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Vancouver Canucks look to end road trip on a high as Red Wings make tweaks |
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Tuesday October 22 - Vancouver Canucks at Detroit Red Wings - 4:30 p.m. - Sportsnet 360, CityTV, Sportsnet 650
Vancouver Canucks: 8 GP, 5-3-0, 10 pts, fifth in Pacific Division
Detroit Red Wings: 8 GP, 3-5-0, 6 pts, seventh in Atlantic Division
Exactly one week after beating the Detroit Red Wings 5-1 at Rogers Arena, the Vancouver Canucks will look to wrap up their four-game road trip on a winning note when they visit Little Caesars Arena on Tuesday.
The Canucks are 2-1-0 on the trip so far, after a shootout win in St. Louis, a shutout loss in New Jersey and a regulation win over the New York Rangers. The Wings are now on a four-game losing streak. After falling in Vancouver last Tuesday, they dropped a 5-1 decision in Calgary, then a 2-1 game in Edmonton. Yes, that means they only scored three goals in an entire week.
The Wings made several roster moves ahead of Tuesday's game:
• Most relevant to Canucks fans — Alex Biega was re-assigned to Grand Rapids of the AHL. Biega played in Vancouver and Calgary last week, averaging 15:52 of ice time, but was scratched against Edmonton. He was a minus-one in the two games, with five shots on goal.
• Also, forward Adam Erne has been placed on injured reserve. After scuffling with Tyler Myers in Vancouver last week, he missed Thursday's game in Calgary with what was called an upper-body injury, then played 9:03 against Edmonton.
• The Wings also activated veteran defenseman Jonathan Ericsson from IR, where he has been recovering from a lower-body injury since the beginning of the season. Then, they placed him on waivers. The 35-year-old is in the last year of a six-year contract that pays him $4.25 million this season, but Steve Yzerman is taking the bold step of leaning on his younger defense corps.
• Finally, the Wings called up forward Evgeny Svechnikov. The older brother of the Hurricanes' Andrei Svechnikov, 22-year-old Evgeny was a first-round pick by Detroit in 2015, but has struggled with injuries. He missed all of last season after undergoing knee surgery following a preseason injury. Like his brother, Evgeny is a big body at 6'3" and 212 pounds. He has played 16 NHL games in his career to this point, and has four points in three games with Grand Rapids so far this season.
Here's how the Wings skated at practice on Monday.
They took an optional morning skate on Tuesday, so there could still be some lineup tweaks against the Canucks — including a possible return to action for defenseman Dennis Cholowski after he missed last week's game against Edmonton with an undisclosed injury.
Jeff Blashill also experimented with breaking up his big line of Bertuzzi, Larkin and Mantha last week in an attempt to jumpstart his offense, but it looks like they'll be back together against Vancouver.
After facing Jonathan Bernier last week in Vancouver, it looks like the Canucks will see Jimmy Howard in the Detroit net on Tuesday. Howard, now 35, is 1-3-0 this season with a 3.81 GAA and .898 save percentage.
As for the Canucks, they stayed off the ice on Monday after a busy weekend, and took a full morning skate in Detroit on Tuesday.
Travis Green's lineup is unchanged, including a second game for Jake Virtanen on Bo Horvat's wing after a solid performance in that spot at MSG on Sunday. After playing just 8:56 on Saturday in New Jersey, Virtanen's ice time jumped to a season-high 13:59 against the Rangers.
After his outstanding performance on Sunday, Jacob Markstrom is expected to be back in the starter's net.
As well as Markstrom has played, check out Thatcher Demko's spots on these goaltending graph, when his quality of competition from last week is taken into account.
Good for Anders Nilsson, too, hanging in there in Ottawa.
The Canucks' new identity as a fast team that drives possession and is fun to watch is starting to get noticed outside Vancouver. What is going on??
That season-high 43-shot performance on Sunday probably has more to do with the Rangers than it does with the Canucks — New York currently leads the league with an average of 36.8 shots against per game, while Vancouver ranks 17th so far with 31 shots for. The sample size is still small, but that is a small improvement on last season, when they finished 24th overall at 29.7.
Last season, Vancouver was tied for 13th-most shots against at 31.7. So far this year, that number has dropped slightly to 31.4, which moves them to 17th.
In addition to their second-ranked penalty kill, which currently sits at 92.6 percent, Vancouver also ranks second as a team in faceoff percentage, winning 54.6 percent of their draws.
After taking more faceoffs than anybody last season, Bo Horvat currently ranks ninth in the NHL so far this year, but sits eighth in efficiency among players who have taken more than 75 draws this year with a very impressive win rate of 59.9 percent. He's also 26-4 on the power play for an 86.7 percent win rate. That's a great way to start with the man advantage. One would think that should start turning into goals sooner rather than later.
Jay Beagle's even higher. He ranks third at 65 percent overall and on the penalty kill, he's 14-6 for 70 percent.
So far, the Canucks are coming out on the positive end of the penalty differential. They've had 33 power-play opportunities this season, which ties them for fifth in the league — and is probably even more impressive when you consider that they have games in hand on most teams. Meanwhile, they've been shorthanded just 27 times, which ties them for 18th overall.
Of course, the Canucks' games in hand hurt them in terms of their overall position in the standings. They are one of eight Western Conference teams to have reached double digits so far this season — and have played fewer games than any of the other seven clubs. But when you look at points per game, Vancouver's five wins in eight games have earned them 62.5 percent of the points available so far. That ties them for 11th in the league, with the New York Islanders, and ranks them fifth in the Western Conference.
A reminder, though — it's early. Last season, the Canucks also started 5-3-0 — despite having lost Elias Pettersson and Jay Beagle to injury in Game 5. With Petey still sidelined and Brock Boeser dealing with his groin issue, the wheels fell off the wagon in Vegas in Game 10 last season. The team gutted out a 3-2 shootout win, but Alex Edler was injured in the first period, Sven Baertschi in the second and Chris Tanev in the third.
Knock on wood, the Canucks have been uncharacteristically healthy so far this season. Let's see how long they can stay that way...
Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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