I spent last night with one eye on the evening's hockey games while putting together a Bleacher Report piece on the hottest and coldest teams in the NHL.
Click here to take a look. The Canucks narrowly missed the cut as one of the hottest teams, but their 6-2-2 record over the past 10 games is fourth-best in the Western Conference.
Also surprising: the best record in the Pacific over the last 10 games belongs to the Arizona Coyotes, who rode a Max Domi hat trick to an overtime win over Edmonton last night. That 3-2 Arizona win over Vancouver last week was not a mirage—goaltender Louis Domingue is now 7-2-2, with great personal numbers. He could be this year's Hamburglar as he gets the Coyotes into the playoffs—all he needs is a catchy nickname and an endorsement deal from a fast-food joint.
Over in the Central, there's a collective sag in progress. Not Chicago—they've won eight in a row and are rolling along like nobody can touch them, but Dallas has struggled since the new year while St. Louis, Minnesota and Colorado have all been just OK and Nashville has been downright bad. The Preds are on a four-game losing streak and even though the talk is about how they can't score, their real problem is defense: they've dropped to 21st overall in goals against.
With the standings across the whole conference tightening up, that second wild card spot might just end up going to a Pacific Division team. The Sharks beat the Jets last night for their third straight win, passing Vancouver and bumping the Canucks down to fourth place in the Pacific, but Vancouver's now just one point out of that second wild card berth.
Interesting times ahead.
Most of the emphasis in the Bleacher Report article was on how teams have been trending recently. I made an exception when I included the Washington Capitals on my "Hot" list: they've been playing well all year. The Caps haven't even missed a beat since losing their top defenseman John Carlson to an undisclosed injury: he hasn't played since December 26 but the Caps have gone 6-1-1 in his absence.
Washington will be well-rested when they take on Vancouver tomorrow night. The Caps haven't played since last Sunday, when they trounced Ottawa 7-1 and Alex Ovechkin collected his 500th and 501st career goals. With five goals in his last three games, Ovi's now leading the NHL with 26 on the season—getting hotter after Christmas, as usual, and nicely on track for his seventh career 50-goal season and fourth straight Rocket Richard Trophy.
The Canucks will need to channel the emotion of Monday's win over Florida at Verizon Center on Thursday. I'll set up the game in more detail tomorrow but in a nutshell, the Caps are good at pretty much everything right now.
The Washington game on Thursday is the first of a back-to-back pair, with Carolina on tap for Friday. With Ryan Miller healthy enough to play, it makes sense to split the duties. He'll get first crack.
After sticking up for the twins against the Panthers' bench on Monday night, Derek Dorsett has earned himself a promotion to the first line at practice today!
That shuffle puts Alex Burrows with Vey and Etem, and Jake Virtanen with Prust and Cracknell. Jannik Hansen's back at practice but it looks like he and Jared McCann, along with Luca Sbisa, will be the scratches tomorrow night.
The
Vancouver Sun posted
this video on Tuesday. It was shot before the Canucks hit the road—presumably at Monday's game-day skate.
Luca Sbisa admits that they did eventually find a small fracture in a bone in his hand, which has taken much longer than expected to heal.
Brandon Sutter says he's making progress but it'll be a little while yet before he's ready to return. Though he warns things can change, he says his goal is the end of the road trip. Is it a coincidence that the Canucks play his old team in Pittsburgh in the last game before they head back to Vancouver?
In the excitement over Monday night's win, I forgot to add my voice to the chorus screaming about Alex Edler's terrible game.
As a rule, I live in the camp that believes Edler's mistakes tend to get magnified because he plays so many big minutes against other teams' best players, but I also think Edler might be the Canucks most mercurial player. He can be very good, but he also goes through stretches when he struggles, and he seems to be in one of those phases right now.
While doing stats on Monday night, the number that jumped out at me was Edler's four giveaways. The Canucks only logged 10 in total and the only other player with more than one was Matt Bartkowski, who had two.
Edler finished the night on Monday with an even plus-minus, but he was minus-three on Saturday against Tampa Bay.
To my eye, his play did decline over the course of the homestand, which makes me wonder what's up. He has had nagging back issues in the past—a flare-up could be a factor, or perhaps he's playing through another injury that we don't know about. Whatever the issue, I hope it gets sorted out and we get back to seeing "good Edler" again very soon.
A few other quick notes to wrap up today:
Chris Higgins did clear waivers and will be joining the Utica Comets, who have lost their last six games.
Ex-Canuck prospect Kevin Connauton was placed on waivers yesterday by the Columbus Blue Jackets, and was claimed by the Arizona Coyotes.
Today, it's ex-Canuck prospect Cody Hodgson's turn. Hodgson was 3-5-8 in 39 games with the Nashville Predators this season. Looks like he has basically been bumped out of the lineup by Ryan Johansen.
And, because we can't have a Hodgson story without a Kassian story...
I was a little worried for Kassian when I caught wind of
this story on TMZ yesterday—showing a group of Bakersfield Condors players trolling for hot women in Hollywood during some time off. As far as I could tell, Kassian doesn't appear in the video. His recall implies that he did a good job of staying on the straight and narrow while he was in California.
Finally, it sounds like the jury's still out on whether Radim Vrbata will be a Vancouver Canuck after the Feb. 29 trade deadline.
In
this column at ESPN, Pierre LeBrun goes on to say that, at this point, Vrbata has not been asked for a list of teams to which he'd accept a trade.
Neither has Dustin Byfuglien, by the way...
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