Tuesday January 26 - Vancouver Canucks vs. Nashville Predators - 7:00 pm - Sportsnet Pacific, TSN1040
Vancouver Canucks: 49 GP, 20-18-11, 51 pts, fourth in Pacific Division
Nashville Predators: 48 GP, 22-18-8, 52 pts, sixth in Central Division
One team will earn two points, but neither will be able to climb back into the playoff picture when the Vancouver Canucks host the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night at Rogers Arena.
It has been just over two weeks since we last saw the Canucks on home ice, jawing with the Florida Panthers after Daniel Sedin's overtime game-winner. Between now and March 3, local fans will have a chance to try to get a read on what this year's group is about as they play 11 of 14 games on home ice.
Of the 33 games left on Vancouver's schedule, 21 will be played at home. Just four are against Eastern Conference teams, so there are plenty of four-pointers to play, starting tonight.
The Nashville Predators currently sit just one point ahead of Vancouver in the Western Conference standings, with a game in hand. That may not matter if the Canucks can climb into third place in the Pacific Division—they're now two points behind Arizona after a come-from-behind Coyotes shootout win over Minnesota last night. Arizona also plays tonight, in Winnipeg.
But the Canucks are also just four points out of the Western Conference wild card spots, where Minnesota and Colorado both currently have 55 points. If that's their route to a playoff berth, they'll almost certainly have to beat out the Predators to get there.
Tonight's meeting will be the first of three between Vancouver and Nashville this season. The Canucks will host the Predators again on March 12 before wrapping up the season series in Music City on March 24.
The Preds' visit to Vancouver is the third game of a four-game Canadian road trip that has gone perfectly so far. Though Nashville has been slipping down the standings for most of January, the team logged 4-1 wins both in Winnipeg last Thursday and in Edmonton on Saturday night. After tonight's game, they'll play the second half of a back-to-back in Calgary tomorrow before returning home to host the All-Star festivities.
Goaltender Pekka Rinne has been selected to appear in net for the Central Division, even though he's having a sub-par season—18-15-2 with a 2.50 goals-against average and .904 save percentage.
Those 4-1 scores from last week look pretty typical for a traditional Nashville team, but they've been a high watermark for the Preds' last couple of months.
Rinne and Carter Hutton will almost certainly split duties over the next two nights. Hutton doesn't play much but is putting together a serviceable season: he's 4-2-1 with a .910 save percentage and 2.55 GAA.
No definite word yet on who will get the start tonight against the Canucks.
Things we do know:
• If you're looking for defenseman who can score, look no further. Four of Nashville's top seven scorers come from the blue line, including team leader Roman Josi with 34 points. As a group, they're the highest-scoring defense corps in the NHL.
• The Ryan Johansen deal is working out pretty well so far. In eight games with the Preds, Johansen is 3-6-9, with all three of his goals coming on the power play. Since December 1, Nashville has had the third-best power play in the league; their recent penalty killing has also been strong, taking care of 19 out of the last 20 shorthanded situations—not that teams need to worry much about the penalty kill these days when they're playing Vancouver. The Canucks have earned just two power plays in their last three games.
As for the Canucks, no word yet on which goalie will get the nod for them, either. Though he can't be expected to shoulder the load for Vancouver's third-period collapse in Pittsburgh, Ryan Miller did give up four goals in that contest, though the game winner turned out to be Sidney Crosby's empty-netter.
If you missed it, Trevor Linden and Jim Benning paid a visit to the NHL offices in New York last week to campaign for a saner travel schedule for his team going forward.
Iain MacIntyre offered up an interesting stat in Monday's
Vancouver Sun that helps to explain what happened in Pittsburgh last Saturday:
Excluding a 2-1 win Dec. 22 in Tampa, where Vancouver was outshot 27-19 and somehow survived a 10-1 disparity in power plays, the Canucks are 1-8-1 the last two years in the final games of road trips of four games or longer.
The goal for next season is to keep all road trips to five games or less. In a perfect world, they'll also be spread more evenly through the schedule.
"We should be real happy we’re still in the hunt here," Daniel Sedin told MacIntyre. "It’s so easy when you start losing on the road to keep losing. When you get home, at least you get a fresh start kind of. We battled hard on the road and we should be proud of that. Now we’ve got to take care of home ice."
Daniel will be taking care of home ice tonight with a new centreman, as Brandon Sutter returns to action after missing 33 games with a sports hernia that required surgery.
Sutter's on the ice, along with Dan Hamhuis, at today's optional morning skate:
Jake Virtanen left the skate with an injury.
Based on the lines at Monday's practice, Virtanen was expected to skate on the fourth line tonight with Adam Cracknell and Derek Dorsett. Jared McCann and Brandon Prust are expected to be the scratches.
As for Dan Hamhuis—his return might not be too far off. Amazing, when you consider that it has been just under seven weeks since he was hit in the face by that Dan Boyle slapshot.
He told reporters at Rogers Arena on Monday that he wants to be back in the lineup on Feb. 4 against Columbus, the Canucks' first game after the All-Star Break.
Ben Kuzma walks us through the details of the injury, where "the puck struck Hamhuis above his lip, but the force of the blast carried up and over and shattered his right cheek," in
The Province. Hammer also explains how the doctors put his face back together again.
"I have a couple of plates in my cheeks permanently and there are a bunch of numb spots in my mouth, nose and gums a little bit.
“It can take six months to get the feeling back, but it has healed back pretty much the way it was, except for the teeth."
Kuzma reports that Hamhuis lost 10 pounds during the three and a half weeks that his jaw was wired shut, but that he subsisted on purees fed to him through a syringe before he could move on to smoothies, then eventually to solid foods. Now, "Not biting apples or eating ribs off bones and stuff,” he laughed. “As long as everything is cut up I can chew it pretty well.”
Hamhuis also addressed the question of his future with the Canucks. He's scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent this summer at the age of 33 after playing six seasons in Vancouver at a cap hit of $4.5 million—a very solid free-agent signing made by Mike Gillis during the summer of 2010.
Hamhuis does have a no-trade clause, but doesn't have his head buried in the sand:
I really believe in the team and I like the direction and the young guys and it’s something that I’d like to be part of for sure. We’ll see how things go because you never know. There are so many variables and maybe they want me and maybe they don’t and there are cap issues with the Canadian dollar. I’m not sure how it will play out.
If he can manage a month of solid play, that'll definite pump up the intrigue heading into the February 29 trade deadline.
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