Tuesday February 20 - Colorado Avalanche 5 - Vancouver Canucks 4 (OT)
Well, that was a weird one. After building a 4-1 second period lead, the Vancouver Canucks dropped an overtime decision to the Colorado Avalanche thanks to a suddenly ineffective penalty kill that went 1-for-6 on the night.
Here are your highlights:
Now in his fifth NHL season at the ripe old age of 22, Nathan MacKinnon's first career goal against the Canucks proved to be the game winner on what ended up being a four-point night for him. Tyson Barrie went one better, with a goal and four assists.
That's an amazing record for a franchise where the Stastny brothers scored a gajillion goals back in the Nordiques days while Sakic and Forsberg led the charge in the early Avalanche era.
A huge night for the kid from Victoria. I saw Barrie and MacKinnon work similar magic earlier this year for Team Canada in Paris at the World Championship, before Barrie was knocked out of the tournament with an injury.
The collapse of the Canucks penalty kill comes out of the blue. Up till now, it has been terrific since the dawn of the Darren Archibald era, giving up just one goal on 16 attempts in Vancouver's previous five games. Archibald was on for three of Colorado's five goals on Tuesday while Brandon Sutter, Alex Edler and Erik Gudbranson were on for four, including the OT winner.
The Colorado comeback overshadowed a couple of nice stories from the Canucks side:
• Archibald opened the scoring in the second period with his first NHL goal in nearly four years, off a sweet feed from Brandon Sutter.
• Nikolay Goldobin got red hot for one minute midway through the second period, scoring his third of the season on the power play before setting up Sutter just 51 seconds later.
That's the first multi-point night of Goldobin's NHL career.
For better or worse, with the single point, the Canucks move ahead of the Edmonton Oilers, into sixth place in the Pacific Division standings and also one point ahead of the Montreal Canadiens. They're currently 26th overall and the fourth-best team in Canada, believe it or not—ahead of the Oilers, Habs and Ottawa Senators.
The Canucks are off today and will practice on Thursday at Rogers Arena ahead of their first-ever game at T-Mobile Arena in Vegas on Friday night. Can't say I'm surprised that the team will keep its potential exposure to the "Vegas flu" to as low a level as possible.
Now—on to the real juice.
A couple of days ago, manvanfan suggested that I open up the floor for you to submit your best trade ideas for the Canucks ahead of the deadline.
I've been pondering the best way to make that work—both in terms of trade targets and how to facilitate the discussion.
I think the best way to do it will still be in the comment section, rather than having you DM me privately. That means you will be influenced by what others are posting, but I encourage you to think creatively and don't get too bogged down by 'popular opinion.' In that spirit, try to be open to other folks' suggestions, too. We've seen lots of out-of-the-blue deals come down on deadline day.
And try to be realistic. Put yourself in Jim Benning's shoes and try to offer up a deal that might make a rival GM say "Yes, let's do it!"
Since those GMs are often reactive more than proactive, and since Chuck Fletcher got burned on his Martin Hanzal acquisition last season and Kevin Shattenkirk didn't get Washington past that second-round hump, there's lots of talk that teams don't want to part with first-rounders for top rental players this year.
The deadline's not as explosive as it was before the salary cap was introduced, but there are usually some intriguing surprises—and Jim Benning was one of the more savvy players last year, with his trades of Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen.
So, I'm going to nominate these Canucks players as the top potential trade targets:
• Thomas Vanek
• Ben Hutton
• Chris Tanev
• Alex Edler
I wouldn't normally include Edler, but Elliotte Friedman linked him to Tampa Bay in this week's "31 Thoughts"—and Edler loves playing with Swedes. He had a dose of life with Victor Hedman when he won gold at the World Championship last spring, so if the Lightning can't pull a rabbit out of a hat and acquire Erik Karlsson, maybe Edler's a nice consolation prize?
Tanev's injury also decreases his likelihood of moving, but those Toronto rumours with him just won't go away, so I'll leave him in the mix as well.
With term on their contracts, both Edler and Tanev fall into the "hockey trade" category that seems to be in vogue this year.
As for Vanek:
Though there are a ton of left wings in the mix on the
TSN Trade Bait board, Vanek's 40 points compare nicely, even against much more high-profile players like Rick Nash (28 points), Evander Kane (39 points) and Max Pacioretty (35 points). I'm pretty confident that a Vanek deal will go down.
If you have another pet player that you legitimately think could be moved, feel free to highlight him, too. Let's leave no stone unturned!
So—over to you. Have some fun with this! I'll run down some of the more intriguing suggestions in the days to come.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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