Canucks need to take advantage
St. Louis visits Vancouver on second night of back-to-back games
When the Vancouver Canucks try to erase the memory of that extraordinary performance in Buffalo at the end of their recent Eastern road trip against the St. Louis Blues Sunday night at Rogers Arena, they’ll essentially be dealing with a .500 team.
Of course, the Blues’ record is much better than that on the season and in any straight-up game during the regular season or the playoffs, they are one of the meanest pieces of business in the league.
In fact, when it comes to potential playoff opponents for the Canucks if they make the post-season, the Blues are about as difficult as you could imagine, given their size and the travel involved.
But here we’re talking second game of a back-to-back and it is almost a universal truth in the NHL that even good teams are humbled to some degree when they play consecutive nights.
The Blues are 5-5-0 in games which the league says are played on “zero” rest days and to be sure, that’s one of the better figures around.
Compared to the Canucks’ woeful 2-6-2 mark, it’s downright sterling.
Nonetheless, Vancouver will be in position to take advantage of one of those ‘easier’ games which present themselves to every team throughout the season.
It’s up to them to make the most of it because it’s beginning to get to that portion of the season when points are absolutely crucial.
To follow that appalling show in Buffalo with another home loss wouldn’t be a very good sign heading into a very busy March without your No. 1 goaltender.
Ever since the league went to bestof-seven series in all four rounds in the playoffs, then increased the breaks both for Christmas and at the all-star break, there has been a proliferation of these games, often even leaving the home side as the tired team. In fact, the Canucks first home loss of the season came in that situation against Tampa.
“I think if you play the right way, it can pay off in the third period,” Dan Hamhuis said of the incoming Blues.
“If you make it a really hard game for them early, you can maybe play in their end in the third period and hopefully take advantage.”
“For us at home, we’ve played a lot of games where we haven’t been as aggressive as we’d like to be here on home ice against a team which played in Alberta the night before,” captain Henrik Sedin said.
“In the days when we were Presidents’ Trophy winners, that was a 100-per-cent win for us. We’d be up 2-0 after the first period all the time. But I think in that situation you have to be aggressive and try to get the advantage that way.”
Derek Dorsett, who has seen a lot of these games, many of those in the Eastern Conference where the teams are much closer and the back-to-backs a little easier as a result, thinks the key is making sure not to fall behind.
“If you can keep it a close game in the first two (periods), you can try to jump on them in the third and take advantage,” says Dorsett.
“It’s hard. With travel and you play most of your back-to-backs on the road, it’s not easy, but everyone plays pretty much the same number around the league, so it kind of works out. But you have to try to take advantage when you can.”
With so many back-to-backs, particularly in the case of the home team being the tired squad as was the case when the Canucks took advantage of the Islanders to hammer them 4-0 on their home ice on this last trip, the real losers are the fans.
They definitely see one team nowhere near its best.
And while it’s tough for the players to participate in those games, they essentially agree to that sort of treatment in the Collective Bargaining Agreement because they know if they are to get the three clear days at Christmas and virtually a full week off in January, there will be a price to pay unless hockey drags into July.
But in this nice little agreement between the players and the owners, it’s the fan who gets shortchanged, a familiar pattern, if we’re not mistaken.