Highlights

Quick Hits

• Have to wonder at what point Willie Desjardins realizes that the Luca Sbisa and Kevin Bieksa pairing just doesn’t work. Or if he ever does, for that matter. The two are routinely outplayed no matter the opposition. Both are slow, prone to lapses in coverage and known to chase the big hit, even at the expense of a scoring chance against. Intuitively, one could only assume that pairing the two would prove disastrous. Yet here we are at the end of the season and they’ve been paired for over 300-minutes of even strength ice-time. Tonight, both were well in the red by Corsi For%, with Bieksa posting an unimpressive 44% and Sbisa a moribund 33%. In the big picture, this pairing has posted a borderline respectable 49.2% Corsi together this season. Nothing to write home about, but I’m hardly losing sleep over it. What’s most alarming is the Goals For of 36%. That’s kind of scary.
• Count me as on board with calling Sven Baertschi “Bae”. More importantly, count me among the more enthusiastic Canucks fans where the acquisition of said Bae is concerned. It didn’t take long for the Swiss national to flash the offensive talents that led to his being a high pick in the first round of the 2011 Draft. In his first shift alone, Baertschi was in on two scoring chances in tight. Maybe that first burst was an adrenaline rush of sorts, because the game got progressively worse for Baertschi as it wore on. Penalties and the odd rookie moments plagued the final forty minutes of Baertschi’s debut. Still, the kid’s line was cooking offensively and I was encouraged by his first performance on the whole.
• That was probably one of Jannik Hansen’s best performances on the season. The pesky Dane was buzzing offensively, wreaking havoc on the forecheck and defensively sound. Only three Canucks players finished with a plus rating and you can count Hansen among them – yes, I know, immensely flawed stat. You can tell the coaching staff noticed as well. In the dying moments of this game, Hansen leapfrogged from the “fourth” line all the way to the second with the coach trying anything to knot the game at five. 
• Ready for a positive spin on today’s loss? For the Los Angeles Kings to make the playoffs, they will probably have to jump ahead of the Jets to do it. With today’s victory, the Jets put a little distance between themselves and the Kings for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West. That said, they do have an extra game played over the Kings, but still, it’s something. Besides, the Canucks all but have second place in the division locked up anyways.
• That certainly wasn’t Lack’s best performance. Is Eddie getting tired? Possible. It’s been a pretty heavy workload for the Stork, who has started all but two games since Ryan Miller went down with injury – in one of those games, Lack actually had to come into the game on mop-up duty less than a period in. Whatever the case, that’s twelve goals against in the last three games for Lack. A lot of them were goals I’d expect Lack to have on most nights… or any NHL goalie, for that matter. Maybe it’s time to give Jacob Markstrom another start? I mean, what good is an exhausted Lack to the Canucks in the post-season.

Conclusion