have had a setback in his recovery.
"He’s skating, no real update," Travis Green told
Patrick Johnston of The Province.
"He didn’t want to engage on whether there’s been a setback," Johnston continued. "When you look at Utica’s schedule, they play three games in six days next week, so perhaps the plan is to get him a practice with the Canucks mid-week, then send him to Utica to play some games and get another practice in, before seeing where he’s at."
Now 31, there has been concern about whether Simmonds' hyper-physical playing style has put too many miles on his body for him to still be effective. He didn't click as a trade-deadline acquisition by Nashville last year, managing just three points in 17 regular-season games and none in the playoffs, where he was knocked out of action after taking a puck to the knee in the second game of the Predators' six-game first-round loss to Dallas.
His offensive numbers have certainly trended downward over the last four seasons:
2016-17 (Phi): 31-23-54
2017-18 (Phi): 24-22-46
2018-19 (Phi/Nas): 17-13-30
2019-20 (NJ): 5-14-19 in 53 games so far
Despite the Devils' trainwreck of a season, LeBrun says acting GM Tom Fitzgerald hasn't fully committed to trading Simmonds, who will be a UFA again at the end of this season — or is this just a negotiating ploy to help draw better offers?
"As one source described it Thursday, that’s still a decision that is in limbo. Simmonds is so respected in the Devils dressing room and his leadership impact so real that it’s not out of the question New Jersey wants to keep him around."
Since Simmonds has spent most of his career out east, Canucks fans haven't seen him all that much. I covered him at the World Championship in 2017, where he had just two assists in 10 games but delighted in stirring the pot when needed on a super-talented team that just missed out on a title, losing to Sweden in a shootout in the gold-medal game.
I'm still more of a believer that the Canucks shouldn't mess with their chemistry — and that they already have too many forwards. I do kinda like what Simmonds might bring — depending, of course, on the price of acquisition.
Also, it's funny to think the best-case scenario would bring even more headaches. If Jim Benning got Simmonds, and he turned out to have a positive impact, then the next question would be how the Canucks would be able to fit a soon-to-be-32-year-old into their salary structure going forward if they wanted to keep him around.
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