The Vancouver Canucks will be back on the ice Monday at 11 a.m. for practice ahead of their Tuesday night contest against the Montreal Canadiens.
With any luck, the Habs have been having some fun while they're here in town, celebrating the hot start to their season. After beating Buffalo 7-2 on Friday and Toronto 5-3 on Saturday, the Canadiens flew into Vancouver on Sunday and will start their Western Canadian road swing here before travelling on to Edmonton and Calgary.
They'll be looking to extend their perfect start to 10-0-0 on Tuesday—not that such minutiae matters to P.K. Subban:
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Canucks will be looking to figure out how to snap their four-game winless streak and find a way to effectively close out games at Rogers Arena.
Iain MacIntyre is sounding the alarm over ice time in his latest column, which appears in the
Vancouver Sun and the
National Post.
His focus is less on what the limited on-ice contributions from players like Jake Virtanen and Sven Baertschi mean to the current Canucks than on who picks up the slack—mostly, the Sedins.
By rolling four lines last season, Willie Desjardins kept Henrik Sedin's ice time at 18:36 per game and Daniel's at 18:21—well below the 20:40 per game for Henrik and 20:36 for Daniel that John Tortorella utilized during his disastrous year in Vancouver.
The twins rebounded with better offensive seasons and, probably most importantly, didn't break down during the second half.
MacIntyre's pointing out that Willie's starting to do what Torts did in his effort to win games—lean heavily on the twins.
Through the first eight games, Brandon Sutter is actually leading all forwards with an average of 20:26 of ice time, but the twins are right behind.
• Henrik's averaging 20:16 and hit a season high of 21:23 against Detroit on Saturday. He has been over 20 minutes five times already.
• Daniel's averaging 19:58 and hit a season high of 21:26 on Saturday. He has been over 20 minutes four times.
If there was any question *why* Torts played the twins so much, I think it was confirmed in Columbus today that it was because he may not have been especially familiar with his other options:
Back here in the present, MacIntyre points out that "Hank is playing more than Jonathan Toews, Jamie Benn and Evgeni Malkin, while Danny is playing more than Vladimir Tarasenko and Alex Ovechkin. The Sedins are 35 years old."
The twins' ice time has increased along with the Canucks' urgency to put points on the board—but the plan's not working.
Despite their best efforts, the twins were pointless on Saturday night—and are pointless in four three-on-three overtime appearances so far, where the cardio workload is even higher than during five-on-five play.
MacIntyre points out that the kids' possession numbers are actually pretty decent so far. "In the case of Baertschi and Virtanen, fancy possession stats indicate they are not hurting the Canucks when they do play."
As the clock ticks down to the end of the nine-game trial periods for Virtanen and Jared McCann, Willie will need to make some tough decisions about whether he can truly trust the kids to carry their share of the workload or if he'd feel better dispatching them back to junior and turning to less-skilled veterans like Chris Higgins, when he gets healthy, and Adam Cracknell. I'm not sure an "older" young player like Hunter Shinkaruk or Brendan Gaunce would be treated much differently from the 19-year-olds if he was to get the call to join the team from Utica.
In the immediate future, the team now has a mental hurdle it needs to overcome. From the MacIntyre column:
"Now, we’re starting to think about it," winger Derek Dorsett said. "It’s obviously frustrating us. A lot. Everyone in here cares, everyone in here wants to win and do the right thing. And it’s frustrating that it’s happening this way. We have to find the confidence to have that killer instinct. Up one or two goals, going out for the third period, we’ve got to be confident in ourselves that we will win that game."
If the Canucks need evidence that things can turn around in a hurry in the NHL, they need only look above themselves in the Pacific Division standings. After starting their season 0-3, the Los Angeles Kings are now the hottest team in the Western Conference after winning their fifth straight game on Sunday night in Edmonton.
The Kings are now tied for first place in the Pacific Division, which has pushed the Canucks down to fourth—outside the playoff picture.
A little confidence goes a long way. A win against Montreal on Tuesday would go a long way towards solving these mental challenges.
Quick Hits:
A couple of other quick items to wrap up today:
• The Utica Comets improved their record to 2-3 on the season after shutting out the Syracuse Crunch 4-0 on Saturday night. Goal scorers were Brendan Gaunce, Blair Jones and Linden Vey, all with their first of the season, and Hunter Shinkaruk with his fourth.
Shinkaruk leads all Comets players with five points and is the only one with more than a single goal, while Jordan Subban's leading the blue line with three assists.
Joe Cannata has been the team's MVP so far, giving up just seven goals in five games for a 1.42 goals-against average and .940 save percentage.
• Brock Boeser's top-ranked University of North Dakota team improved its record to 4-0-2 after sweeping a weekend series at Vermont. Boeser has four goals so far.
The UND website hasn't updated its team stats to include Saturday's game yet, but through the team's first five contests, the freshman Boeser was ranked fourth in team scoring and had put 21 shots on goal.
Our reader djlarose was at the game on Saturday night, and posted a lengthy analysis in our comments section afterwards. Thanks for that!
It's a mix of positives and areas that need improvement.
Click here and scroll down a bit to read.
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