West Best Canucks Tangle With Improving Flames

Wagering: 1.888.238.8018 - 1.888.889.4313
Customer Service: 1.877.717.7747 - 1.888.889.4368

: 1.888.238.8198 - 1.888.889.4312
: 1.888.378.0888 - 1.888.889.4219

West Best Canucks Tangle With Improving Flames

The Vancouver Canucks still hold down the best record in the NHL, but they’ve not looked their best recently and will face a tough test on Saturday night as they head to Calgary to face the Flames. After a slow start to the season Calgary has started to show some life down the stretch and is right in the thick of the tightly packed Western Conference playoff hunt. This is something of a rivalry matchup—not as big as the Edmonton/Calgary rivalry but still with a fair share of intensity. At this point, every game is important for Calgary—they’re currently in 6th place but in a conference where only ten total points separate fourth place Chicago from 12th place Columbus there’s no such thing as ‘postseason security’.

When they’re playing at their highest level, the Vancouver Canucks are practically unbeatable. They have the NHL’s #3 scoring offense (3.18 goals per game) and the #1 scoring defense (2.24 goals per game) anchored by the exceptional goaltending of Roberto Luongo. At their best, the Sedin twins are practically an unstoppable offense force and they’ve been getting a lot of help lately—a problem with the Canucks is that at times the rest of the team doesn’t hold up their end and makes the Sedins do all the work but that hasn’t been the case of late.

Calgary doesn’t have the nasty defensive numbers of recent vintage Flames teams, but they may be a more balanced—and ultimately more successful—mix of offense and defense as they head into the stretch run of the regular season. In the past they had to play exceptional defense since the offense was always ranked among the league’s least productive. That’s changed this year—Calgary is currently the #6 scoring offense in the league (2.94 goals per game) and still have a decent defense with a high level goaltender in Mikka Kiprusoff. The Flames are currently #14 in scoring defense but that’s somewhat inaccurate since they started the season in awful form and have been much stingier lately.

Vancouver’s problem at the moment—at least on a micro level—is an enviable one. They’ve run away with their division with a 14 point lead over the second place Flames. In the conference standings, they lead second place Detroit by 7 points and third place Chicago by 11. That means with the regular season winding down at some point they’ll be shifting their focus—either consciously or unconsciously—to the Stanley Cup playoffs. There’s some pressure on coach Alain Vignault to turn in a strong playoff run this year—the Canucks have frequently put up dominant performances in the regular season and don’t have a Stanley Cup to show for it. They’ve only reached the Finals twice, with the last time in 1994. Since it’s functionally impossible for the team to drop out of the top three seeds in the West, it wouldn’t surprise us to see the Canucks limiting starters’ minutes and possibly giving Roberto Luongo some extra days off to keep them in top form for the postseason.

That could very well be the case in this game—the Flames are going to have to play high level hockey down the stretch just to make the postseason. The Canucks, on the other hand, have nothing to gain by ‘leaving it all on the ice’ here. Given the difference in playoff scenario urgency this looks like a game where the Calgary Flames will be a strong play, possibly as a short priced home underdog.