Monday October 22 - Washington Capitals 5 - Vancouver Canucks 2
Alexander Ovechkin doesn't bring his top-level game to Vancouver very often, but it was on full display Monday night as the Washington Capitals handily dispatched the Vancouver Canucks by a score of 5-2.
Ovi had two goals, two assists and seven of Washington's 33 shots. He was ably supported by his top-end teammates John Carlson (1-2-3), Nicklas Backstrom (0-3-3), T.J. Oshie (1-1-2) and Evgeny Kuznetsov (1-0-1).
Here are your highlights:
Troy Stecher and Sven Baertschi scored for the Canucks.
Are we making progress on offense from the defense? Not really. As a group, the Vancouver blueliners scored just 21 goals in 82 games last season. Stecher's tally on Monday was the group's second in nine games this season, which projects to just over 18 goals over the 82-game schedule. There's definitely still work to be done in this area.
Stecher's goal was pretty flukey, too—a weird deflection off former Canuck Nic Dowd.
Also worth noting: those Petey point have been sorely missed. Elias Pettersson appeared on the scoresheet in all five games he played before suffering his concussion. He was leading the team with eight points when he was injured—and still leads the team scoring race despite having missed the last four games.
With Pettersson in the lineup, the Canucks were averaging 3.80 goals per game and running a power play with 26.7 percent efficiency. In the four games since his injury in Florida, the team has dropped to just 2.00 goals per game and the power play has dropped to 20 percent.
Pettersson is taking part in the Canucks' practice at Rogers Arena on Tuesday before the team heads south for a quick back-to-back series in Vegas and Arizona.
Fun and frivolity in Vegas followed by a round of golf in Scottsdale? Good choice for a Dads' Trip.
When faced with the Capitals' killer power play, it's no wonder that Vancouver's penalty killers didn't have a great night. Washington went 2-for-5 with the man advantage, right around their league-leading average. Monday was only Vancouver's third home game of the year, but Washington was the first visiting team to score on the power play this season.
The Canucks have now dropped into a tie for 12th with an 80.5 percent overall kill rate. Most worrisome: only Colorado been shorthanded more times this year. The Canucks are handing over an average of four power plays per game, while getting just 2.78 power-play opportunities of their own.
If Pettersson does return to the lineup on Wednesday, who sits? Will Loui Eriksson get another chance to make his case for relevance on this team by slotting back onto Petey's wing?
The Canucks have made one roster move on Tuesday.
Darren Archibald has been off to a good start in Utica—second on the team with four goals to go along with two assists and eight penalty minutes in eight games.
The Canucks have had an extra roster spot open since Pettersson and Jay Beagle were injured. Pettersson's return was expected to bring them to full strength.
Apparently Archibald's return is a result of a lower-body issue for Brock Boeser.
The obvious question is whether Boeser's absence is related to his back injury from last season. For now, they're calling him day-to-day. Twitter thinks this play might have been the culprit:
The injury has led to a motley mix of line combinations in practice. Most notable: Leipsic and Eriksson playing with Bo Horvat, Goldobin skating as...a spare?...and MDZ back in regular rotation with Derrick Pouliot skating on the right side and Troy Stecher as a spare.
Speaking of injuries, the Utica Comets are now once again dealing with a growing list of issues down on the farm:
Reid Boucher had been responsible for more than one-third of the Comets' offense this season before he was injured, with nine of the team's 29 goals in the first eight games. His absence will open up some quality ice time for other skill forwards—Jonathan Dahlen, perhaps?—but his production will be missed.
The Comets' next game is at home on Wednesday, against the Charlotte Checkers. They'll be facing Scott Darling in the Charlotte net, on a conditioning stint as he completes his recovery from his preseason lower-body injury.
Speaking of Dahlen, I stumbled across an interesting feature on him as part of Scott Wheeler's 2018 "The Gifted" series in The Athletic. For the second year, Wheeler has chosen 10 prospects to highlight for their unique talents that separate them from the rest of the crop. In Dahlen's case, it's his edgework that has caught Wheeler's eye.
Dahlen is being featured among some high-profile names like Miro Heiskanen, Casey Mittelstadt and Dylan Strome in this year's group. Elias Pettersson was one of the players that Wheeler highlighed in his 2017 series last year.
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Dahlen has one goal and three assists and is a minus-two in seven games with the Comets so far this season.
Today's Boeser news definitely puts a damper on the excitement surrounding Pettersson's expected return. Here's hoping that if he gets the treatment he needs, Boeser will come back looking more like the scoring machine we saw last season.
Apparently Pettersson's dad is in the house ahead of the road trip; that seems like another good sign in his boy's recovery.
EP is expected to speak with the media after practice wraps up.
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