Canucks Game Facts
Tonight: Vancouver Canucks at Ottawa Senators
Where: Canadian Tire Centre
When: 4 pm pacific
TV/Radio: Sportsnet / AM-650
Key Factors:
Starting goalkeepers: Casey DeSmith for Vancouver and Anton Forsberg for Ottawa. His partner Joonas Korpisalo started and won Wednesday night in Toronto as the Senators snapped a two-game skid.
The Canucks have benefited from some handy scheduling lately. They shut-out a Dallas team playing its third game in four nights on Saturday and they catch the Sen’s on the tail end of a back-to-back. Naturally, that will even out later. Vancouver has a back-to-back set, home then road, in the middle of next week. Cash in while you can.
“Korpy” won last night, but the Ottawa goaltending numbers are substandard so far this season.
Who’s Hot? And Not …
After being named the NHL’s 1st-Star of the previous week, Canucks captain Quinn Hughes added four more points to his season total in the 6-2 win over the Oilers on Monday night. “Huggy” leads the NHL in scoring for defenceman with 20 points, five of them goals.
Three Canucks stand in the top-10 in league scoring. Centre Elias Pettersson is 2nd with 21 points, one behind Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Hughes is tied for third with two other players, and J.T. Miller is tied for 8th with 18 points.
Winger Brock Boeser isn’t far behind that pack, tied for 16th in NHL scoring with 15 points, while Hughes’s D-partner Filip Hronek has 13.
It not, “who’s not hot”, it’s “who’s NOT hot (?),” for the Canucks.
As a team, Vancouver has an eight-game point streak.
In the Senators 6-3 ‘Battle of Ontario’ victory over the Maple Leafs, Tim Stützle had four points, winger Mathieu Joseph added three, as did veteran forward Claude Giroux.
While Stützle and Giroux are one and two in team scoring, four other Senators, including captain Brady Tkachuk, are averaging exactly a point-a-game through eleven matches.
Among a handful of injuries, D-man Thomas Chabot is out with a broken hand.
Special Teams
The Canucks power play went a whopping 3-for-6 against the Oilers, now clicking 32.6% of the time, 4th best in the NHL. Hughes and Pettersson both have nine power play points, Boeser leads the team and is 2nd in the NHL with five PP goals.
The Vancouver PK stopped two of three Edmonton power plays on Monday and is hovering just below 78% for the season.
Ottawa tallied once on three power play chances against the Leafs and sits 12th in the NHL with a very respectable 22.9% success rate. Their PK is at a porous 73.7%.
Coming In:
Canucks: 9-2-and-1 for 19 points, 2nd most in the Western Conference and tied for the 4th most in the league, following the 6-2 win over the Edmonton Oilers on Monday night.
Senators: 5-and-6, coming off last night’s 6-3 victory in Toronto.
Earlier Canucks:
— Canucks Win 6-2 As The Oilers Completely Unravel
