Monday January 27 - Vancouver Canucks 3 - St. Louis Blues 1
Vancouver Canucks fans can thank Thatcher Demko and J.T. Miller for another two points as their team returned from the All-Star Break by squeaking out a win over the defending Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues on Monday at Rogers Arena.
Here are your highlights:
Not only have the Canucks finished out their season series against the best team in the Western Conference by taking five of a possible six points off the Blues with a 2-0-1 record, but Monday's game also marked the first time all season that St. Louis lost in regulation after scoring the first goal. Impressive!
To be fair, it should also be noted that the Blues have been struggling a bit on the road lately. Since New Year's Eve, they've gone 4-4-2 overall in their last 10 games — 4-0-1 during a mid-month homestand at Enterprise Center, sandwiched between losses in Arizona and Colorado and an OTL in Vegas, then another loss in Colorado just before the All-Star break.
St. Louis still has a six-point cushion atop the Western Conference but when a team plays .500 hockey, competitors start catching up. Colorado sits second in the conference with 62 points. What's interesting is that, after Monday's win, the Canucks are now tied with Dallas for third in the conference with 60 points — and that the next four teams are that well-documented Pacific group with 57.
The California teams may be out of the mix this year, but the rest of the Pacific has the edge over a good chunk of the Central at the moment...
This week's NHL schedule is strange, coming out of All Star and with Super Bowl on tap this weekend. There are just two games on the Tuesday schedule and only one with Western Conference implications, as the Blues continue their road trip in Calgary.
The Canucks outshot St. Louis 10-9 in the first period on Monday — the only period that they finished with a shot advantage — but to my eye, they didn't look like they had the edge in play.
The NHL's new GameFlow tool bears this out. If you haven't taken a look yet, open the NHL app on your phone, then click on last night's game and go to GameCentre, then GameFlow.
The tool offers a visualization of which team is controlling play, based on shot attempts and possession. I wrote about it when it was first released in December — you can
Click Here if you'd like to learn more about how it was developed and how it works.
Looking at the flow of Monday's game, the Blues appeared to control play right from puck drop, all the way through about the first 17 minutes of the opening frame. Despite the fact that Travis Green deployed his lines the same way he has for the last several games, the Canucks looked sloppy on their changes — and got dinged for a Too Many Men penalty midway through the first. And Quinn Hughes lost both the puck and his stick to David Perron as Zach Sanford was set up for the game's opening goal, just 3:06 into the first.
In the second, the Blues doubled the Canucks on the shot clock, 16-8. But it was J.T. Miller who rippled the twine twice, for his 18th and 19th goals of the year.
Here's Jake Virtanen digging out the puck from along the boards to help set up Miller in the slot.
And here's Jake with the cross-ice pass for the one-timer.
With 48 points, Miller is already at the second-best offensive season of his career, and should surpass his career highs of 22 goals and 56 points from 2016-17 with the Rangers. He also went 8-for-11 in the faceoff circle on Monday, while Jay Beagle went 9-for-14 and Bo Horvat was 14-for-20.
Claude Giroux had better watch his back. He remains atop the NHL's faceoff standings with a 59.7 percent win rate, but Miller's now right behind him at 59.6 and Beagle's third at 59.4.
It's terrific to see Virtanen realizing the potential that earned him the sixth spot on NHL Central Scouting's North Ameican draft rankings in 2014, but it's bittersweet that it is coming at the expense of first-line ice time for Brock Boeser, who's now pointless in his last five games — the longest drought of his NHL career. His ice time has also been dwindling. He played a season-low 13:40 on Monday and had just one shot, although he did get a full 4:00 of power-play time, more than any other Vancouver player.
I'm still going to try not to fuss about this. There will be bumps in the road going forward, and I'm sure Green won't hesitate to reunite the Lotto Line as soon as scoring dries up. For now, Virtanen is clicking with Miller and Pettersson — let's ride the wave.
I hope that Thatcher Demko's performances on either side of the All-Star Break are helping to convince fans that he has what it takes to be a legitimate No. 1 NHL goaltender — although I also hope NHL Seattle isn't watching too closely!
There have been a few rough patches along the way, but it's a positive that the Canucks have given Demko eight home starts out of 25 games so far at Rogers Arena this season — and that after giving up just one goal against the Sharks last week and the Blues last night, he's now 7-0-1 for the season on home ice. His goals-against average took a hit in Florida during the recent road trip but is now back down to 2.93, his .909 save percentage is solid, and his .750 quality start percentage is right up there — tied for second with Washington's Ilya Samsonov among goalies with more than 10 starts, with only Darcy Kuemper's .760 with Arizona higher.
Demko's best save on Monday came at a crucial point, late in the third — and seemed so implausible that the fans at the arena had to wait to see a replay before applauding him, and the officials also needed video confirmation that the puck really didn't cross the goal line.
And as if the 37-26 shot differential in favour of St. Louis wasn't lopsided enough — add on 23 blocked shots for Vancouver, with three each from Jay Beagle, Alex Edler, Oscar Fantenberg — and Miller, working hard at both ends of the ice.
All told, St. Louis finished the night with 74 shot attempts — 37 on goal, 23 blocked and 14 missed. Vancouver had just 51 — 26 on goal, 16 blocked and 9 missed. So it wasn't exactly a textbook win, but it was their ninth-straight at home, matching the franchise's second-best home winning streak of all time.
That number will now stay intact for the better part of two weeks, as the team hits the road for five games in nine nights. It's their second-last trip of the year to the Eastern Time Zone, kicking off in San Jose on Wednesday before back-to-back dates with the Islanders on Saturday and Hurricanes on Sunday, then finishing up with Boston on Tuesday and Minnesota on Thursday.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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