Saturday February 4 - Minnesota Wild 6 - Vancouver Canucks 3
All the feel-good stories that have recently surrounded the Vancouver Canucks have quickly become a distant memory. The Canucks are now embarking on a tough six-game road trip as one of the coldest teams in the league after losing their third straight game on Saturday night—a 6-3 defeat at the hands of the Minnesota Wild.
Here are your highlights:
Though an unseasonable snowstorm may have hampered fans' access to Rogers Arena on Saturday, the night started off well enough. Henrik Sedin was joined by his family and by Trevor Linden and Stan Smyl as he was honoured for becoming just the 85th player in the NHL's 100-year history to reach the 1,000-point plateau.
Video tributes to Henrik ran throughout the night, from players including Alexander Ovechkin, Daniel Alfredsson and former teammates like Jason King and Kevin Bieksa.
Anson Carter won the night with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
As for the game itself, there were plenty of goals, including the 13th and 14th of the year from Brandon Sutter and a beauty from Bo Horvat for his team-leading 15th.
Unfortunately, the "other" Granlund brother Mikael, matched the Canucks' output with three goals of his own and the Wild added three more from Mike Rielly, Zach Parise and Mikko Koivu to round out the scoring.
If there was a backbreaker, it was probably Granlund's second goal, four minutes into the second period. It came just 11 seconds after the fourth line had put the Canucks on the power play thanks to a chippy, aggressive shift, kicking off a three-goal second period for Minnesota and putting the Wild up 3-1.
Saturday was an uncharacteristically rough night for Nikita Tryamkin, who finished with a team-worst minus four. Willie did juggle his defensive pairings a bit and Troy Stecher staggered to the bench after blocking a shot with his foot midway through the second period, but didn't appear to miss a shift.
When Ben Hutton's ready to return to the lineup—most likely sometime on this upcoming road trip—will Willie Desjardins take out Philip Larsen, or will he stick with the left-right deployments that he has been using?
Tryamkin's still a rookie. Not every night is going to be an all-star performance. I'm bracing for the possibility that we might see him scratched, at least occasionally, when Hutton returns.
Meanwhile, after being red-hot in January, Ryan Miller is trending dramatically downward. Vancouver's only win in its last five games came in Jacob Markstrom's start against Colorado. Two empty-net goals make the final scores look even worse, but Miller has given up 15 goals in his last four starts—all losses.
Were Miller's new goalie pants a factor last night? This analogy from Arizona goaltender Mike Smith offers some insight into how it feels to wear the new design:
We'll need a bigger sample size before we draw conclusions on this issue, I think. I am surprised that the league went ahead with this change at such an important juncture of the season.
Dubnyk’s complaint simply that always wears same pair of pants start to finish in season, so didn’t like forcing him to adjust to new ones
Jannik Hansen picked up one assist in his first game back and led the Canucks with five of the team's 27 shots on goal. Daniel Sedin also picked up his 970th career point, his 28th of the year, on Brandon Sutter's third-period power-play goal. He needs to pick up the pace in a big way if he also hopes to hit 1,000 before the end of this season.
Now—on to Air Canuck. The six-game road trip kicks off in Nashville on Tuesday night; the Predators have gone 5-2-1 since their 1-0 loss to Vancouver at Rogers Arena back on January 17th. From there, it'll be on to Columbus, a weekend back-to-back against Boston and Buffalo, then Pittsburgh before finishing off in St. Louis next Thursday.
With Saturday's loss, the Canucks have slid five points out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference and that number could increase before the end of the day. Los Angeles, in the first wild-card, got shut out by Washington this morning but Calgary's tied 1-1 with the New York Rangers in another pre-Super Bowl contest as I type this. If the Flames pick up one or two points, the Canucks will be six points back by the end of the day.
Vancouver's light schedule and three losses has also caused them to slip to 26th overall—and they're only listed above Dallas and Tampa Bay, also with 52 points, because they have a game in hand. Draftists, your coveted lottery pick is once again well within reach!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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