Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

The next 20,743 kilometres will make or break the season in Vancouver.

Toronto. Montreal. Ottawa. Boston …

You never know what the turning point is until your season is over. Then, only when you look back, can you identify it as something that took the team north or south. Once hindsight kicks in.

But as the Vancouver Canucks step out for what is, technically, the longest road trip in National Hockey League history, it couldn’t possibly be in a better position to turn this Olympian road trip into a positive. With six straight wins the Canucks aren’t just leaving Vancouver today for Toronto on charter aircraft. It’s like they are being shot out of a cannon.

Tampa Bay. Florida. Columbus. Minnesota…

The only scary thing for Canucks fans however, is this:

Can it get any better for a team that has gone 17-4-2 since Dec. 10? Can the Canucks keep this up, or like any team that has been winning for nearly two months, is the swoon just around the corner?

And if the swoon begins on a 14-game road trip, can all that good work be erased in a span of 14 games?

Columbus. Detroit. Chicago. Nashville. Colorado. Phoenix.

What lies ahead of the sixth place team in the entire NHL is a journey that spans 12,889 miles — 20,743 km — stops in eight different NHL cities, and features a long trek back to Vancouver at the midway point of the Olympic break.

Many players will likely fly from Minnesota on Feb. 15 directly to their vacation hot spots, then gather in Vancouver near the end of the Olympics. The team will hold a mini-camp prior to re-starting the season in Columbus on March 2.

A host of others will be playing in the Winter Olympics, of course, and they are obviously the most crucial Canucks: the Sedin brothers, Roberto Luongo, Ryan Kesler, Pavol Demitra, Christian Ehrhoff. Injuries could swell even that number by a couple, but the question is, will fatigue set in for the Canucks’ leaders?

With 14 road games and a highly charged Olympic tournament between now and its last game of the trip on March 10, can the Canucks maintain what just may be the highest level of consistency they have shown us in years?

“We're in every game,” said the NHL’s leading scorer Henrik Sedin. “When you're in them it makes it easier for sure, and we've got guys in here who can score on any given night.”

The 12,889 miles is longer than a return flight to Beijing and is split up into 16 flight segments. It is 13,557 chairlift trips to the top of Whistler mountain.

If you travelled Canada from coast to coast four times, you would cover almost as much ground as the Canucks.

But it’s not a surprise. The team has known about the road trip since the schedule was released last summer. So already, the Canucks have played 31 home games — more than any team in the league — and 22 road games, less than any team in the league. But the disparity you might expect does not actually exist.

Five other clubs have played 28 home games, just three less than the Canucks, and five teams have road game totals within two of the Canucks. The Canucks advantage will come late in the schedule, when they play 10 of its final 15 games of the season at GM Place.

Of course, it will have earned that cushy schedule down the home stretch.

As for the state of the team heading into this hellacious road trip, well, the good news is that it couldn't be better.

The Canucks have continued racking up the points despite the loss of three starting defencemen — Sami Salo, Willie Mitchell and Kevin Bieksa. With the leadership they’re getting from the Sedins’ line, the depth from the Kesler line, and the goaltending Luongo gives them, there aren’t many holes in Vancouver’s game right now.

Mason Raymond is playing wonderfully and had two goals and an assist in a 3-2 win over St. Louis last night. He has been the best Canuck is more than one game of late. Now Kyle Wellwood’s game is shoring up, and perhaps he will wake up that regular season demon Demitra.

This team plus-26 on third period goal differential, which means they get stronger as the games go on.

If Vancouver can extrapolate that strength on to its season, the Canucks might just look back at this 14-gamer as the best thing that ever happened to them.