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Canucks move into second-place tie in overall NHL standings

Rob Williams
Rob Williams
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Dec 16 2023, 10:00 pm
Canucks move into second-place tie in overall NHL standings
Nick Wosika/USA TODAY Sports

The Vancouver Canucks earned a point, following their first shootout of the season today in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Wild walked away with the 2-1 victory, as Mats Zuccarello scored the only goal of the shootout. Andrei Kuzmenko, J.T. Miller, and Elias Pettersson were unable to answer for Vancouver.

Teddy Blueger scored the Canucks’ only goal of the game 3:50 into the first period, completing a nice passing play from Dakota Joshua and Conor Garland. The third line is absolutely rolling right now, which is why Rick Tocchet has praised them of late.

Frederick Gaudreau scored the lone marker for the Wild, from Marcus Foligno and Patrick Maroon, with less than two minutes left in the first period.

Nils Höglander was taken off Miller’s line and demoted to the fourth line, not long after the Canucks conceded the goal. He swapped spots with Phil Di Giuseppe.

Despite Tocchet’s reason praise for his team, he wasn’t thrilled with the result from today’s game. Though he gave his guys credit for battling, he thought they got away from what has made them successful to this point in the season.

“The execution was off a little,” Tocchet told reporters postgame. “I thought the third [period] we started finding ourselves a little bit.

“We grinded it out and got the point, so you like that. The execution though, we had a tough time handling pucks. You’ve got to learn how to play these tight games when things aren’t going your way. Try not to give them much. Casey was good, that’s a positive.”

Backup goalie Casey DeSmith was outstanding for the Canucks, stopping 30 of 31 shots he faced. DeSmith has given the Canucks everything they could have hoped for since picking him up in a pre-season trade with the Montreal Canadiens. The Canucks have picked up a point in seven of his nine starts, which includes five wins.

You couldn’t say the same thing about the Canucks’ usually-excellent power play, which went 0-for-5 in Minnesota.

Today’s game was a great example of a so-called “scheduled loss,” given they had to fly 3.5 hours to Minnesota for a matinee game and acclimatize to a two-hour time change, with just one day off since Thursday’s game in Vancouver.

“We performed well. First game of a road trip, it can be tough hopping off a plane,” DeSmith said. “I thought we defended well. We had some chances, obviously [Filip Gustavsson] played well too. Going up against a good goalie, I thought we played well.”

They’ll be playing earlier than usual tomorrow as well, for an afternoon game in Chicago (12 pm PT), as the Canucks get their first look at Connor Bedard.

Canucks move up the standings

It’s not all bad news for the Canucks though, as they continue to climb up the standings. The loss snapped Vancouver’s four-game winning streak, though it did extend their run of picking up at least a point to five games.

There’s now just one team in the NHL — the division rival Vegas Golden Knights — that have more points in the overall standings than the Canucks. Vancouver has 42 points (20-9-2), which has them tied with the Boston Bruins. One caveat to that stat is that the Canucks have played more games than many of the teams that surround them.

They’re still fifth in the league by points percentage though, and are the surprise of the NHL this year.

nhl standings dec 16 2023

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