Plays of the Week: March 5th, 2017

“On the surface, it seems like a remarkable long-shot. The Canucks are currently nine points back of second Wild Card team St. Louis and no one thinks they’re closing that gap. So is it foolish to think that Arizona could make up the nine points needed to pass the Canucks over the final quarter of the schedule? Before you dismiss the notion entirely, look a little a closer, and it may not be so far-fetched to see the Canucks wind up with the second-best odds in April’s draft lottery.”

“It’s clear that the Comets will see some turnover next season with some young prospects graduating next season. Ideally, the organization will let some of the older players, on AHL deals specifically, walk and let the younger players fill those voids.”

“The Canucks need Desjardins to demonstrate he can change his ways. These final 20 games are an opportunity to prove he can work with young players and help develop them at the NHL level. That should mean looking for ways to give Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi (when he returns to the line-up) a scoring winger to see the possibilities of a potential future first line for the hockey club. It should mean scaling back the ice time of the Sedins, Loui Eriksson and Brandon Sutter and giving more prominent roles to younger players at even strength and on special teams.”

“Like any other NHL team, there’s going to be a time when the long-lasting core begins to disperse. Fans have called for it for quite some time, but management tried to delay it. This week, it finally happened. The focus is on surrounding the younglings with veterans to ease their transition and guide them through the highs and lows. Let them grow and develop alongside players who have done it themselves and succeeded.”

“MacEwen has clearly shown improvement each year. That’s a good thing, but even with a good slope, the numbers look bad if the intercept is much lower than it should be. In other words, his year-to-year improvement doesn’t make up for the fact that his production is still about two years behind where we’d expect it to be from a player that has any chance to make the NHL.”

“I don’t know if I can say with any confidence whether this is a flash in the pan of brilliance or the first step towards being a voracious asset accumulating franchise on par with the league’s upper echelon of young, up and coming franchises. We’re months away from being able to come to any conclusions in that sense.”