Tuesday December 15 - Vancouver Canucks at Minnesota Wild - 5 p.m. - Sportsnet Pacific, TSN1040
Vancouver Canucks: 31 GP, 11-12-8, 30 pts, fourth in Pacific Division
Minnesota Wild: 28 GP, 15-7-6, 36 pts, fourth in Central Division
The Vancouver Canucks' road trip doesn't get any easier when they face the Minnesota Wild tonight.
Like the Chicago Blackhawks, the Wild need every point they can get in the tough Central Division, and they're 4-0-3 in their last seven games, even though starting netminder Devan Dubnyk has missed the last three due to a groin injury.
Dubnyk will dress tonight, but the plan is for him to back up Darcy Kuemper. Like Corey Crawford on Sunday, Kuemper's coming off a shutout performance in his last game, which was a 2-0 win in San Jose.
The Wild picked up Jarret Stoll from the New York Rangers on waivers today, but he won't arrive in St. Paul in time to face the Canucks.
With the Canucks currently last in the league in faceoffs and Stoll boasting a 57.9 percent success rate on draws this season, I thought Jim Benning might have had some interest in Stoll as a stop-gap until Brandon Sutter gets back into the lineup.
Apparently not:
Rangers-watchers also point out that there's more to life in the bottom six than just winning faceoffs:
Still, if Benning won't grab a depth center for free, maybe he's less interested than I thought in plugging the hole created by Sutter's absence.
With the holiday trade freeze about to kick in on Saturday, I put together
this article for Bleacher Report, looking at some trade possibilities around the league, including here in Vancouver. When I realized the Canucks are 4-8-3 since Sutter went down (and were 7-4-5 before that), the idea of bringing in another centre suddenly started to seem even more important than finding a defenseman who could help eat Dan Hamhuis' minutes.
If you look at the article, you'll see that I've warmed up to the Lars Eller for Radim Vrbata idea. Eller's only 26 and he's a versatile forward who can play center or wing, so he'd still be useful after Sutter comes back. If the Habs are serious about looking for scoring, let's make it happen.
I'm not surprised to see that Zack Kassian was placed on waivers by Montreal today after being reinstated by the league's substance abuse program. I wonder if Marc Bergevin would have any interest in bringing Brandon Prust back to Montreal and pretending that offseason trade never happened—though I highly doubt Benning would be willing to trade Prust if he's still focused on making the playoffs.
For the moment, Vancouver is on the outside looking in after the Edmonton Oilers won their first game in Boston since November of 1996 on Monday night. If the Canucks don't pick up points tonight, they could be in sixth place in the division by morning—San Jose and Calgary are both within striking distance and are also playing.
After an unexpectedly long travel day on Monday, the full Canucks team skated this morning.
Tonight, they're going by the old adage "Don't mess with a losing lineup"...
Three weeks ago, the Canucks surprised the Wild when they stole a 3-2 win at the Xcel Energy Center in the teams' first meeting of the season. Zach Parise was sidelined for that game but his return to the lineup has basically coincided with Minnesota's current streak—he's on a six-game point streak and scored the game-winning goal on Saturday in San Jose.
With Dubnyk back in the lineup, the Wild are completely healthy heading into Tuesday's contest.
With that, you're up to date. The Canucks are in tough tonight but they've surprised us before when the odds have been against them this season.
Let's give the last word for the day to Dan Murphy:
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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