Sunday December 20 - Florida Panthers 5 - Vancouver Canucks 4 (S/O)
The Vancouver Canucks collected the third point of their road trip and survived another 3-on-3 overtime, but fell to the Florida Panthers in the shootout on Sunday afternoon in Sunrise.
Here are your highlights:
It's surreal to see Roberto Luongo make a big around-the-world save with his glove to give his team a shootout win, but full value to the Panthers for Aleksander Barkov's nifty game-winning goal.
That move would have beat just about any goalie, so I'm not assigning any fault to Jacob Markstrom, who was required to step in after Ryan Miller injured himself on the Panthers' first shootout attempt—a goal by Brandon Pirri.
Here's what we know so far about Miller's status:
The way he winced when he went down on the Pirri goal, I thought Miller had pulled a groin muscle. It's not hard to imagine that he was pretty gassed by the end of Sunday's game—he faced 40 shots and was under siege, as usual, for most of the five-minute 3-on-3 overtime period.
They're hanging on by their fingernails, but at least the Canucks are now finding ways to get through 3-on-3. Next step, finding ways to actually get shots on net—they also managed just one shot in overtime on Friday in Detroit.
I'm happy to hear that Markstrom will get the nod on Tuesday—and that Miller shouldn't be out long term. Miller, 35, is tied with Corey Crawford (30), Cory Schneider (29) and Pekka Rinne (33) for most games started so far this season—28—and has climbed the ranks of minutes played. Earlier in the week, he was fifth but has now worked his way back up to third place, behind only Rinne and Schneider.
If the Canucks want a halfway-productive Miller available for the second half of the season, they have to get him some rest!
Sunday was another rough outing for the Canucks' special teams. The power play went 0-for-2 and is now in a five-game drought—there hasn't been a power-play goal on this road trip. Meanwhile, the penalty killing was 2-for-4 after a couple of solid outings in Philadelphia and Detroit. Once again, positioning was an issue as the penalty killers overloaded one side of the ice in the first period, leaving none other than Jaromir Jagr wide open for the goal that moves him into sole possession of fourth place on the NHL's all-time scoring list.
To summarize: the Canucks are 14th in scoring, 26th in goals against, 23rd on the power play, 22nd on the penalty kill and are missing their top two centers, two regular defensemen and now possibly their starting goaltender due to injury. And with their single point on Sunday, they snuck back into third place in the Pacific Division. If the playoffs started today, the Canucks would face the up-and-down San Jose Sharks in the first round.
Sorry, Tank Nation. The playoff dream is still alive. And the schedule starts to get a lot friendlier after Tuesday's game—the Canucks will play just seven games over the following three weeks—all at home.
They could end up dropping in the standings as their Pacific Division foes make up some of their games-in-hand, but the team should finally get a chance to get some rest, get healthier, and get some practice time where the coaches can work on trouble spots like special teams and 3-on-3.
The team did practice today in Tampa.
Sounds like Henrik's close to being ready to come back in for Tuesday's game:
World Juniors Check-In
Jake Virtanen picked up a greasy goal in Team Canada's first World Junior Championship tune-up game against Belarus on Saturday.
In Canada's 1-0 win over the Czech Republic on Sunday, Virtanen took a blindside hit to the head:
Virtanen played on the second line, on the right side, against Belarus, then was shifted to a fourth-line left wing spot against the Czechs. The final cuts have been made and the boys are enjoying a day off today in Helsinki. They'll play their final pre-tournament game against Sweden on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Brock Boeser and Team USA arrived in Finland on Sunday morning. They'll play the Finns in an exhibition game on Tuesday.
The Canucks have one other prospect to watch in the tournament—2015 sixth-rounder Lukas Jasek, with the Czech team. It'll also be interesting to keep an eye on Gustav Forsling, the fifth-round pick from 2014 who was named an all-star at last year's World Junior tournament, then was traded to Chicago less than a month later in exchange for the now-departed Adam Clendening. Forsling will be back for his second tournament with the Swedish team.
Ryan Kennedy of
The Hockey News is picking the Swedes to win this year's tournament, in part because of the contribution he's expecting from Forsling, as well as William Nylander.
Kennedy names both Nylander and Forsling to his pre-tournament "first team" of World Junior all-stars. On the right side of that first team? Jake Virtanen.
I'm looking forward to seeing Virtanen and Boeser go head-to-head when Canada plays Team USA to kick things off on Boxing Day.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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