CANUCKS ARMY GDT# 23 – CANUCKS @ WILD

BROADCAST INFO

LW	C	RW
Daniel Sedin	Henrik Sedin	Jannik Hansen
Alexandre Burrows	Bo Horvat	Chris Higgins
Sven Baertschi	Jared McCann	Radim Vrbata
Brandon Prust	Adam Cracknell	Derek Dorsett

Defensive Pairings
Alexander Edler	Chris Tanev
Dan Hamhuis	Yannick Weber
Luca Sbisa	Matt Bartkowski

I haven’t really followed along how the Wild have done this year but seeing Jordan Schroeder in the bottom 6 makes me giggle a bit. He did score against Boston last week because of course he did. The Wild are very much on par with how the Canucks are producing and with Ryan Suter on the back end contributing on what seems like every goal they score, he’ll be a target. Zach Parise is still out with a knee injury and Kurtis Gabriel should slot in. In no way is he related to Peter Gabriel, I checked.

Sir Devan Dubnyk, he of the bounce back career, will be in the pipes.

Minnesota Wild lines courtesy of Dailyfaceoff.com:

LW	C	RW
Thomas Vanek	Mikael Granlund	Jason Pominville
Jason Zucker	Mikko Koivu	Nino Niederreiter
Ryan Carter	Charlie Coyle	Jordan Schroeder
Chris Porter	Erik Haula	Brett Bulmer

Defensive Pairings
Ryan Suter	Jared Spurgeon
Jonas Brodin	Mathew Dumba
Nate Prosser	Christian Folin

REASONS TO WATCH THIS GAME

• Fitting its almost Christmas as the Canucks get to most likely see the holiday reds for the Wild. Even if it’s the greens, who cares, they all look like Christmas jerseys…..very….cool Christmas jerseys. Hopefully, you aren’t tuning in/skipping the end of your work day for the opponents jerseys. To each their own but just so you know I’m judging.
• Nino Niederreiter owned the Canucks last season so I’m guessing the Horvat line may be tasked with keeping him at bay. The benefit of that is that speed faces speed so its elastic; bounce goes one way and sling shots in the other direction. Basically what has backfired on the Canucks in OT but in their favour in regulation.
• Daniel Sedin is 6th in league scoring and he’s 35. His brother whom you may know as Henrik is 2 pts back; Daniel is 1 pt back of 4th overall. They’re 35 in case you lost track of this bullet point. The Sedins are the equivalent of the knuckleball as they don’t require their bodies to exert the same ruthless energy that so many players in the league do. I’d say I don’t know how they do it but I do and that’s amazing. Watch the game just for these two and you are never disappointed. 35 years old.
• Bo Horvat seems ready to break out this season and he’s had his chances. If you could have a top 10 of Bo’s almost goals, he’d have that done inside of 10 games alone. His stats have been pretty dismal but this seems to be a case of opening the floodgates. Radim Vrbata is due for some of that love too.
• Has Jake Virtanen been forgotten? I have not noticed him very much in the last few weeks and that’s due in large part to Willie running a slightly shorter bench/vets. It won’t come overnight but man, this guy just needs to be worked to the bone for a game IMO. He’s a great talent and won’t put up Bo year one numbers but give us something to go on. He’s back in the lineup tonight so hopefully good things are to come.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING