Saturday February 17 - Vancouver Canucks 6 - Boston Bruins 1
I was expecting lots of goals on Saturday night, but I wasn't expecting the Vancouver Canucks to light up the NHL's best defensive team in a 6-1 rout at Rogers Arena.
Here are your highlights:
The Game Presentation department did an excellent job of setting a festive mood with the team's first-ever Chinese New Year celebration. That served to distract from the team's less-than-stellar recent record and the disappointing memories of 2011 that always stir up when the Bruins come to town.
The traditional Chinese New Year greeting of Gung Hey Fat Choi translates literally to "wishing you great happiness and prosperity." On Saturday, the Canucks were prosperous in the goal column and the fans were as happy as they've been all year.
Anders Nilsson was a surprise starter in net for his third appearance of the week after Jacob Markstrom had been announced earlier in the day.
The first period was all Canucks on the scoresheet, with goals coming fast and furious from Loui Eriksson, Daniel Sedin, Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi in the opening frame. But Nilsson did his bit to keep the score lopsided—the Bruins outshot the Canucks 18-8 in the first, and also hit two goalposts.
Give Vancouver credit for some style points on their goals, too. A couple of examples:
• For the second straight game, Thomas Vanek and the twins lit the lamp after a sexy passing play.
• Troy Stecher was making some bold long-bomb passes up the middle in the first period. His plan paid off when he set up Bo Horvat for the third goal of the game. What a roof job!
Tuukka Rask surrendered the net to Anton Khudobin after the first period, as questions swirled about why the Bruins were struggling to defend in their first game in four days.
In these (year of the) dog days of the season, some weird results pop up from time to time as the league's top teams occasionally mail one in against the non-contenders. It's reasonable to argue that the Canucks were able to take advantage of those circumstances last night, but Boston never really threw in the towel. In the third period, the Bruins outshot the Canucks 19-5, giving them a 45-23 total edge on the shot clock for the night, but they were only able to beat Nilsson once.
Trade him today, Jim!
A couple of other style notes for the night:
• The Canucks played a solid physical game against the Big Bad Bruins. Darren Archibald led the way with five hits and a fight with Brandon Carlo and the Canucks outhit Boston 28-17 overall. Brad Marchand was a particular target, to the delight of the crowd, which has been excellent lately at booing each of the Canucks' sworn enemies as they roll through town.
Marchand's rap sheet is now long enough that he was getting no sympathy from the officials as he begged for calls on a couple of occasions on Saturday.
• I quite enjoyed the new-look fourth line of Nic Dowd with Jake Virtanen and Nikolay Goldobin, which got a good dose of ice time after the Canucks built their early cushion on the score sheet.
Goldy was mucking, which I haven't seen before, while Jake and Dowd combined for a couple of good scoring chances—and connected the second time.
• In his weekend notebook (behind a paywall),
Eric Duhatschek of The Athletic was spitballin' about whether more teams could get a boost from trading players with bad contracts with other teams in similar situations after the Phaneuf-for-Gaborik deal went down on Tuesday.
His suggestion was Loui Eriksson for Milan Lucic in Edmonton, given the Canucks' interest in acquiring Lucic before he signed with the Oilers.
That's a non-starter for me—despite what Jim Benning said last night on Hockey Night in Canada.
After his two-goal performance and second-star honours on Saturday night, is there any chance that the Bruins might be interested in reacquiring Eriksson? They've got David Backes, who's also in a similar situation. Backes is one year older than Eriksson, has been dealing with injury and health issues, and has 25 points this year to Eriksson's 22. Also with a $6 million cap hit, although his deal is one year shorter than Eriksson's, Backes is currently toiling on Boston's third line.
Eriksson and Backes both have no-move clauses, and I sincerely doubt that Jim Benning will make a move to get Eriksson off the books—at least, not anytime soon. And who knows? Maybe Saturday's game is the start of something good—at last—for Loui here in Vancouver.
A rumour with a bit more juice—Chris Tanev, now officially tradeable.
Elliotte Friedman doesn't throw up thoughts like this out of the blue—and Tanev has been linked to the Leafs for a good part of the season. He's from Toronto, and had great chemistry with Morgan Rielly when the two of them formed the top pairing on Canada's gold-medal winning team at the 2016 World Championship in Russia.
I know Leafs fans are worried about Tanev's fragility—and yes, he's on the shelf again right now—but he'd be a great fit for them if they're willing to buck up. Keep the asking price high and see if there's a deal to be made!
I'm also not surprised to see Alex Edler's name starting to pop up. Though he has always indicated that he'd never waive to leave Vancouver, he has just one year left on his deal after this season and has seen many of his longtime teammates move on over the last few years.
I imagine the Edler chatter starts with the fact that he has been playing some of his best hockey in years over the past couple of months. Maybe there is another team out there with enough Swedes on the roster that he'd be willing to consider making a move?
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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