Saturday January 6 - Vancouver Canucks at Toronto Maple Leafs - 4 p.m. - CBC, Sportsnet, Sportsnet 650
Vancouver Canucks: 40 GP, 16-19-5, 37 pts, seventh in Pacific Division
Toronto Maple Leafs: 42 GP, 24-16-2, 50 pts, third in Atlantic Division
After a three-day break, the Vancouver Canucks get back to work on Saturday at the Air Canada Centre, looking to sweep their season series against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
It seems like way more than five weeks ago that the Canucks played one of their best games of the year, coming out of the gate with 17 shots and two goals in the first period on their way to a 2-1 win over the Leafs at Rogers Arena. Since that time, the Canucks have gone 3-9-1—of course, due in no small part to the absence of Bo Horvat for 12 of those 13 games. Vancouver's seven points over that stretch is tied with Arizona for the worst in the league.
For their part, the Leafs have gone 7-6-1 since the last time they saw the Canucks—tied for 20th over that stretch with Edmonton, Chicago and Calgary, but good enough to give themselves a nine-point cushion in an Atlantic Division playoff race that already looks all-but-set with Tampa Bay, Boston and Toronto as the teams headed for postseason play.
Here are some more head-to-head numbers on how these two teams have fared over the last five weeks:
Goals For: Toronto 37 (T18th), Vancouver 31 (T28th)
Goals Against: Toronto 38 (T13th), Vancouver 55 (30th)
Power Play: Toronto 18.9 percent (T13th), Vancouver 20.5 percent (8th)
Penalty Kill: Toronto 87 percent (10th), Vancouver 72.3 percent (28th)
Leading Scorer: Toronto - Mitch Marner (3-11-14), Vancouver - Brock Boeser (8-5-13)
Some unexpected storylines emerge from those stats:
• Despite all the talk of Toronto's need to shore up its defense, the Leafs have actually been pretty reasonable defensively compared to the Canucks—both in terms of overall goals against and penalty killing.
• For all the heat he took early in the season, sophomore Mitch Marner appears to have found his game—he has been putting up points while the overall Leafs offense has run rather cold. He's expected to skate on Toronto's third line tonight, with James van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak.
• Though the Canucks' power play production looks good, that production all happened awhile ago. Vancouver's last goal with the man advantage came nearly a week before Christmas—Brock Boeser's 18th of the year, in the third period against Montreal back on December 19.
Coming into tonight's game, the consistent Boeser is on a two-game pointless streak after his four-point explosion against Chicago on December 28. He didn't get on the scoresheet against the Leafs back in December but if history is any indication, he should do so tonight.
Defenseman Travis Dermott will be making his NHL debut tonight for Toronto. The 21-year-old native of Newmarket, Ontario, was chosen in the second round by the Leafs in 2015 and has spent the last season-and-a-half with the Marlies in the AHL. The Leafs are trying to fill a hole on the blue line created by the absence of Nikita Zaitsev, who's dealing with a lower-body injury.
As for the Canucks, coach Travis Green is playing it close to the vest as far as his lineup goes.
This'll be the first time for Green as a coach at Air Canada Centre. He retired as a Leaf after playing 24 games during the 2006-07 season, and also spent two years in Toronto earlier in his career, collecting 23 goals and 58 points in 157 games playing for Pat Quinn between 2001 and 2003.
The ACC is also the site of fond World Junior memories for Jake Virtanen, who won gold there with Canada in 2015. This time around, he had to settle for winning a few bucks from a couple of his Swedish teammates:
Of course, yesterday's excellent gold-medal game at the 2018 World Juniors ended with a 3-1 win for Canada over Sweden.
Jonah Gadjovich got his gold medal...
...though his role in the gold-medal game was pretty small. He played just 4:21 in the game—the lowest of any Canadian—and his only entry on the stat sheet was a first-period holding penalty—a weak call, but the only penalty of the night for the Canadians.
Canada's discipline could be part of the reason why silver medallist Elias Peterson was also relatively quiet. He played 15:06, with both his shots on goal coming in the first period, and finished the night with a minus-two—on the ice for Dillon Dube's opening goal in the second period and Alex Formenton's empty-netter.
Like most of his teammates, Pettersson seemed crushed after the defeat.
Since he did play in the first three games of the tournament, Will Lockwood also received a bronze medal after Team USA's 9-3 win over the Czech Republic on Friday.
Nice that he got a piece of hardware, at least. Lockwood's outlook is not good following the apparent shoulder injury that he suffered in the outdoor game.
“We’ll reevaluate him when he gets back in (from World Juniors),” Lockwood's college coach Mel Pearson told
told Jacob Shames of The Michigan Daily. “It’s a possibility he could be out for the year, but it’s a possibility he could come back. But he’s going to miss a few weeks for sure.”
Don't forget, tonight's game is an early start—and the first of three 4 p.m. puck drops over the next four nights, as the Canucks will go on to face Montreal on Sunday, then Washington on Tuesday.
Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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