It’s been a season of extremes for the Vancouver Canucks.
From the early season struggles that culminated in general manager Jim Benning and head coach Travis Green losing their jobs at the beginning of December to the 180-degree turn the Canucks have made since Bruce Boudreau took over as head coach, the ebbs and flows have been dramatic in Vancouver.
But now as we approach midseason with the trade deadline looming, it becomes time to balance it all out and ask: ‘who are the 2021-22 Vancouver Canucks?’
The Canucks have gone 9-4-1 since Boudreau took over. But three of those losses have come in their last four games in Carolina, Florida and Tampa Bay, in what is a difficult and perhaps season-defining road trip.
It begs the question as to whether this is the Canucks starting to come back to earth, reverting to the form they displayed for most of the season’s first two months? Or were the Canucks’ three losses a small blip on the radar, a product of facing three of the league’s top teams on the road?
Whichever way you look at it, the overall math doesn’t lie. Vancouver is 17-18-3 and sits five points out of a playoff spot.
Speaking on Monday’s episode of The Daily Faceoff Show, Frank Seravalli said that how the Canucks finish their five-game road trip in Nashville on Tuesday could go a long way toward dictating general manager Jim Rutherford’s approach at the trade deadline.
Seravalli: “They have one more game against Nashville. That kind of makes it really interesting in that it was in some ways a season-defining road trip.
“You get off to the start they did under Bruce Boudreau. It’s like, OK, well let’s now see how we stack up against some of the very best in the NHL. Florida, Tampa and Carolina has sort of been the triangle of death for Canadian teams with playoff hopes. You saw the Calgary Flames get shredded on that same road trip. It started the same way for the Canucks, outscored 13-5 in those three losses.
“You’re thinking, OK, this team isn’t anywhere near where it needs to be. I know Jim Rutherford had told other general managers around the league, ‘let’s get through this road trip’ and then we can engage in some conversation about what we’d like to do.
“Now the funny part about that is, all of a sudden, if you end off this trip with a win against the Preds, who’ve been near the top of the Western Conference in terms of points – not points percentage – well then all of a sudden, does going 2-3 put a bit of a different spin on it?
“At the end of the day, the math is still the math. You need 94 points to get in. That’s the current pace for the second wild-card spot. Meaning that the Canucks would have to go on something like a .647 points percentage the rest of the way. What does that mean in real terms? That means they have to go something like 25-12-7 over their last number of games. They’re 9-4-1 since Bruce Boudreau took over now. They need to be sort of at that same 9-4-1 pace the rest of the way. It feels like a lot to ask.
“I think a lot of teams saw these three losses out east for Vancouver and they’re saying, maybe that means we can get J.T. Miller now?”
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