Season series: Nick Bonino, Linden Vey and Jannik Hansen scored third-period goals to break a 1-1 tie and help the Vancouver Canucks defeat the St. Louis Blues 4-1 on Oct. 23 in St. Louis. Former Blues goalie Ryan Miller made 31 saves.
Blues team scope: Goalie Jake Allen will start after Brian Elliott played Saturday and made 21 saves in a 2-1 victory against the Edmonton Oilers. Center Paul Stastny had a goal and an assist. Ian Cole (upper-body injury) returned to the lineup after sitting out one game. St. Louis will return home following the game Sunday before completing its five-game road trip with games against the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday and Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday. The Blues have lost three in a row in Vancouver. They won't see Miller this time around; he is on injured reserve and out 4-6 weeks because of a knee injury sustained Feb. 22 against the New York Islanders.
Canucks team scope: Vancouver returns to play on home ice for the first time since Feb. 16 after going 3-2-0 on a five-game trip. They have won four of five at Rogers Arena. Defenseman Christopher Tanev, who has missed six games because of a head injury, practiced Saturday but said he's not ready to play yet. Defenseman Frank Corrado (upper body), who has missed 13 games, practiced and said he's available. Left wing Alexandre Burrows (lower body), who has missed the past four games, did not practice. The Canucks placed left wing Brandon McMillan, who they claimed off waivers from the Arizona Coyotes on Feb. 12, on waivers Saturday after he was held without a point in three games. "I honestly liked [McMillan]," coach Willie Desjardins told the Vancouver Sun. "I thought his best game was his last game. There are lots of good parts to his game. ... It's not what you want to do sometimes, but there are just so many things that go on behind the scenes that you have to care of. And that's one of them."
The St. Louis Blues have been superb on the road recently, but their struggles with the Vancouver Canucks aren't limited to the Pacific Northwest.
The Blues look to remain perfect on this trip Sunday night by avoiding a slow start against the Canucks, who are coming off one of their worst efforts of the season.
St. Louis (40-18-4) is five points behind Nashville in the race for the Presidents' Trophy, and owning one of the best road records in the NHL is a big reason why.
The Blues have won nine of 10 games as the visitors, beating Edmonton 2-1 on Saturday after winning by the same score in Winnipeg two days earlier to open this five-game trip.
Still, coach Ken Hitchcock is concerned. St. Louis has totaled 11 shots combined in the opening period of those victories.
"We don't look like we get to our game near soon enough, and we're going to get challenged in the next three or four hockey games and we're going to have to find a way to get into our game a little bit earlier," he said.
Slow starts aren't the only issue against the Canucks (35-23-3), as the Blues have dropped seven of the past nine matchups (2-5-2) while totaling 12 goals.
Paul Stastny will try to change that after scoring the go-ahead goal and assisting on the other Saturday. The center scored twice in his last visit to Vancouver on April 10, leading Colorado to a 4-2 win.
Vladimir Tarasenko hasn't come close to being effective against the Canucks, going pointless in the last five games and failing to score a goal in seven lifetime games. The right wing has no goals in four games, but he still has team highs of 31 goals and 60 points.
Brian Elliott may be back in net on back-to-back nights for the first time this season since he's won seven of eight road games, and four straight there with a 1.44 goals-against average after making 21 stops Saturday. He also owns a 1.83 GAA despite a 1-4-0 mark at Rogers Arena.
Backup Jake Allen stopped 19 of 22 shots in a 4-1 home loss to the Canucks on Oct. 23. He had 18 saves in a 5-2 loss to Montreal in his most recent start Tuesday.
Vancouver, which is three points clear of the postseason cutoff in the Western Conference, is going for a season-high fourth straight home win. However, the Canucks concluded a 3-2-0 trip by falling 6-3 to league-worst Buffalo on Thursday.
Coach Willie Desjardins is well aware a better effort is needed versus the Blues.
"The Blues are a top team. They're going to come in and play hard. They want to establish their game," Desjardins said. "It's going to be a real hard game and we know that. We're back at home. We want to play good at home. We haven't played the way we wanted in some of our home games. We need a real hard effort and we know St. Louis is going to come with a real hard effort, and we have to match that."
Eddie Lack should get a third straight start with Ryan Miller sidelined with a sprained knee. He had a 40-save performance in a 2-1 win at Boston on Tuesday before finishing with 18 against the Sabres.
Lack, though, has won all three meetings with St. Louis behind a 0.97 GAA.
Henrik Sedin has nine points over the past nine games versus the Blues, and he's collected 10 during a six-game point streak overall after setting up Daniel Sedin's goal Thursday.
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Originally scheduled for 9 central, moved up to 8:30. I'll take that. But still late for those in the Eastern time zone.
I wish they did stuff like that a little more often. We don't have it as bad as people on either coast that experience a 3 hour difference in start time, but 2 hours is still pretty hard for people that work the next day.
I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest it which means there's a reason they don't do it (likely TV $), but I wish they would shift start times slightly when the visiting team is more than 1 time zone away. Instead of a 9PM start, make it 8 or 8:30 which is 6 or 6:30 local time to the home team. That's not so bad for them and makes it a lot easier for us. Likewise, we could start our games an hour later when a west coast team is here. I'm sure people getting off work on the west coast would prefer that.
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The Canucks are just flat out weird to me as of late. I don't think even they know what they're doing. Saying that, I feel we need to hit them hard and fast and not let up on them. Weird bounces and oddball stuff seem to go their way. With that said,
Canucks (Always the bridesmaid, never the bride): 1
Blues (Teal's just a lighter color, pale by comparison): 5
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Nice comeback by the good guys to get to OT, but some interesting goings on with Hitch/Elliott:
[tweet][/tweet]
Here is full tweet, which JR decided not to share in full:
[tweet][/tweet]
Ells isn't such a good soldier after all.
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Garbage game in the first 2 periods, especially by Allen. He has looked lost out there for several games now. Even his last start where they got the win, he looked helpless. Dude's head is not where it needs to be.
Of course Elliott picks the perfect time to have, what, a melt down? 19 games left to play with a turd of a backup goalie - not a good time to start shitting on your relationship with the head coach.
Krigloch the Furious wrote:uh huh
seriously, most of the time they are so sloppy it's just stupid
So sloppy they scored 3 goals in the 3rd on the 2nd night of a back to backer..
I mean, I saw the same game you did, I didn't love giving up 5 unanswered goals, but talking about a team having nothing going on in the offensive zone as they are 5th in the league in goals for and 1 back from first in goal differential (they were in 1st until the recent short skid) is as Chicken Little as it gets. There is LOTS going on in the offensive zone, all up and down the lineup.
Well... Allen had a horrible game...and then didn't stop anything in the shootout.
I would say that Allen won't get many starts the rest of the way, but now with Elliott getting all pissed at Hitch, I'm not sure what's going to happen.
Hitch doesn't seem like the guy who would take kindly to a player disrespecting him.
I'm hoping it's not a matter of Elliott being pissed at Hitch, but simply being pissed at himself and didn't want to talk to anyone. But why he pulled himself, if he did, I have no idea.
Just read through Blake Prices tweets from last night... Just seemed like he wanted to stir some crap up... One tweet he says stuff is going crazy, another he says it's calm... Another tweet he reports on goalie being pulled as he's in the know, the next he's asking it as a question...
What a weird, weird game. From the goal review, to the Ells in/Ells out saga, to the posts, to the blowing a 2-0 lead and giving up 5 straight only to get 3 straight to get a point....up and down emotionally.
But the plus is we're 4 back of Nashville with 19 games to play. We've got a shot. We just need to keep racking up points. We lost, yeah, but we got a point. I'll take it.
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Bear in mind that this is pure speculation and me talking out the end opposite my mouth, but with this teams lackluster play sans Shattenkirk and if whatever happened with Ells wasn't being blown out of proportion and he really did have a tiff with Hitch, is it possible that Hitch is losing the team, and is it possible Army pulls a Lou Lamoriello and fires Hitch in the waning weeks of the season when the playoffs are pretty much a lock just to shake things up for the sake of shaking things up heading into the postseason? No matter what, I don't think ol' Ken will be the coach of this team next year. If they don't win the Cup, he'll be gone and if they do win the Cup, he'll go out on a high note. That one year contract was just that... a one year contract. Dan Bylsma is still, inexplicably, available. He'd be a good fit on a team with so much budding offensive talent. Plus he'll have a better goalie and a better defense already in place.
I wonder if there wasn't a silent agreement between Armstrong and Bylsma (or any other GM and Bylsma, for that matter) because it doesn't make sense with the in-season firings so far that no one snatched him up. He would have been a good fit in Toronto with the offensive ability they have on that roster. Ottawa and NJ also passing on him seems odd. All three teams are familiar with what he can do since they had to play against Pittsburgh so much.
glen a richter wrote:Bear in mind that this is pure speculation and me talking out the end opposite my mouth, but with this teams lackluster play sans Shattenkirk and if whatever happened with Ells wasn't being blown out of proportion and he really did have a tiff with Hitch, is it possible that Hitch is losing the team, and is it possible Army pulls a Lou Lamoriello and fires Hitch in the waning weeks of the season when the playoffs are pretty much a lock just to shake things up for the sake of shaking things up heading into the postseason? No matter what, I don't think ol' Ken will be the coach of this team next year. If they don't win the Cup, he'll be gone and if they do win the Cup, he'll go out on a high note. That one year contract was just that... a one year contract. Dan Bylsma is still, inexplicably, available. He'd be a good fit on a team with so much budding offensive talent. Plus he'll have a better goalie and a better defense already in place.
I wonder if there wasn't a silent agreement between Armstrong and Bylsma (or any other GM and Bylsma, for that matter) because it doesn't make sense with the in-season firings so far that no one snatched him up. He would have been a good fit in Toronto with the offensive ability they have on that roster. Ottawa and NJ also passing on him seems odd. All three teams are familiar with what he can do since they had to play against Pittsburgh so much.
Elliott was just pissed that he was pulled from the game...he wanted to stay in. From what people are saying, that's all there was to it.
I don't think there is any way Army fires Hitchcock now. To me, that would have a far greater chance of screwing the team up than it working out.
There is the question of if this is Hitchcock's last season...and Bylsma still being available. Interesting.
