The Vancouver Canucks host the Calgary Flames on Tuesday evening and will attempt to bounce back from Saturday’s thorough mauling on home ice against the Edmonton Oilers.
The Flames have proven to be a more feisty, organized and tricky opponent than they were expected to be when the Canucks last played them on opening night. Calgary is fresh off another impressive victory, over the Los Angeles Kings, on Monday night and will be playing in the second leg of a back-to-back.
The schedule may be spotting the Canucks an advantage on paper, but on the ice, the Flames have moved beyond being underestimated. Calgary has two solid options in goal, an elite matchup centre in Mikael Backlund and enough experienced, high-IQ defenders to make life miserable for even star-level performers.
The structural integrity with which the Flames have approached their games this season has also been impressive. They play thoughtful, intentional hockey and always seem to have a good sense of how to probe their opponent’s weaknesses. Second-year coach Ryan Huska has found a way to keep the work rate and spirits high, no mean feat given that this Flames roster is a mix of veterans who didn’t sign up for a rebuild and gifted, young players still learning how to win at the NHL level.
That mix can be volatile if it isn’t managed. It’s clear, though, that Huska is pushing all of the right buttons at the moment to get the most out of the lineup.
We expect the Canucks to be hungry to bounce back after Saturday’s game got away from them. However, the Flames have already defeated Vancouver this season and should offer them another stiff test.
Let’s get into a few other items surrounding the Canucks, including Dakota Joshua’s impending return, Erik Brännström’s hold on a spot in the lineup and what’s shaping up to be a high-stakes week for Artūrs Šilovs.
The impact of Joshua’s impending return
On Monday, Joshua practised on a potentially intriguing fourth line with Aatu Räty and Nils Höglander.
Joshua has yet to appear in a game this season following offseason surgery to address a testicular cancer diagnosis. He appears to be getting close to returning to action, and his fourth-line perch at practice may be a major hint about how Vancouver’s coaches plan to ramp Joshua up gradually in the weeks to come.
“You try to find some kind of target date, maybe Thursday is a good time,” Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet said of Joshua’s timeline on Monday. “We’ll see how he reacts and how he is tomorrow, but I think there’s a good shot that he can play on Thursday. I’m not saying he is (playing), but maybe that’s something that may be in the works for us.”
While there had been some consideration to assigning Joshua to Abbotsford on a conditioning loan, Vancouver appears to have settled on a different tack, according to Tocchet. When Joshua does debut, he’ll likely play further down the lineup than he did when he logged top-six minutes in the playoffs.
“I’d rather him play, whether I get him into 10-12 minutes, than go down to (Abbotsford),” Tocchet said. “That’s what I think we’re going to do.
“Dak plays penalty kill, I don’t know if I’ll get him on the power play second unit, but I want to manage his minutes.”
Joshua has scored 10 goals each of the past two years for Vancouver and was on pace to hit the 20-goal milestone for the first time in his career last season before he fractured his hand in a fight down the stretch. Beyond the goal scoring, Joshua’s unique profile is something that will give the club an immediate boost regardless of how many minutes he’s playing.
With Joshua’s combination of size, defensive reliability, finishing skill in tight and exceptional forechecking impact as an “F1,” there are a ton of ways for him to help the team. Those are all areas where the Canucks could use precisely what Joshua is capable of providing on his return.
The Edmonton bludgeoning
It was easily the most disappointing Canucks result of the season.
Vancouver fell behind early, battled back in the second period and then was thoroughly bludgeoned in the third period by the team that eliminated the Canucks from the playoffs.
Edmonton may be off to another pedestrian start, but make no mistake, Connor McDavid’s Oilers are still the team to beat in the Western Conference. They’re favoured to win the Stanley Cup in the outright markets and have the highest top gear of any club in hockey.
Vancouver wasn’t close to its top level on Saturday and paid the price.
“I think, really, I know some guys were tired,” Tocchet said on Monday. “Getting home late, but you’ve got to learn to play tired. When you’re tired you shorten your shifts, is one thing, and you stick to the game plan. I thought we had opportunities to stick to the gameplan, but we want off-kilter, then McDavid smells blood and he takes over the game in the third period.”
The loss on Saturday was the result of a correlation of forces, as lopsided defeats tend to be in the regular season. McDavid severely outplayed Vancouver’s star forwards, Kevin Lankinen turned in his leakiest performance of the year and an unlucky bounce padded Edmonton’s early lead in the second period.
Big picture, it’s just one game, and the Canucks remain a very strong side. Where there’s perhaps a bit more signal to chew on, however, goes well beyond the final score or the club’s third-period gas job.
Aside from a few scattered scoring opportunities late in the first period and throughout the second frame, Vancouver’s ability to generate scoring chances was popgun, to put it kindly, against Edmonton. Vancouver recorded no shots on goal with its first line on the ice and got an effective but still relatively low event effort from the middle six as well.
By the end of the game, Natural Stat Trick credited Vancouver with two high-danger scoring chances at five-on-five to 11 by the Oilers.
Maybe it’s just a one-off, but the way Saturday’s game looked matches what we expect when a good team bumps into an elite one. When teams get to the pointy end of the season and face the toughest opposition, it’s usually the ability to generate scoring chances that separates the contenders from the plucky also-rans.
You’ll notice this start to happen as the playoffs go along, where the truly elite sides can control the game to such an extent that it looks like their opponents need a massive breakdown or a lucky bounce to score at five-on-five.
That’s what it looked like for the Canucks against the Oilers in the second round in the spring, especially in Games 6 and 7 when Vancouver managed three goals in two games with an opportunity to advance to the Western Conference final. It’s why Canucks leadership — both at the coaching and executive level — spent so much time and thought and money this summer to shore up the team’s ability to generate off the rush and level up as an attacking side.
In the early going, the Canucks’ efforts have paid off in spurts. Vancouver’s attack has looked more dynamic and reliable, even if that newfound cutting edge has seemed to occasionally come at the expense of the club’s defensive solidity.
On Saturday against a motivated Oilers team, however, Vancouver’s attack was completely blunted. It was, in fact, next to non-existent in terms of the volume of quality scoring chances the Canucks were able to generate relative to their opponent. Vancouver permitted seven goals and scored three, but it was the absence of quality Canucks scoring chances that defined that game and shaped the outcome.
Saturday’s game was the greatest test yet of Vancouver’s evolution as an attacking team, and the decisive loss should be viewed as something of a signpost to measure the Canucks’ progress. Vancouver has added a more threatening baseline level to its attack, but the club may still have some distance to travel to get to the level it’s hoping to reach come April and May.
Brännström and the eight
Brännström has been a great find for the Canucks and has stabilized a significant chunk of the otherwise problematic “Non-Quinn Hughes minutes” in the early part of the campaign. In so doing, Brännström has cemented himself as a fixture in the lineup.
Now that Brännström’s waiver clock has expired, Vancouver is unlikely to risk placing him on waivers again in the short term. He’s performed to a level over the past five weeks that he would surely be claimed. And anyway, the club now views him as one of its top-eight defenders.
If that seems like faint praise, it isn’t. In fact, it should be counted as an opportunity seized for Brännström, who was a July 2 free-agent signing of the Colorado Avalanche and was originally viewed as a cap throw-in by the Canucks when they acquired him as part of the Tucker Poolman deal.
In asking around, however, I’m not sure that Brännström has locked down a spot in the pecking order beyond being one of the top-eight defenders yet. And that’s something worth paying attention to, especially given that Brännström is coming off a tough outing against the Oilers — one that was punctuated by a deeply unfortunate bounce off a stanchion on a clearing attempt, and which Brännström was on the ice for three five-on-five goals against and no goals for.
A third-pair defender like Brännström who has performed well for a stretch might be able to withstand an off game without losing his hold on a lineup spot. It’s important, however, that those sorts of performances don’t stack one on top of the other.
Brännström has performed well for the Canucks, but the sense I get is that there’s still some internal skepticism about his lack of size — especially given how the Canucks want to play on the back end — even if his overall competitiveness and transition ability have turned heads among Canucks management. Brännström’s puck moving ability is indispensable, and he likely has a bit of a grace period to work through given that Derek Forbort remains out of the lineup on a week-to-week basis.
The truth remains that if you’re an NHL blueliner who isn’t a big, mean defensive presence or an elite offensive producer, the margin for error is always going to be slight.
Lots for Šilovs to play for
When the Canucks signed Lankinen during training camp, they planned to roll through the regular season with three goaltenders on the NHL roster once Thatcher Demko returned from injury.
The thing about plans, however, is that they change. Sometimes rapidly. Especially in a sport like hockey, and especially in a hard-capped league like the NHL where teams are forced to make difficult and sometimes inconvenient decisions at the bottom of the lineup.
Now that Demko is back to practising with his teammates and appearing relatively unencumbered, the star netminder’s return would finally appear to be on the medium-term horizon. That’s a welcome development for the Canucks, of course, but it’s also going to necessitate a re-examination of their depth priorities in net.
Vancouver has the cap and roster flexibility to carry three goaltenders as it originally intended. However, Lankinen has clearly outperformed Šilovs and is now established as the No. 2 option in goal.
Šilovs has struggled in his three NHL starts this season and has more frequently looked like a promising young netminder who might be best served getting a healthy dose of AHL reps as he gets his game back on track.
Over the weekend, the 23-year-old was reassigned to Abbotsford, where he got a start and fared well on Sunday evening. Šilovs stopped 23 of 25 shots in a victory over the Bakersfield Condors and was recalled by the Canucks on Monday.
Tuesday night would be a good opportunity to get Šilovs into a game again, against an opponent playing the second leg of a back-to-back. Assuming Šilovs plays on Tuesday, or at some point this week (the club has a back-to-back over the weekend), the stakes will be sky-high for him.
Given that Vancouver has carefully managed its cap situation and that Šilovs is waiver-exempt, he’s going to need to restate his case to remain on Vancouver’s roster for the duration of the campaign. And he may only have another opportunity or two remaining to make that case.
(Photo: Derek Cain / Getty Images)
