Is it just me, or are the Canucks heating up at the right time? After a shooutout win against the Calgary Flames on Tuesday (which saw a nice battle between Alex Burrows and our old pal Todd Bertuzzi), my favorite hockey squad rolled into the Nation's Capital ready to take names. And did they ever. Another clutch money win, a 5-2 beat down of the Ottawa Sens, and the Canucks have nailed down 7 wins in their last 8 (a nice follow up to losing 10 out of 12 in the month of January). This game saw a new line combination of the Twins and Alex Burrows take charge, and the recently hot Senators fall back to their old ways.
The Orca came out hard in the first period, earning three netters to jump out to a big lead against Canada's version of the Caps. Alex Burrows skated toward the net with Daniel providing a screen, and blasted a wrister right past Elliot and into the net. The new top line would strike again, as Daniel Sedin side stepped the defense and fed a perfect pass to his brother Hank for another easy strike. Kevin Bieksa topped the period off with a blasting slap shot on the power play for his 10th of the year. Either Newmarket, Ontario native Brian Elliot sucks between the pipes (7-4-2, 2.62 GAA), or the Ottawa coach really picked the wrong line to match up with the new Sedin/Sedin/Burrows line. I guess based on the numbers, it would be answer #2. Of course, the Ottawa coach didn't change the line match ups, and Daniel Sedin would strike again at 8:35 of the second period for his 25th goal of the year. Ottawa would finally get on the scoreboard, with Dany Heatley nailed a power play blast at 12:37, and Mike Fisher scored on a couple of nice passes to beat Lu as Mattias Ohlund came crashing into Luongo to knock them both down. Now, if Vancouver would have lost the game, I would have pointed out that Ohlund was pushed down into Lu and the goal shouldn't have counted. Luckily, that didn't happen, so I didn't have to complain. But I wanted too! But not at the cost of 2 points. All we had left was Pavol Demitra's empty netter that didn't even come on a shot. Po Po just kind of bumped into a Sens player, and the puck slowly drifted toward the net with nobody to stop things. It was a slow, but beautiful 16th goal of the year for Demitra. What an exciting finish.
The three stars were somewhat amiss. The liberal Ottawa media picked 1) Hank (1 goal and 3 assists) 2) My man AB (1 goal and 2 assists), and somehow 3) Peterborough, Ontario native Mike Fisher (1 goal and being on the home team gets you in the top 3?). On a serious side note, Peterborough, Ontario is the city that my Sligo, Ireland family immigrated to prior to moving to this beautiful Nation. That is the truth. Interesting, eh? The LSF Underrated 3 Stars looks like 1) Hank (they got that right), 2) My man AB (again, they got that right), and 3) Willie Mitchell (an enormous +3 rating in a very underrated evening). That should set things straight.
The 29-21-8 (66 points) Canucks are marching back toward the top, and now sit just -8 of Calgary. At least we're gaining ground on the Northwest's groundlings: +4 on Edmonton, +6 on Minnie, and a serious +11 on Colorado. Looking at the bigger picture, the Blue & Green are in the #5 spot in the conference. Looking up, we are -8 of Chicago in the 4 hole (just like we are -8 of the division lead, which would put us in the top 3). Looking in the rear view, #6 Columbus is dead even at 66 points, with #7 Dallas -1, and #8 Edmonton at -4. The bottom of the conference has Anaheim at 9th (-5 of Vancouver), Minnie in 10th (-6 of Vancouver), and L.A. in 11th (-7 of Vancouver). Isn't it cool to see Anaheim just outside of the playoff chase after 59 games? Keep a close eye on Dallas (a game in hand against Vancouver) and Minnie (2 games in hand). Chicago also looks good, sitting tied for the least amount of games played in the West.
The battle against the East continues, as the Canucks take on Andrew Do's Maple Leafs on Saturday, some loser's Canadians on Tuesday for a rematch (we won last Sunday), and the Lightning on next Friday. Can someone say East Coast pummeling?
Has anyone else noticed that when the Canucks are winning, nobody says anything about a recent lack of production from Mats Sundin?
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