The Columbus Blue Jackets and Vancouver Canucks exist in precisely the same space in terms of the NHL standings, but couldn’t be living more different realities.
Columbus has played the entire season plagued by the most troubling Russian subplot this side of election tampering. OK, we don’t mean to make light of real-life events, but you can’t blame fans in Central Ohio for wanting to barf ever since Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin made it clear — without actually spelling it out — that they were bound for different burghs in the summer of 2019 as UFAs.
The initial — and correct, in my opinion — tack seemed to be a “bleep-it” approach from Columbus management. For a franchise with zero playoff series wins in its history and plausible aspirations for a Cup in 2019, it made more sense to keep a star forward and two-time Vezina winner in their midst and let the chips fall where they may on the open market.
Maybe the Jackets shouldn’t deviate from that plan, but with the squad now squeezed down to the final wild card spot in the East and Bobrovsky letting in goals like this one during a 4–2 loss to the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, speculation continues to build that the Blue Jackets and GM Jarmo Kekalainen are ready to reverse course.
Meanwhile, a Vancouver club nobody thought would even sniff the playoffs moved into the second wild-card position in the West thanks to a 5–1 victory over some direct competition, the Colorado Avalanche, on Saturday.
We all assumed Vancouver would be sellers this season, meaning defencemen Alex Edler and Chris Tanev — even with their no-trade protection — could be out the door. Instead, it seems like a no-brainer that the Canucks would want both in the fold as they push through an unlikely playoff run. Tanev has another year to go on his deal and while Edler’s is up this summer, the 32-year-old Swede has made it clear that — unlike the pair in Columbus — he loves his surroundings and wants to stick around.
Lock it in, Vancouver. Good luck, Columbus.
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Other Weekend Takeaways
• Nikita Kucherov, who picked up an assist in Tampa Bay’s 3-2 win over the New York Rangers on Saturday (and a $5,000 fine for a dangerous trip on Friday), became the first player to reach 80 points for the second straight year. The Bolts, by the way, also have a league-best 80 points. Of course, if past precedent holds, Connor McDavid will usurp Kucherov in the scoring race and a team other than Tampa will raise the Cup.
• If I asked you who had the second-best goals-per-game mark in the NHL, you’d likely be guessing for a while. Viktor Arvidsson bagged a brace in Nashville’s Friday night win over Florida and is scoring at a 57-goal pace (0.7 goals-per-game) after missing a month and a half with a broken thumb.
Arvidsson may still have the second-best hands on the team, though, given what Filip Forsberg pulled against the Dallas Stars while killing a penalty on Saturday. ‘Flip’ Forsberg, it is.
• Habs rookie Jesperi Kotkaniemi — who happens to be the youngest player in the league — has three goals in his past six outings, and each one of them is a tribute to high-end talent. Here’s his goal against Florida on Jan. 15:
Here he is Saturday vs. New Jersey:
And here is Sunday vs. Edmonton:
For most of the season, Kotkaniemi’s modest point totals meant praise for his game focused on finer points and all-around abilities. Now, we’re starting to see the third-overall pick from last June start to sizzle.
• Tip of the cap Pt. 1: Tuukka Rask became the winningest goalie in Boston Bruins history in style on Sunday, using a 1–0 shutout against the Washington Capitals to post his 253rd career victory and pass Tiny Thompson for top spot in Beantown. Assuming Carey Price gets eight more wins to pass Jacques Plante for the all-time Montreal lead this year, by the end of the season three Original Six goalies (Rask, Price and Henrik Lundqvist) will hold the team mark for victories.
• Tip of the cap Pt. 2: Ken Holland watched his team post weekend wins over Toronto and Ottawa, giving the long-time GM 914 victories with the Detroit Red Wings, one more than the previous franchise leader, Jack Adams. Give Holland hell, if you must, for where the Wings are right now, but don’t forget he was under the misguided gun to keep pushing for playoff spots when Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg were in the twilight of their careers. Much of the hockey world expects Steve Yzerman to return home and take the wheel of Detroit’s rebuild this summer, but I’d wager Holland and his staff would do a fine job now that they’re able to focus on building from the ground up instead of being asked to slap together a squad meant to squeak into the playoffs.
• With two tallies on the weekend, Connor McDavid is on pace for his first 50-goal season. Still, nobody on the Super Bowl-losing Los Angeles Rams has any idea who he is.
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Red and White Power Rankings
1. Calgary Flames (34-14-5): How about Elias Lindholm trolling the Hurricanes after both he and Noah Hanifin scored in a 4–3 win against their old team in Carolina on Sunday?
Elias Lindholm is pretty excited about this victory pic.twitter.com/TGYgxKVTIm
— Sportsnet 960 (@Sportsnet960) February 3, 2019
2. Winnipeg Jets (34-16-2): The six goals Winnipeg scored in the opening frame on Saturday during a 9-3 thrashing of Anaheim is a Jets/Atlanta Thrashers franchise record for most goals in a period.
3. Toronto Maple Leafs (31-17-3): Auston Matthews heating up (three goals in his past three games) means the hand-wringing over Toronto’s middling recent results (5-7-1 in their past 13) is likely coming to an end.
4. Montreal Canadiens (29-18-6): Two months ago, fans worried Carey Price’s contract might be a decade-long albatross for the team: It says here he’ll wind up a finalist for the Vezina this season.
5. Vancouver Canucks (24-22-6): It just occurred to me that hot-shot Canucks defence prospect Quinn Hughes — expected to make his NHL debut whenever his NCAA season ends this spring — will almost certainly slug it out with brother Jack Hughes (a slam dunk to go first overall in June) for rookie-of-the-year honours next season. The Sedins weren’t even close to the top of Calder voting during their freshman seasons, so can anybody think of brothers who went head to head for rookie honours?
6. Edmonton Oilers (23-24-5): On consecutive afternoons this weekend, Edmonton blew third-period leads and wound up with overtime losses on the road. The bad news has to change immediately if the Oilers are going to scrape into the post-season.
7. Ottawa Senators (19-28-5): The Sens are officially down to three weeks in terms of figuring out what happens with pending-UFAs Mark Stone and Matt Duchene before the Feb. 25 trade deadline.
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In Your Ear
Arizona didn’t get the win on Saturday, but the team did pick up a point versus the Sharks and continues to hang around the Western Conference playoff picture. On the most recent episode of Tape to Tape, my co-host Rory Boylen and I discussed just how improbable the Coyotes’ relative success is given the degree to which they’ve been decimated by injuries.
Also, consider the fact Arizona traded away Max Domi last summer and the centre, playing for the Habs, is five points away from exceeding his previous personal best of 52 points in a season with 30 games to go in the year. The player Domi was exchanged for, Alex Galchenyuk, missed some time with injury and is scoring at roughly a 15-goal pace.
Oh yeah, the Coyotes also dealt away 21-year-old centre Dylan Strome this season, a player picked third overall in 2015 who has 17 points in his past 15 contests with Chicago. The guy Arizona got back, Nick Schmaltz, was killing it in the desert until he sustained a season-ending knee injury.
How is this team doing it?
Looking Ahead
• Twenty-year-old rookie Carter Hart goes for his seventh straight win in the Philly crease tonight as the Flyers host the Canucks. If Elias Pettersson didn’t exist, Hart would be inserting himself directly into the middle of Calder talk.
• The Sabres and Hurricanes are both three points back of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot and will play a huge tilt Thursday in Buffalo. The Sabres dropped the first contest of a positively critical seven-game homestand on Friday versus Chicago.
• Hockey Day in Canada on Saturday brings, among other heart-warming things, the second matchup of the year between the Canadiens and Leafs, who — somewhat astonishingly — would be facing each other in the playoffs for the first time in 40 years if the big derby started today.
