The Vancouver Canucks are back in town and will practice today at UBC ahead of their Monday night matchup with the Philadelphia Flyers.
Brad Ziemer of the
Vancouver Sun reports that Chris Higgins is expected to practice with the team today for the first time since he was injured blocking a shot at the Kraft Hockeyville game back on September 21. Monday will mark six weeks since Higgins' injury.
According to Ziemer, "(Willie) Desjardins said goalie Jacob Markstrom could also return to practise Sunday." His hamstring injury occurred during the final practice of preseason, so he has been out for nearly four weeks.
UPDATE: While I was putting the finishing touches on this blog, the Canucks held their team meeting, then announced that Jared McCann and Jake Virtanen are both staying with the team. Great news!
The team gave the kids a full torch job before they made the announcement. Check the Canucks Twitter feed for the full story. Here's one excerpt:
I hadn't quite gotten around to breaking down the Virtanen decision, but here's what I was thinking on McCann:
“We’ll evaluate after tonight’s game again and take another good look at him,” Desjardins said of McCann. “He has been good for us. But it’s still a tough decision to make. It might not seem like it is, it might seem it’s for sure and a given, but our No. 1 thing is (determining) where he’ll develop the most. Whether he gets 20 minutes in junior (in Sault Ste. Marie) or 12 minutes with us.”
I'll take solace in the fact that somewhere in his mind, Willie thinks "it’s for sure and a given" that most people think McCann will stay. Hopefully this weekend's decision-making is little more than a formality.
They can't send down their leading goal-scorer, can they??
Jason Botchford doesn't think they can. In his
latest story in
The Province, he says "let’s be real, cutting your team’s leading scorer would be the biggest upset of the season."
Botchford also points out that while the deficiency in McCann's game is his defensive play, that probably wouldn't improve if he goes back to junior—and Willie knows it.
“I do believe if he went to junior, he’d get away with not being detailed in his own zone, because he’d be expected to score,” Desjardins said. “He probably wouldn’t need to develop that (defensive) side of his game as much.
“Here he’ll be expected to work on that a bit more.”
I like the sound of that.
Around the league, the trend this year seems to be to stick with the kids. Of the players from the 2015 draft class who made opening-night lineups, Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel and Noah Hanifin have now all played past nine games. Only Colorado's Mikko Rantanen was sent down, but he's in the AHL because he came over from the Finnish League—he didn't have to go back to junior.
From McCann and Virtanen's 2014 draft class, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Nikolaj Ehlers and Dylan Larkin have all cracked the nine-game threshold. Nikolay Goldobin has been demoted by the Sharks but once again, he was sent to the AHL, not to junior.
Comparing Octobers
The Canucks head into November with a 5-2-4 record for 14 points, tied for first place in the Pacific Division after the Kings won their seventh straight game in OT on Saturday against Nashville. So much for that slow start!
Last year at this time, the Canucks were 7-3-0 through 10 games, for 14 points—tied for second in the Pacific with the Kings, Flames and Sharks. They won their 11th game of the year against Edmonton on November 1 so they were two points ahead of this year's pace in the same number of games.
Eleven games is a pretty small sample size, but the Canucks are scoring nearly half a goal less per game in the early going this year, with just 32 goals compared to 37 last season. But, they've tightened up defensively, with just 25 goals allowed compared to 33 last year. Kudos to Ryan Miller for his strong start this year—and to a pretty solid performance from a defense that was thought to be the Canucks' weakest area heading into the season. On balance, they're getting the job done.
It seems like scoring around the league is up this year when I look at the Art Ross race and see 17 points in 11 games for current leader Jamie Benn, but only the top 11 scorers are contributing above the point-a-game level—and a quick n' dirty look at overall league offense is pretty similar to last year.
Click here for the 2014-15 league standings and
here for this year's standings so far.
Last season, Tampa Bay led the league with 42 goals on November 2, the 10th-place team was New Jersey with 33, 20th place went to Columbus with 28 and Buffalo was last with 13.
This year, Montreal leads all teams in offense with 45 goals so far, Vancouver's 10th with 32, Calgary's 20th with 27 and Anaheim's last with just 10 goals scored. Without adding everything up and accounting for the exact number of games played, those numbers look pretty similar to my naked eye.
I just took a look back to my blog from November 2 of last season, which you can find
here. It's a bit startling to realize that win over Edmonton the night before was the last hurrah for Tom Sestito, that the key moment of the game was Andrew Ference's hit on Zack Kassian and that Bo Horvat was just on the threshold of making his debut in a Canucks uniform.
A lot has changed in a year!
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