Excuse Me Mr. President?: Canucks & Kings

> Coasting To The Finish Line: The Canucks have one more regular season milestone in their sights, but getting healthy is more important (Hamhuis, Samuelsson and Glass in particular; Alberts and Edler on the horizon). Vigneault will likely still tinker the bottom six for the best answer to the Malhotra problem; no word yet if Lapierre is still the answer going forward. On the fourth line you have to wonder if Bolduc didn’t help his longterm chances with the team from the Nashville game: the fourth line got outchanced and Bolduc took a lazy slashing call in the second period. The defense didn’t break against the Predators forecheck and they’ll get plenty more from Kings. It’ll be interesting to see how Tanev holds up, but he didn’t look out of place at all in his first game back two days ago.

> Trevor Lewis Can’t Lose: With Kopitar out for the year, the Kings fourth line center has popped up to the first with Smyth and Brown. Lewis has four points in two games for his efforts and – if it can continue – should soften the blow of losing Kopitar and still give the Kings a good one-two punch along with the Penner line. They’re also hurting from losing Justin Williams (second on the team in points) so it’s a committee approach going forward. Thankfully (for them anyway) they deploy one of the deeper defenses in the league and Quick is having a fantastic season with 33 wins, a .919 SV% and a 2.19 GAA.

> Impress Your Friends With Knowledge!: With a Vancouver win and a Philadelphia loss against Atlanta, the President’s Trophy will call British Columbia home for awhile.