Sunday March 24 - Columbus Blue Jackets 5 - Vancouver Canucks 0
Well, that de-escalated quickly.
As I walked to Rogers Arena in the sunshine on Saturday, I marvelled at the idea that the Vancouver Canucks were heading into a weekend of meaningful games, with slim-but-there playoff hopes still alive.
After dropping a competitive contest against Calgary on Saturday, the Canucks came out flat one night later against the desperate Columbus Blue Jackets and left the ice to a smattering of boos as they were shut out.
Not sure there's much to recommend this package from a Vancouver point of view but nevertheless, here are your highlights from Sunday's 5-0 loss.
After the weekend's action, the Canucks sit seven points out of the second wild-card spot that's currently held by Colorado. They've slipped to sixth in the Pacific Division, 13th in the Western Conference and 24th overall. Even
Sports Club Stats seems to recognize the futility of further scoreboard watching—they haven't updated their odds since the day after Vancouver's win over Ottawa last Wednesday.
There are a couple of other sources of similar data. According to
MoneyPuck, the Canucks' playoff odds now sit at 0.03 percent after their two weekend losses. Over at
The Athletic, Dom Luszczyszyn has 'em at 0.1 percent.
So—still not mathematically eliminated, but almost certainly not gonna happen.
Time to get back into the familiar territory of looking at draft lottery odds. If the season ended today, the Canucks would finish eighth from the bottom. They still could move up, but could also move down. They're currently two points ahead of Anaheim—their next opponent, on Tuesday—and three up on Buffalo and the Rangers. The Ducks have played one more game than Vancouver; the Sabres and Rangers have both played two less.
I just ran the
Tankathon draft lottery simulator. It only took me two tries to get the Canucks into the No. 1 slot!
As for Sunday's game—on a night where the Canucks failed to make a ripple on the scoreboard and Brock Boeser's league-high nine-game point streak ground to a halt, Luke Schenn established a franchise record in his 12th game in a Vancouver uniform.
I was hypnotized by his hitting right from the opening puck drop—five in the first, another five in the second. Just two in the third, but even that showed more engagement than 90 percent of his teammates, who were mostly watching the clock wind down. The Canucks were outshot 33-21 in the game and managed just four shots in a third period where the Blue Jackets scored twice on eight shots.
I felt bad for Thatcher Demko, who didn't get the same run support that he received when he made his NHL debut against the Blue Jackets in that wildly entertaining 5-4 overtime win this time last year. The Blue Jackets were picking corners all night, often shooting uncontested from prime positions.
As expected, Travis Green also made a few lineup changes up front after his team lost on Saturday, and with plenty of extra bodies on hand.
A few games in the press box did not do any favours for Derrick Pouliot or Nikolay Goldobin. Goldy wasn't on the ice for any goals against, but managed just two shot attempts and one giveaway in a generous 16:33 of ice time, including 3:32 on an ineffective power play. At five-on-five, he started the game with Adam Gaudette and Jake Virtanen, and also saw some ice time with Boeser and Elias Pettersson.
Pouliot finished up with a minus-one and recorded one giveaway. He was on the ice with Troy Stecher for Columbus' first goal near the end of the first period—the goal that gave the tight Blue Jackets some much-needed confidence and opened the floodgates for the rest of the game.
Sergei Bobrovsky hasn't had a great season but when he's good, he's very good. He didn't have much to do on Sunday—Bo Horvat did some buzzing around the net and led the Canucks with four shots on goal, but there wasn't much production from anybody else. Still, it must have felt good for Bobrovsky to earn the shutout in front of his old goalie coach, Ian Clark. And remarkably, that's his seventh clean sheet of the year—second only to Marc-Andre Fleury, who has eight.
It was nice to see Sven Baertschi back in the lineup for the Canucks after missing 23 games with his concussion symptoms. He played 16:48, including 4:41 on the power play. Rusty? Probably. He finished at minus-3, with two shot attempts, a takeaway and a hit.
As the homestand continues this week, the Canucks are taking another day off on Monday. Quinn Hughes skated twice over the weekend, so he should be inching closer to game action.
I'm also wondering if/when we'll see free-agent signing Josh Teves, who's also a lefty. I know he has studying to do, but we were expecting him to get game action at some point before the end of the year. Now that we're into garbage time, he should get an opportunity.
Speaking of college boys, two Canucks prospects will be skating in the 2019 Frozen Four tournament.
Tyler Madden's No. 2 seeded Northeastern will take on No. 3 Cornell in the East Regional bracket on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. in Providence, Rhode Island.
In the Northeast Regional, Jack Rathbone's No. 4 Harvard will face No. 1 UMass on Friday at noon PT in Manchester, New Hampshire.
It looks like both those games will be available to subscribers on TSN.ca.
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