Thursday April 10: Colorado Avalanche 4 - Vancouver Canucks 2
Thanks to an unlikely come-from-behind shootout win by the Winnipeg Jets over Boston on Thursday night, the Vancouver Canucks slid down to 24th place in the NHL standings with their loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night.
With two games to go, they could still slip below Carolina for a possible top-six position in the draft rankings. They'll finish no higher than 20th, so a top-10 pick in this summer's draft is virtually assured.
There's a strong possibility that the bottom four teams in the Western Conference at season's end will be the four teams from Canada. When you factor in Ottawa and Toronto, it's six Canadian teams in the league's bottom 10. A huge disappointment—and an awful blow to the CBC in the last year of its NHL contract. Without Canadian teams to drive playoff viewership, their ad revenues will likely drop significantly on top of Thursday's big announcement of cost-cutting and layoffs.
If there's a silver lining for the Canucks, we saw it on the ice last night at Rogers Arena. The Colorado Avalanche finished dead last in the Western Conference in 2012-13. With two games to go, they're now one point behind Anaheim for top spot—and play the Ducks in their last game of the year. Colorado has a chance to go from worst to first in just one season. Amazing.
There's something Vancouver can try to emulate...though Colorado spent four years out of the playoffs, accumulating all the young talent that's driving them today.
Apparently I'm not the only one who's unexcited about leading with last night's game highlights. Canucks.com only has clips of the Canucks' two goals, but NHL.com has a look at the whole game:
The score makes the game look worse than it was. The Canucks played a very good Colorado team evenly through 40 minutes, and got 20 shots through to Semyon Varlamov in the third period—an unexpected outburst given their tendencies this season.
The whole game really came down to two defensive mistakes by Vancouver: Nick Jensen was stripped of the puck by Paul Stastny while trying to make a play at the top of the offensive zone late in the first period, and Kevin Bieksa coughed up the puck to Jamie McGinn during a four-on-four in the third. He was able to feed Tyson Barrie, who made a big-league move around Alex Edler to fire his 13th goal of the year past Jacob Markstrom for the winner.
Think about that for a second: 22-year-old defenseman Tyson Barrie of Victoria, a third-round draft pick, has 13 goals this season. Not only do his 38 points top all Canuck defensemen, he has more goals than everyone but Kesler, Higgins and Daniel—tied with Zack Kassian.
The Avs are currently missing their first-rounder from 2009—Matt Duchene's out with an injury—but Nathan MacKinnon gave us a glimpse of why the 18-year-old is a virtual lock for the Calder Trophy with his strong play on Thursday night.
Coach Patrick Roy's getting a lot of the credit for the Avs' turnaround this season, but the team is deep with young talent who are developing according to expectations.
It'll be ironic if the Canucks' "almost-there" prospects develop into a similar core over the next couple of years, making Mike Gillis' scouting and drafting look much better than it does at the time of his firing.
One other note from the game. For the first time this season, the Canucks did not announce the game as a sellout. There were lots of empty seats, but that's been the norm all year. My guess is that it's part of a re-positioning from a marketing perspective—getting back to the idea that the team *needs* and actively covets support from the fans, rather than taking it for granted. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
Meet The New Boss
Click here to read a post from OmarCanuck over at VanCityBuzz, with quotes from Trevor Linden and Pat Quinn's appearances with Bill Good on CKNW on Thursday morning. Trev's been all over the media in the last 48 hours, but there's some juicy material here.
Linden, on Tortorella's deployment of the twins:
Was it a good idea to use the twins to block shots and kill penalties?
“It’s one of those things where I probably felt personally it was a misuse of their abilities, but I’d have to dig deeper into it.”
Good: “But you know they’ll do anything they’re asked to do.”
“Exactly, but I have to get the information. I’m not sure if John feels that was a mistake or not, I mean if he feels strongly about it… (trails off).”
Quinn is even less diplomatic, going so far as to compare Torts' approach to (gasp) Mike Keenan:
“To assess your team like you need a hammer – now we need the tough guy – well it’s like bringing Mike Keenan in… to pull the whip out and play the tough guy with them didn’t seem the right way to approach this group of players.”
I'm sure Linden will be involved in Pat Quinn's Ring of Honour ceremony at the Calgary game on Sunday. I wonder if there will be any type of formal announcement about a position for Quinn within the new regime. It certainly sounds like both would like to see it happen:
Good to Linden: “Will you use Pat in any formal way?”
“I’ll definitely talk to him about perhaps being involved or supporting me in some way.”
Good to Quinn: “On Twitter I’m getting the question asked of Pat if he’ll accept if offered a position with the Canucks.”
“I certainly would with Trevor in there for sure. I don’t know what Trevor has in mind. He has a plan, and if I could be of assistance to the Canucks, I’d be there in a heartbeat.”
I'll leave you with this question for today: is there room in the organization for Quinn in some sort of Senior Advisor capacity, Linden as President, then a General Manager below that?
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