By Joel Smart (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 14, 2012
After last Saturday’s embarrassing 4-1 loss to the Montreal Canadians—a team that is only higher than Edmonton and Columbus in the standings and sits 30 points back of Vancouver—the Canucks were left with four nights off to contemplate the dire situation they’d created for themselves. While the issue isn’t about points, the problem is almost more worrisome; if they can’t get it together soon, they may be hard pressed to win a best-of-seven series against any team in the league.
There are less than four weeks left in the regular season. Not counting the games against the Phoenix Coyotes and the 7 p.m. matchup on Saturday against the worst-place Columbus Blue Jackets, there are just eight games remaining in the last two weeks of March. The final three games the Canucks play, all in the first week of April, will be the last chance for the team to get on track before the real season begins. (As an aside, it’s interesting to note that in their final nine games, the Canucks play the Dallas Stars, the Colorado Avalanche and the Calgary Flames twice each.)
A rare highlight in the last several weeks was the team’s matchup against the newly-reborn Winnipeg Jets. It marked just the 11th time in 32 games that the Canucks had won in regulation time. That’s just 34 per cent of the time, going back into late December. Sure, the Canucks have played some great hockey games in that span, but the Canucks have not been playing up to their potential for quite some time now.
Consider that the Sedins are both suffering from major point droughts in the last several weeks – to the point where it’s on the brink of setting career records for them. Slump records… not exactly the kind of records they were hoping to set this year. Due to the heavy reliance the Canucks place on the brothers in order to consistently win, this slump is coming at a very inopportune time; (the Canucks should probably try to finish first in the Western Conference, considering both the Detroit Red Wings and the St. Louis Blues have only four regulation losses at home.) The opposition has long known that if you can stop the twins, you can probably stop the Canucks. It just hasn’t been so easy until recently.
One theory is that the NHL is opting to call the game differently – letting a lot of the clutching-and-grabbing go that was so often called over the last few years. Slow down the game and your star players suffer fewer high-impact head injuries. But with fewer penalties called—especially the type of calls the Canucks used to thrive on—combined with the reduced time and space for skill players to maneuver on the ice, and players like the Sedins just can’t seem to get it going.
Whether that theory stands the test of time or not, what is clear is that the Canucks need to figure out a way to make it work in the next couple weeks if they want to make a serious run at the Cup. Part of the solution has to rest on the likes of Chris Higgins, Maxim Lapierre, Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen. These are the players assigned the task of creating space for their counterparts. Though they’ve often looked like the best players on the ice this season with their tireless hard work, they’ll have to work even harder to free up open ice now.
Perhaps, ultimately, it’s a good exercise in frustration for the team to deal with now, before the post-season begins. After all, it is generally held that the referees call the game differently in the playoffs – allowing more clutching-and-grabbing and the type of defensive battles that have proved challenging for the Sedins to overcome in the past. If that is the case, then the way they approach these last handful of games could say a lot about their chances come April (and hopefully June).
