Vancouver Canucks Game Day: Mar 18 at Edmonton Oilers, Awards for Prospects (canucks)

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Vancouver Canucks Game Day: Mar 18 at Edmonton Oilers, Awards for Prospects

By Carol Schram

Mar 18, 2016 • 2:43 pm

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Friday March 18 - Vancouver Canucks at Edmonton Oilers - 6 p.m. - Sportsnet Pacific, TSN1040

Vancouver Canucks: 69 GP, 27-30-12, 66 pts, fifth in Pacific Division Edmonton Oilers: 73 GP, 28-38-7, 63 pts, seventh in Pacific Division

The Vancouver Canucks will play the first of their three remaining games against the Edmonton Oilers on Friday night at Rexall Place. Given that just three points separate the two teams, those three games will go a long way in determining where the Canucks will land in the final year-end standings.

Many Canucks fans hope to boost their team's draft lottery odds with a low finish. The Oilers have shown you don't need to end up dead last in order to pick first overall—they've turned the trick four times in the last six years despite finishing 30th just twice—when they drafted Taylor Hall in 2009-10 and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in 2010-11. The Oilers finished 29th in 2011-12 when they chose Nail Yakupov and 28th last season when they acquired Connor McDavid.

The Oilers are coming into tonight's game after scoring four power-play goals in a solid 6-4 win on Wednesday against one of the best teams in the league, the St. Louis Blues. Their ace in the hole as far as maintaining their high draft lottery odds is the number of games they have played. Going into their 74th game tonight, they have already burned through more of their schedule than any other team in the league.

The Oilers could also be icing as many as three ex-Canucks tonight, all of who would be playing their first games in the blue and orange against their former teammates.

Zack Kassian has become a regular with the Oilers since joining the team in January, though he often plays limited minutes. Here's coach Todd McLellan's current assessment of Kassian, who is 3-4-7 and a minus-seven in 27 games with Edmonton:

Meanwhile, Adam Cracknell is getting warm greetings from his old teammates.

Cracknell has appeared in six games since joining the Oilers and has been scratched three times, including the last two games against Nashville and St. Louis, so don't hold your breath to see him in the lineup tonight.

We will, however, probably see another ex-Canuck with the same initials. Defenseman Adam Clendening has slowly worked his way out of the press box since being claimed on waivers by the Oilers in late January. He has played in 11 of Edmonton's last 12 games and is 0-3-3 and a plus-one in 14 games total as an Oiler.

Clendening was not in the lineup for Pittsburgh when the Canucks played the Penguins earlier in the season and he didn't get into a game at all during his brief stop in Anaheim.

Tonight will mark his first game against his old Vancouver teammates—but look at how much tonight's roster will differ from when Clendening and Kassian were here just one year ago.

All new—at forward, Alex Grenier, Brendan Gaunce, Jake Virtanen, Sven Baertschi, Emerson Etem and Jared McCann. On defense, there's Ben Hutton, Matt Bartkowski, Andrey Pedan and Nikita Tryamkin. Add in Jacob Markstrom, who gets the nod in net tonight, and that's 11 of 20 roster spots taken up by players that Clendening and Kassian didn't play with last year.

One of the Russians could get scratched on the blue line tonight, though. Alex Biega is expected to be back in the lineup; he played a whopping seven games with the Canucks last year. With back-to-back games this weekend, I could see the logic in holding Tryamkin out for at least one of these contests and trying to rotate three pairings more consistently than Willie was able to do on Wednesday against Colorado.

The news is not so good for Jannik Hansen, who was hoping to return from his rib injury this weekend.

The morning skate at Rexall today is an optional, so we'll have to wait till gametime to see exactly how Willie will deploy his troops tonight. Benning Speaks at GM Meetings

Away from the team this week at the general managers' meetings in Florida, Jim Benning sat down with a couple of national writers to talk about the Canucks.

Click here for Josh Cooper's piece for Yahoo's Puck Daddy, where the most interesting quote might be his praise for coach Willie Desjardins.

“He’s been excellent. He’s got a good attitude every day,… Benning said. “He expects a lot out of himself and all of his players.…

Craig Custance of ESPN tried to get a read on whether the Canucks would be pursuing Milan Lucic or Loui Eriksson as unrestricted free agents in the offseason. Instead, he got this:

Benning's not usually very cagey about his future plans. I wouldn't say this is definitive proof that he's not planning to go after a big-money UFA but in this case, it doesn't sound like it's at the front of his mind.

Thatcher Demko, Brock Boeser Win Awards

To wrap up—two more positive announcements for the Canucks' star NCAA prospects on Thursday:

Demko shares the award with Kevin Boyle of Massachusetts-Lowell.

Also...

Boeser also picked up the NCHC's first-ever Three Stars Award.

The NCAA playoffs resume today. Boeser's North Dakota team takes on Minnesota Duluth as part of the NCHC Frozen Faceoff, while Demko's Boston College team takes on Northeastern today for a shot at the Hockey East championship.

For all the success that Demko and Boeser are having, I found this interesting:

It feels to me like the Canucks should be higher than 11th with these two blue-chippers in the pipeline—but I bet 11th is the highest that this team has ranked for its prospects in a long, long time!

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