The Vancouver Canucks are back on the ice at Rogers Arena this morning, preparing for a quick road trip that will see them playing back-to-back games in Denver on Tuesday and Glendale on Wednesday.
As the roar gets louder over Willie Desjardins' stubborn consistency when it comes to how he deploys his players, there's a tweak at forward today!
This is a throwback to early in the season, where the kids showed some chemistry together:
If Radim Vrbata has been holding onto his spot on the second line as part of an attempt to showcase him for a trade-deadline deal, his stock just dropped.
After leading the Canucks with 31 goals last season, Vrbata has just 11 goals and 22 points this year. He has scored just once in the last 18 games—a meaningless goal in Vancouver's 4-1 loss to Washington on January 14. Even as his linemates Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi were starting to find the net, Vrbata collected just two assists and was a minus-six in the last eight games.
One other note—though for me it's too little, too late.
Given that the team is playing back-to-back games on the road, it's hardly laudatory that Willie's finally giving Markstrom his first start in nearly three weeks. And given all the promotional energy that has been put into showcasing Ryan Miller's retro gear for Saturday's game against the Maple Leafs, it'll take a miracle for Markstrom to get into that game...
The Avalanche will be an interesting opponent on Tuesday. This will be the first meeting of the year for the two teams and the only one in Denver. The Canucks will host Patrick Roy's team on Feb. 21 and Mar. 16 at Rogers Arena.
After a tough start to their season, Colorado has gone on enough of a run to get back into wild-card contention in the Western Conference, but the team has been plagued by inconsistency. The Avs won five straight games in mid-December and four in a row in late January, but are 0-2-1 out of the All-Star break.
The vibe in their hometown should be beyond giddy tomorrow, though...
Maybe the Canucks will be able to draw some inspiration from seeing a city rally around its championship team? We do know that they'll have some special guests along for the journey.
Speaking of Hamhuis, his trade stock is increasing now that he's back in the lineup. And I think I figured out a carrot that might convince him to waive his no-trade clause!
Writing
this piece for Bleacher Report yesterday about the odds of high-profile players being moved at the trade deadline, I realized that if Hamhuis does get dealt to a Stanley Cup favourite like Washington, he'd have a chance to become just the 10th Canadian and 27th player to join the elite
Triple Gold Club.
Hamhuis already has a gold medal from the 2014 Olympics in Sochi and two World Championship golds—from Russia in 2007 and from Prague last spring. If he could add a Stanley Cup, he'd join Chris Pronger and Rob Blake as the only Canadian defencemen to win all three titles.
That's a pretty thrilling prospect, in my book. D'you think it'd be enough to help convince him to waive—then maybe pull an Antoine Vermette and rejoin the Canucks again in the offseason as the steady veteran presence helping to mentor a young blue line?
A number of Canucks alumni are already on the elite Triple Gold list—though (obviously) Igor Larionov, Alex Mogilny, Jiri Slegr and Mikael Samuelsson all won their Stanley Cups elsewhere. If Hamhuis pulled it off, he'd become the second B.C.-born player to join the group, after Joe Sakic.
If you're embracing the #TankNation mentality, you may also want to catch Bob McKenzie's midseason draft ranking show. He'll offer more analysis on this year's top picks on TSN at 4 p.m. PT today.
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