The Vancouver Canucks hit the ice for a Monday morning practice at Rogers Arena before hopping on Air Canuck to start their six-game road trip.
First stop: Nashville, where they'll take on the Predators on Tuesday.
Here's the quick n' dirty rundown of today's player movement:
Brendan Gaunce's assignment to Utica is triggered by the need to clear a roster spot for Ben Hutton. Gaunce, Troy Stecher and Nikita Tryamkin are the only players currently on the Canucks roster who can be assigned to the AHL without needing to clear waivers. With Jannik Hansen's return to the lineup last Saturday, the team was carrying 14 healthy forwards.
Gaunce, 22, has been a steady performer for Willie Desjardins this season. He has just five assists in 47 games but has been a hard-worker who has been defensively reliable on a fourth line that has eaten up its share of minutes for the Canucks this season. Gaunce is averaging 8:49 of ice time this season but has been above that in most games since Christmas, peaking at 12:47 in the 4-2 home win over Calgary on January 6.
Gaunce has been operating primarily as a winger, with Michael Chaput as the main centreman on the fourth line. Sounds like Jayson Megna will draw back in on Tuesday after being scratched last Saturday against the Wild, while Reid Boucher continues to be the extra man.
On the blue line, Nikita Tryamkin will shift to the right side to play with Hutton—reuniting a third pairing that was effective before Hutton's injury. That'll move Philip Larsen back to the press box.
Hutton is also slotting into Larsen's spot on the power play.
It'll be interesting to see how much of a difference Hutton makes in the lineup. He suffered that hairline fracture of his finger when he blocked a shot against Calgary on January 6, which was the last game of Vancouver's six-game winning streak out of the Christmas break—when the team allowed just nine goals in those six games.
While Hutton was out of action, the Canucks went 3-5-3 in 11 games and allowed 31 goals.
I bet the Canucks are not the only team in sports that's looking to draw inspiration from the New England Patriots' stunning comeback win in Sunday's Super Bowl.
According to
Bill Barnwell of ESPN, the Atlanta Falcons' odds of winning the Superbowl hit 99 percent on 20 different occasions on Sunday. The Canucks' current playoff odds of 6.2 percent, from
SportsClubStats, look pretty encouraging compared to the hill that New England successfully climbed!
With Gaunce's re-assignment, it's a good time to check in on what's happening in Utica.
Just like their parent club, the Comets also currently boast a .500 record. They're 18-18-6-2 and sit in fifth place in the AHL's North Division after dropping a 4-3 decision on the road to the Hartford Wolf Pack on Friday night—their only game since the AHL's All-Star break.
With 14 goals and 35 points, 25-year-old Alex Grenier leads the Comets in scoring. He's tied for the goal-scoring lead with 26-year-old Darren Archibald, whose 14 goals tie his previous career high. Archibald, who was known primarily as a grinder in his younger days, is now up to 29 points in 44 games, also a career high for him.
Jake Virtanen has now played 33 games in Utica, and is 5-4-9 in his time with the Comets.
Ben Birnell of the
Utica Observer-Dispatch published an informative feature on Virtanen toward the end of last week.
The article confirms that Virtanen's weight has been an issue this season. He says he started his season with the Canucks at 228 pounds and is now down to 215.
"I feel a lot faster, more explosive," said Virtanen, who has totaled 31 shots in the last nine games. "I'm feeling really good. I want to keep building off that. I want to get stronger every day, come to the rink every day and learn."
Coach Travis Green is seeing improvement in Virtanen's game.
"It might have been arguably his best game of the year," Green said after Utica's 3-2 loss to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on January 27, a game where Virtanen had five shots on goal.
"He's had some games where he hasn't been as effective, hasn't been as aggressive. We talked about that with him. He needs to play an aggressive, hard game. He was physical tonight. When he was around the puck, he was effective with the puck. When he does that, he's a handful. When he doesn't do that, he's not going to be effective enough to play in the NHL."
At just 20 years old, Virtanen still has time to hone the tools that he needs to be an effective NHL player and justify his position as a high first-round draft pick. Jim Benning and Trevor Linden may have listened to their hearts when they selected the big, bruising local boy sixth overall in their first draft with the Canucks, but Virtanen's skill set is there. He needs to get his discipline and his mental game in order, and all indications are that the process is working in Utica.
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