Monday March 30 - Vancouver Canucks at St. Louis Blues - 5:00 p.m. - Sportsnet Pacific, TSN1040
Vancouver Canucks: 43-27-5, 91 points, second in Pacific Division St. Louis Blues: 46-22-7, 99 points, second in Central Division
For all the talk last season of the powerful Pacific Division, this year it's the Central where even the bad teams are pretty darn good.
Central Division teams currently hold down both wild card spots and even the division's last-place team, the Colorado Avalanche, has 82 points—25 more than the Pacific's sixth-place Edmonton and 28 more than last-place Arizona.
These strong teams represent Vancouver's next four opponents as the Canucks embark on their final road trip of the regular season.
It begins tonight in St. Louis, facing a Blues team that has been as inconsistent as the Canucks in recent weeks—3-2-2 in their last seven games. Their last game was a 4-2 loss to the red-hot Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night—their first game back at home after a six-game road trip.
There's still some room for the order of affairs to be shuffled in the Central before the end of the season—St. Louis sits three points behind Nashville, three up on Chicago and four up on hard-charging Minnesota—but the Blues don't need points nearly as much as the Canucks do right now. We'll see how that factors into the game.
It looks like Vancouver will take to the ice tonight with the same lineup that has been used in recent games. No reinforcements stepping in just yet:
Willie Desjardins was hoping to have Brad Richardson make road trip, didn't happen. Richardson and Zack Kassian in Vancouver. #Canucks
— JAY JANOWER (@DOUBLEJGLOBALBC) March 30, 2015The Canucks have gone 2-0 against the Blues so far this season—winning 4-1 on the road with Ryan Miller in net back in October, then taking a wild 6-5 shootout affair at Rogers Arena earlier this month.
We know that Brian Elliott will be starting for St. Louis. Tonight's game is the first part of a back-to-back for Vancouver, but Canucks.com suggests that Eddie Lack will get the call.
The Blues were missing T.J. Oshie in their last outing due to flu-like symptoms and Alex Steen was knocked out of Saturday's game after a knee-on-knee collision with Cody Goloubef, but the Blues' website suggests that both players may be available tonight.
When we talked about faceoffs the other day, one point that arose is that small changes can make big differences in the stats of a player or a team. It looks like the same is true of the power play.
After hovering in the bottom half of the league for most of the season, the Canucks now have power-play goals in five straight games and went two-for-three against Dallas on Saturday.
Just like that, the team that's ranked 13th in the NHL now boasts a power-play that's also ranked a respectable 13th. Power-play opportunities tend to diminish in quantity but increase in importance come playoff time, so this is a very good time for things to start clicking.
All year long, I've been impressed by how well Willie Desjardins has gotten the most out of his team. In addition to the stratospheric rise of Bo Horvat, we've seen many other players exceed expectations and play some of the best hockey of their careers. Now, even the power-play is starting to deliver.
A few days back, Harrison Mooney wrote that he thinks Willie hasn't made much noise in the conversation for the Jack Adams Awards as coach of the year because many people may not realize just what a good job he has done this season. They saw a tire fire last year and figured that any coach could step in and do better than what had been happening.
As good as he has been, I'd argue that Willie has a couple of other elements working against him.
First, he's still a rookie in this league. The Adams may often go to the coach who has engineered the biggest turnaround in a single season, but wins like Patrick Roy's last season, in his first year, are the exception rather than the rule. The Avs were also a much more spectacular case, going from the bottom of the Western Conference in 2012-13 all the way to the top of the Central. And Patrick Roy is just a little bit more of a brand name than Willie will ever be.
Second, the Canucks haven't *really* proven anything yet. In the big picture, Vancouver has gone about its business rather quietly this season—no big winning or losing streaks and certainly none of the drama that surrounded the team last year. Unless you follow this team regularly, the Canucks have probably flown under the radar for a lot of the NHL fanbase (and media) this season.
Willie's not a household name—and probably won't become one unless the Canucks make some sort of insane playoff run. I think he has lived up to his advanced billing this season, but I highly doubt he'll get any love for the Jack Adams.
My guess is that Peter Laviolette has the inside track on the award after the much more dramatic turnaround that he has engineered in Nashville.