GDRC – Canucks @ Red Wings + Trade Deadline!

Photo: CRIS BOURONCLE

Gold Medal winning goaltender Roberto Luongo faces gold medal winning head coach Mike Babcock tonight as the Red Wings host the Canucks at Joe Louis Arena. The Canucks are playing the second of back-to-back games afters beating the Blue Jackets in Columbus last night.

Only two changes in the proposed lineup has been noted so far, as Steve Bernier has been sidelined, in favour of Jannik Hansen. More importantly though, Roberto Luongo takes back the reins in net, after Andrew Raycroft played in the Canucks first game back after the Olympic break.

The Red Wings were having issues scoring prior to the break, but did beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-2 on Monday.  The Canucks certainly have not had any issues scoring this year. Their problem has been stopping the goals lately. Much of that has to do with the decimated blueline, being backfilled with a rotating set of Moose call-ups.

Surprisingly, the Canucks have not made any significant moves today to fill the obvious injury-induced gaps on the blueline. The one move of note was that Vancouver finally moved disgruntled free-agent signing Mathieu Schneider, sending him to Phoenix for Sean Zimmerman and a conditional sixth round pick in 2010.

So it appears that the Canucks are going to go with the status quo for now, stay with the blueline fill-ins and hope that Bieksa and MItchell come back in the line-up sooner than later. At this point, we know that Bieksa is due back well before Mitchell, as Mitchell continues to suffer from post-concussion syndrome.

It is hard to say if Gillis was simply holding his ground because the asking price was too high, or he couldn’t get the assets in return he really wanted. I have a feeling that the Canucks only had inquiries about Hodgson, and the Canucks are unwilling to move him.

UPDATE – Canucks have acquired Andrew Alberts from Carolina. Hopefully an upgrade over Aaron Rome as a 5th/6th defenseman.

Canucks acquired Andrew Alberts from CAR for a 3rd round pick in 2010.