Thursday February 16 - St. Louis Blues 4 - Vancouver Canucks 3
Bo Horvat and Brandon Sutter returned to the lineup, but a rough outing from Jacob Markstrom torpedoed any opportunity for the Vancouver Canucks to take advantage of a tired St. Louis Blues team as they closed out their six-game road trip with a loss on Thursday.
Here are your highlights:
On the positive side, having Horvat and Sutter back certainly helped on the offensive side of the ledger. Both players scored on nice setups...
....Horvat's 18th of the year of a sweet feed from Nikita Tryamkin...
Between Horvat's and Sutter's goals, we even got a rare-these-days glimpse of Sedinery, as Henrik picked up his first goal since that milestone 1,000th point against Florida back on January 20.
Sedins work their magic in tight and Henrik capitalizes on the tap-in against the Blues in this @REMAX Move of the Game. pic.twitter.com/ughDMlGElH
That goal came just 19 seconds after Markstrom was saved by a quick whistle as a long Kevin Shattenkirk point shot ever-so-slowly trickled through his pads. Midway through the second period, the Canucks were gifted with a 2-2 tie instead of a 3-1 deficit, but they couldn't turn that opportunity into any points in the standings.
Considering the final shots on goal were just 21-21, the high-mistake hockey by both teams and the close score made for a relatively entertaining game. Still, the Blues were able to shut things down nicely to preserve the win—after Sutter got the Canucks back within a goal with 13:11 left on the clock in the third period, Vancouver managed just two more shots during a stretch that included a power play and an additional 1:52 with Markstrom pulled for the extra attacker.
Horvat and Sutter each played just over 18 minutes, but Bo took a whopping 21 draws while Sutter took only 12, including just two in the second half of the third period, where he's often the go-to guy. It'll be interesting to see how his wrist holds up on the back-to-back games this weekend before Vancouver's five-day break.
The other big news of the day on Thursday was Jim Benning's radio hit on TSN1040, from St. Louis.
You can click here for TSN's up-to-the-minute Trade Tracker, which is decidedly short on blockbuster deals so far, heading into the second-last weekend before the trade deadline.
I maintain that the marketplace is even more convoluted than usual this year because of the expansion draft and the tight race in the standings in both conferences, though we're starting to see a bit more clarity in that area.
A couple of weeks ago, Colorado and Arizona were the only teams that were virtually assured of missing the playoffs. Today, Sports Club Stats lists 12 of 30 teams with a less-than-20-percent chance of getting into the postseason. Yes, these numbers can change dramatically when teams go on winning streaks—like St. Louis has—but the line between the buyers and sellers is starting to come into focus.
After last night's loss, the Canucks' current playoff odds dropped by another one percent. Vancouver now has the sixth-lowest odds in the league of reaching the postseason, at 2.6 percent.
Benning said on Thursday that he will talk to players during the break next week about trade possibilities. Though he spent most of last week scouting in Europe, I'm going to assume that he has had discussions with other teams and has some sense of the level of interest in his players and whether or not he thinks he could do a deal.
The team's next order of business is to cobble together a game plan to take on two other bubble teams this weekend. On Saturday, it's the Calgary Flames, who currently hold down that second wild-card spot and are five points ahead of the Canucks. Then, Vancouver hosts Philadelphia on Sunday—the Flyers are currently two points out of the second wild-card spot in the East after losses in both Calgary and Edmonton so far this week.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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