Canucks Army Post-Game: #BellLetsTalk About the Canucks 3-2 win over the Avalanche

Stats

Highlights

Quick Hits

• So, Baertschi’s having himself quite the season. If he continues at this pace, Baertschi will finish with 23 goals and 46 points. In laymen’s, he’s on pace for fringe first line production. He’s the 41st most productive even strength scorer by Corsica.Hockey, and I doubt they’ve updated their database to include tonight’s results yet. That number could spike by tomorrow. Nothing new here, though. It seems every time I’m writing one of these I’m breaking down how obscenely productive Baertschi is. 

• I didn’t catch this observation by Canucks Army alumni Patrick Johnston until after Baertschi lit the Pepsi Center on fire, but he might be onto something. If I’m reading this right, Johnston advocates for Baertschi to play a net-front role on the Canucks’ first unit power play. Intuitively, it makes sense. That’s where Baertschi seems to do the majority of his scoring. The data Johnston provides backs that observation up, too. If the Canucks are going to keep running the 1-3-1 setup with the man advantage, maybe that’s how they can best work within those parameters?

• The Canucks defencemen were as active as I’ve seen them in some time tonight — though I must say for posterities sake, I didn’t catch Sunday’s game in Chicago. There’s one play by Troy Stecher that sticks out. Just a fantastic display of awareness through the neutral zone and using the space afforded him. He starts from his zone, then zig-zags through the neutral zone and about two or three Colorado defenders to get the shot off. Nikita Tryamkin had a nice rush in the middle frame too, and almost converted on the pass from Loui Eriksson two-on-one. Calvin Pickard was there to rob the towering Russian, and he looked none too happy about it.

• Matt Nieto scored the Avalanche’s second goal tonight, knotting the score with Vancouver. Colorado claimed Nieto on waivers from the San Jose Sharks at the beginning of this month. Now, I’m not going to accost the Canucks for not grabbing Nieto, because we’ll never know if they or didn’t due to Colorado’s waiver priority over Vancouver at the time. They could’ve claimed Nieto and just lost out due to circumstance. In fact, The Vancouver Sun’s Iain MacIntyre thinks the Canucks had interest. The point I’m trying to make is that players claimed off waivers can help the claimant in short order. Nieto’s barely been an Avalanche for two-plus weeks. Vancouver has a worthwhile claim to their credit in January. They grabbed Reid Boucher from the New Jersey Devils, around the same time Nieto was waived and claimed. Canucks coach Willie Desjardins can exclaim he hasn’t the opportunity to experiment with his roster when pressed on playing Boucher, but it just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. And given the Canucks general inability to score, perhaps they could use a player like Boucher in the lineup? That’s something he’s proven to be relatively good at most levels.

• I don’t think we can call the Canucks season a success just yet. Of course, with tonight’s victory, Vancouver is holding down a Wild Card spot in the moribund Western Conference, ahead of Calgary, Los Angeles, Winnipeg, etc. I tend to be at odds philosophically with the Canucks, but I’ll give credit where due; they’re far better off, in the standings, than I’d initially expected. I’ve serious questions about how long this will last, though. They’re don’t rank any higher than sixth in any of these key predictive metrics: Corsi, Fenwick or Expected Goals. By the latter and most ominous of those three, they’re the third worst team in the league. And this is after running through a most accommodating January. I’m all for tipping my hat to the Canucks success this late in the season, meagre as it may be, but I have grave and legitimate concerns about how well it will hold up when their schedule looks like this:

Bell Let’s Talk