Calgary Flames at Vancouver Canucks - Saturday January 18 - 7 p.m. - CBC
Vancouver Canucks 24-16-9 57 points fourth in Pacific Division Calgary Flames 16-26-6 38 points sixth in Pacific Division
It's Hockey Day in Canada! The Vancouver Canucks will see if they can remember how to play this great game when they return home to Rogers Arena to face the Calgary Flames on Saturday night.
For all their troubles, the Canucks do still have a marginally better record than the Flames over the last 10 games. Vancouver is 2-5-3 while Calgary is 2-8-0, though the Flames have been scoring machines relative to the Canucks. They scored twice in all three of their games this week—a win over Carolina and losses to Nashville and Winnipeg.
Karri Ramo will be starting in net for the Flames tonight. No word yet on the goalie for Vancouver, though I assume it'll be Eddie Lack again. All has gone eerily quiet on the Roberto Luongo-recovery front—should we be worried?
UPDATE: Apparently Torts is being coy about who starts tonight. Brad Ziemer takes this as a good sign:
Torts not naming starter tells me Luongo will be starting. #Canucks
— Brad Ziemer (@BradZiemer) January 18, 2014The Canucks didn't practise yesterday, so roster updates are just trickling out now.
Dan Murphy tweeted yesterday that he figures Henrik Sedin's about 50/50 after taking Martin Hanzal's cross-check to the ribs on Thursday.
Hearing #Canucks H. Sedin's iron man streak is in jeopardy. Questionable to play versus #Flames. 50/50 at best. He's come through before tho
— Dan Murphy (@sportsnetmurph) January 18, 2014Here's the latest from Torts this morning:
Torts confirms Burrows is in tonight. As is Kellen Lain. Henrik a game time decision. Booth will play. #Canucks
— Ann Schmaltz (@annschmaltz) January 18, 2014Henrik has played through a lot to keep his ironman streak alive and is already battling through a finger injury. He'd have to be in pretty rough shape to miss the game.
Has the streak become a distraction that's drawing Henrik and the team away from making the best long-term decisions for his health? That's a topic that can be debated. It doesn't really *mean* anything; maybe he should sit out and get the rest he needs rather than playing an ineffective game.
Will Alex Burrows be the player to snap the Canucks out of this terrible scoring funk that saw them score just one goal in their three road games this week? With his bad luck before his injury, you'd think he'd have a backlog of goals stored up in his stick, just waiting to be scored...
I suppose this poll could ask *when* the Canucks will score again, but I'll go with the slightly more cheerful version: who will be the next Vancouver player to light the lamp? Players are listed in order of production so far this season.
Feel free to chime in with your comments about when that goal might come—what part of tonight's game, or what day in the future...
First-time Olympian Dan Hamhuis will be Scott Oake's guest tonight on After Hours. Tweet in your questions to @ScottOake with the hashtage #afterhours,
Quick Hits:
- Did anybody catch Bob McKenzie on TSN talking about Dale Weise? I'm seeing some bubbles on Twitter from the last day or so that the Canucks sent a league-wide email saying he's available for a fifth to seventh-rounder. I wouldn't have a problem with that after his boneheaded plays against the Kings on Monday, though I'd worry we might a bit short on bodies right now to be tossing players aside.
- If you haven't seen it, there's a website called SportsClubStats that tracks teams' chances of making the playoffs, win the Stanley Cup, and other possible outcomes. They've currently got the Canucks pegged at 82.9 percent, which seems about right to me—for now. Something to keep an eye on if the losses continue to pile up. Click here to check it out.
- Responding to a thread from months ago—I finally had a chance to play Comfortably Numb at the Commodore last night!