Thursday November 12 - Vancouver Canucks at Ottawa Senators - 4:30 p.m. - Sportsnet Vancouver - TSN1040
Vancouver Canucks: 16 GP, 7-4-5, 19 points, first in Pacific Division
Ottawa Senators: 15 GP, 7-5-3, 17 points, third in Atlantic Division
The Vancouver Canucks are back in Canada, hitting the midpoint of their road trip with a game against the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night.
It's tough to get a read on the lines right now, as a couple of players appeared to be under the weather at Wednesday's skate and may not be available tonight:
Jake Virtanen did practice on Wednesday, but remains questionable after missing Tuesday's game against Columbus:
Also, Brandon Sutter is a question mark:
Derek Dorsett narrowly escaped a serious injury when he was cut just above his eye by Brandon Saad's skate in the first period of the Columbus game.
"In junior, I had a skate get me in the cheek but it wasn’t that close to the eye," Dorsett told
Iain MacIntyre of the
Vancouver Sun. "I’ve had sticks and stuff like that, but nothing like a skate blade. I haven’t watched it again and I don’t know if I want to. It was a scary moment. You vision goes blurry for a bit and I panicked for a little bit, but it started coming back really quickly. Dr. (Mike) Wilkinson and the training staff did a great job."
Dorsett returned before the end of the period, wearing a visor. It'll be interesting to see if he keeps the visor in place after his near miss.
No specific updates on the blue line, but this is an interesting tidbit:
Also, tonight's a big game for Ben Hutton, who grew up in the Ottawa area:
If you watch the Canucks' game-day road report, you'll see Hutton flash his famous smile when he talks about the guests he'll have on hand tonight, but you'll also notice he has moved past the perpetual ear-to-ear grin.
With eight assists in 16 games, Hutton is Vancouver's top-scoring defenseman and is settling nicely into the daily NHL grind. Should be good timing for his homecoming.
Ryan Miller is expected to be back in net after Jacob Markstrom earned the win on Tuesday in Columbus.
Miller has found himself at the centre of the discussion about reducing the size of goalie equipment—namechecked by TSN's Ray Ferraro because of his lean build.
Click here to read Miller's rebuttal. He spoke in detail on the topic to Jason Botchford of
The Province yesterday, breaking down his pants size and his past experiences with changes in goalie equipment.
The spark for this latest round of discussion on increasing scoring came from Toronto coach Mike Babcock's suggestion that the size of NHL nets should be increased—even though I'd argue that the Leafs' easiest route to more goals would be to add more talent to their team.
It's also funny that the Canucks aren't having scoring issues at all. Vancouver currently sits third in the league with 48 goals scored over 16 games—a tidy three goals a game.
On average, teams are scoring 2.67 goals a game this year, according to
this chart from Hockey Reference.
As you can see, that number is down slightly from 2.73 goals per game last season. For those who want to see changes made to the game, the key fact is that scoring hasn't been this low since 2003-04, the last year of the Dead Puck Era.
It seems a bit ironic to me that all this discussion comes on a day where goaltending expert Kevin Woodley has a feature story on
NHL.com that breaks down the latest technological advances in goalie skates and how they benefit the netminders. Goalies will continue to do whatever it takes to earn an advantage—not just against shooters, but also against each other. I suspect we may be in an era where the innovations in their equipment are progressing more quickly than the players who shoot on them.
One other quick Canucks note: sounds like Alex Burrows is not out of the woods yet regarding his trash talk towards Jordin Tootoo from last Sunday's game against New Jersey:
Now—the Senators.
The bright spot for Ottawa this season has been their high-scoring top six. With 13 points in 15 games, 26-year-old Kyle Turris of New Westminster is finally realizing his potential as a first-line center, and Bobby Ryan is also developing into the scoring powerhouse they hoped they were acquiring when he came over from the Anaheim Ducks during the summer of 2013. Add in super sophomores Mark Stone and Mike Hoffman and, of course, Norris Trophy-winning defenseman Erik Karlsson, and the Sens aren't lacking in firepower.
Ottawa has scored 47 goals this season—one less than Vancouver—but the Sens have also played one less game.
The trouble has come from trying to keep the puck out of the net. Ottawa ranks 27th defensively with 49 goals against, compared to 39 for the Canucks.
Special teams have also been a challenge for the Senators. Even with Karlsson, their power play ranks 19th at 17.4 percent, while their penalty kill is a grim 28th, with a 75 percent kill rate. Maybe that'll help kickstart the Canucks tonight with the man advantage.
Last year, the Canucks' visit to Ottawa was a wild one. On Remembrance Day 2014, the Canucks picked up the OT win thanks to Daniel Sedin's fourth goal of the season. Ottawa returned the favour with a 4-3 OT win of their own in Vancouver a month later, but it wasn't enough to save their then-coach's job. Paul MacLean was fired the next day, so this will be the Canucks' first time playing against a Dave Cameron-coached club.
It'll also be their first time facing the pride of White Rock, Andrew "The Hamburglar" Hammond, who's scheduled to start in goal. After his dazzling debut last season, Hammond is 1-0-2 this year, with a .926 save percentage and 2.55 goals-against average.
The game can be found on the Sportsnet Vancouver channel tonight due to football on the main Sportsnet channel.
Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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