Canucks Army GDT #29 – Canucks @ Canadiens

Vancouver is in Montreal this afternoon to finish up their 7-game Eastern road swing against the slumping Canadiens, who have dropped 3 games in a row and lost 7 of their last 10. More notably however, it will be an emotional night as Montreal is playing their first home game since the passing of Habs legend Jean Beliveau.

Read past the jump for a preview of tonight’s match up.

Puck Drop: 4:30 PM PST

TV: Sportsnet Pacific

Radio: TSN 1040

Truth be told, there is very little that can happen in the game tonight that will make it more notable than the pre-game ceremony that’s scheduled to take place, as the Montreal Canadiens and their fans say goodbye to one of Hockey’s all time great players and people, Jean Beliveau. Tim Thompson (a.k.a @b0undless, a.k.a the guy responsible for CBC’s fantastic montages in recent years) has already put together and released a pretty stirring tribute earlier today:

The Canucks players themselves have admitted that tonight will be a pretty special night to witness first hand as well.

As for the task at hand, Vancouver has dropped two consecutive games to two pretty mediocre Toronto and Ottawa teams over the weekend, and are in danger of coming away with a losing record on their season-long 7-game road swing. They played well in the second half of the Toronto game and early against Ottawa, but ultimately couldn’t put together a 60-minute effort in either outing. Montreal, while coming back down to Earth after an extremely fortunate start to the year, is still a tougher opponent than either Ontario club, at least on paper.

That being said, Montreal is far from one of the East’s best teams. They’re 22nd in the NHL in score adjusted Corsi, and have a minus-2 goal differential on the season – the lowest number of any team currently in a playoff position. Like Vancouver, they jumped out to a great start thanks to a ton of one-goal victories, but “ability to win one goal games” just is not a thing that exists in the long term, and their warts are finally starting to show now that their good fortune appears to be taking a vacation.

This is a possible look into Vancouver’s short-term future as a thin blueline and shaky goaltending may catch up to the Canucks one day soon, but until that day comes, Vancouver can thank exceptional production from their forwards and a monster season from Alex Edler and Chris Tanev for getting them this far. While the Sedins continue to be the engine that powers Vancouver, the Canucks’ depth forwards have stepped up in a big way this season and provided a scoring punch that just hasn’t been there in years.

There are some worrying signs with the 4th line’s inability to control play at 5v5 and offense from Nick Bonino’s group has (as expected) run dry, but ever since being united with Linden Vey when Zack Kassian went down with injury, Shawn Matthias and Brad Richardson have been on a tear. Matthias may sit out tonight once more, but Richardson scored against Ottawa on Sunday to give him 4 goals and 4 assists in the past 6 games to go along with a 56% Corsi at 5v5. It’s unreasonable to ask Richardson to keep this pace for the rest of the year, but we can hope that he and Matthias have turned a corner and given the Canucks a capable 3rd line. We’ll see if they can continue their strong play tonight.