Thursday March 12 - Vancouver Canucks vs. Los Angeles Kings - 7:00 p.m. - Sportsnet Pacific, TSN1040
Vancouver Canucks: 38-24-4, 80 points, second in Pacific Division
Los Angeles Kings: 32-21-13, 77 points, fourth in Pacific Division
It's make-or-break time. The Vancouver Canucks have a three point lead over the Los Angeles Kings for a playoff spot as they line up for their first of three meetings against the defending Stanley Cup champions over the last month of the regular season.
In many ways, this is a playoff series of its own. If either team can win all three games, that could make the difference to who plays on and who goes golfing—though one other option is starting to arise.
The Kings are now just one point behind the Winnipeg Jets for the final wild card spot. There's still a chance that the Jets will falter and one of the Pacific Division teams will sneak into their position.
Winnipeg plays in Florida tonight, where the goaltending situation is still a mess. It sounds like Roberto Luongo's close to returning, but he's not there yet.
After practice yesterday, Willie Desjardins talked about how the Kings are able to raise their game when it matters.
He shows Los Angeles a lot of respect, which I think is the right way to approach the game, but it is interesting to note that the Kings and Canucks actually have identical records over the last 10 games: 6-3-1. They also share identical goal differentials of plus-10.
Ronalds Kenins' legion of fans will be thrilled to know that he is expected to rotate back into the lineup tonight, in place of Brandon McMillan. In the clip above, Willie is careful to say that he didn't think Kenins was "awful" before he was scratched for two games, but that he wants him to get back to the simpler style he employed when he was first called up by Vancouver.
The desperate Kings will almost certainly have their physical game dialled up to 11 tonight, so Kenins' banging and crashing could help to make a difference.
Defenseman Alec Martinez and forward Tanner Pearson remain sidelined with injuries for the Kings, while the Canucks will once again be without Yannick Weber and Chris Higgins, as well as Brad Richardson, Kevin Bieksa and Ryan Miller.
Playing very well, Eddie Lack is expected to get his third-straight start.
The sometimes-inconsistent Jonathan Quick is in the midst of another one of his hot stretches as well—5-1-0 in his last six games with a save percentage of .955.
I couldn't decide, last night, whether or not I was cheering for the Calgary Flames after they rebounded from an early 2-0 deficit to beat Anaheim 6-3. It's always nice to see a team lay the boots to the Ducks, and if I had my choice, I'd love to see the Canucks play Calgary in the first round, as the standings are currently aligned.
I don't want the Flames playing so well that they put our playoff spot in jeopardy, but after the season they've had, I'd much rather see them in the postseason than the Kings or Sharks.
Last night's win pulls Calgary two points ahead of the Kings, and just one point behind the Canucks, who will play their game-in-hand tonight. The Flames host Toronto on Friday night, before the Leafs arrive here in Vancouver, then head to Denver to take on the Avalanche on Saturday.
Sharp Shooters
As I was researching another story last night, I came across a surprising statistic. Four Vancouver Canucks are listed among the NHL's top 30
in shooting percentage.
The first eight spots are taken up with players who have seen very limited game action, but our Canucks are all quite legitimate.
Henrik Sedin leads the way in 11th place at 19.7 percent accuracy, Zack Kassian is 13th at 18.9, Bo Horvat is 20th at 17.7 and Linden Vey is 22nd at 17.6.
The fancy-statters often use shooting percentage as a sign of over-performance—that a player is lucky if a high percentage of his shots are going in the net, and will eventually regress closer to his career average.
Obviously, we don't have a big enough sample size yet to judge whether Bo Horvat is lucky or good—though he sure seems to be good. Same with Linden Vey, really. He didn't score at all with the Kings last season, so all of his NHL goals have come during this year's campaign.
Henrik's career average is 13.3 percent, though he shot 20.5 percent in his second NHL season, when he scored 16 goals.
Kassian's career average is 14.2 percent—lower than this year, but still pretty good, considering all the heat he takes.
As for Vancouver's official sniper, Radim Vrbata? His percentage is 12.2, well above his career average of 9.5 percent. He leads the Canucks and is 20th in the NHL with 205 shots taken, so I guess his philosophy skews a little closer to Wayne Gretzky's old adage that "you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take."
We're always on Henrik to shoot more, and his 76 shots so far this season are on the low side, even for him. Still, it's nice to know that this season, we have multiple players who are having good success at turning shots into goals.
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