Sedins, Schneider, Empty Netters Beat Avalanche 4-1: Recap and Chance Data

 
Daniel Sedin scored the winning goal in the third, as the Sedins helped will the Canucks to their 6th straight win.

On Thursday night, the Vancouver Canucks won their 6th straight game – for the 2nd time this season, with the first occasion stretching from January 30th to February 12th – with a 4-1 victory over the Colorado Avalanche. I figure this game recap is mostly read by people who didn’t have a chance to catch the game for whatever reason. Assuming that to be the case, I’ll play along. 

Your eyes technically aren’t deceiving you. The Canucks scored 4 goals, ultimately winning this one by comfortable margin. What’s that you say? Two of the goals came in the final 84 seconds without a goaltender manning the opposing team’s net? Semantics. 4 goals are 4 goals, right?

Read on Past the Jump for Analysis, and Scoring Chance Data.

You’ve clicked past the jump, which is all that matters, so I’ll stop pretending to be a Positive Peter. Simply put, the Canucks aren’t a fun team to watch right now; what’s new though, as that has been the case for much of the season. I probably would have turned the television off if I hadn’t been responsible for covering it, so I admire your resiliciency and sadomasochistic tendencies loyalty if you watched this game in its entirety just for fun. But I did watch it, so let’s get to some of the thoughts that I had.

Cory Schneider was spectacular in this one. Maybe even "stupendous", which is the term John Shorthouse used to describe his effort at one point. He stopped 32 of the 33 shots that he was faced with, which is impressive in and of itself. However, what put it over the top for me was the degree of difficulty of some of those saves that he made. He was especially strong in the second half of the 1st period, as the team in front of him completely fell apart in their own zone. Remember – you can just as easily lose a game at the beginning as you can at the end. Things could have gotten out of hand there, but Schneider held the fort, and was really the only reason the team even had a chance in this one. 

In terms of both Corsi and Fenwick, the Sedins, Burrows, Garrison, and Hamhuis were the only Canuck skaters in the black. While they had some shaky moments early on, I thought the Sedin line was quite strong as the game went along, particularly in the third period. The first goal of the game was pretty much vintage Sedinery, as pinpoint passing left Alex Burrows with a yawning cage to bury his 9th of the season. After Daniel scored the go-ahead goal halfway through the 3rd, they were called upon in the final minutes to take a shift in their own zone with the Avalanche pressing. Schneider made a nice save, before Henrik ultimately buried the clincher into an empty net. An interesting stat that Cam Charron pointed out on Twitter was that Henrik Sedin took 11 faceoffs total in this one, with 8 of them coming in the defensive zone. You don’t see that every day.

Overall, that line wound up generating the three goals that mattered (apologies to Chris Higgins’ incredibly important empty netter, of course). It’s nice to see Burrows back with the twins, as the Higgins experiment had run its course. Hopefully Vigneault leaves them alone now. I understand that he was trying to spread the wealth – which actually worked for two games, as Burrows made Ebbett and Ballard look competent on the team’s third line – but the Canucks are clearly a better team when those three are together.

The team’s second line of Hansen-Schroeder-Raymond, which had been so effective in recent games, had a dreadful showing against the Avs. They failed to generate any sort of significant offense, and wound up being buried in their own zone on a handful of occasions. In particular, Jordan Schroeder was exposed; he lost a couple of 50/50 puck battles which he has to win to be effective, so it’s not exactly a huge surprise that he only wound up logging 10:32. Considering how good they had been since Schroeder was re-called from Chicago, I’m willing to give them a free pass and move on. They’ll bounce back on Saturday against Edmonton.

So basically to sum things up, as the title implies, the combination of the Sedins, Cory Schneider, and two empty netters helped beat a Colorado Avalanche team that seems to have some serious issues. Despite what I’d describe as a forgettable effort from most of the team, the Canucks picked up a huge 2 points as they continue to jockey for 1st with the Wild.

PS: Tom Sestito still continues to be a waste of a roster space, and I will make mention of this in every game recap I do until that is no longer the case. Mark my words.