[GDT] Vancouver Canucks vs. Edmonton Oilers | May 20th, 6:00PM PT | Round 2, Game 7 (Series tied 3-3)

[Jaimito]

 

 

Get well BB! 

 

He'll be on ice to lift that cup though. 

[Canuck You]

Let's end em' tonight!

 

 

 

Edited May 20 by Canuck You

[Canuck You]

6 minutes ago, Jaimito said:

 

 

Get well BB! 

 

He'll be on ice to lift that cup though. 

Just a major blow but health first, Always.

[Rip The Mesh]

1 hour ago, VanOriginal said:

It may be difficult to get that rumoured big return. Other teams also see how he is performing. But I wouldn't rush into anything with Pettersson. Whatever happens tonight let's enjoy the game and season. Whether the Canucks win the cup or not this year, I expect Pettersson won't be happy with his performance and next year he will be back with a vengeance 

Didn't he get the no trade clause anyway? Maybe I'm wrong on that?

[Canuck You]

1 hour ago, Odd. said:

I’ve defended Pettersson a lot over the months.
 

Simply put, if Pettersson doesn’t show up tonight in arguably the most important game of his career, you have to revisit that rumored potential Carolina trade and ship him out for a large return of assets. You can’t have an $11.6M player not show up while your $8M and $7M stars are carrying this team on their backs. An $11.6M player CANNOT be a passenger.

Doubt that happens anymore unless we retain a chunk.

[CanuckMan]

Boeser being out is a big hit to our team. But like Tocchet said, there are passengers on this team. If even 2-3 of those passengers become engaged today then we will come out on top.

[Rip The Mesh]

Maybe Brock will be there at the end of the game to help cheer the victory with his team-mates

 

[CanuckMan]

Canucks this year BEND but do not BREAK. Canucks usually come out with a much better effort after a loss like that. Oilers better be scared. Hit anything that moves if you aren't scoring damn it! Should be the message sent to all the players 

[Rip The Mesh]

 

[IBatch]

4 minutes ago, Rip The Mesh said:

Didn't he get the no trade clause anyway? Maybe I'm wrong on that?

 UFA portion of his deal yes.   Same as JT Miller  in TB, until the UFA portion starts, Vancouver owns his rights, so next year until  2025-2026. and yep a full NMC after that.    

 

 

[NewbieCanuckFan]

1 hour ago, Odd. said:

I’ve defended Pettersson a lot over the months.
 

Simply put, if Pettersson doesn’t show up tonight in arguably the most important game of his career, you have to revisit that rumored potential Carolina trade and ship him out for a large return of assets. You can’t have an $11.6M player not show up while your $8M and $7M stars are carrying this team on their backs. An $11.6M player CANNOT be a passenger.

Well to be fair, he's not a 11.6 million the start of the next season.  But yeah, he's not even playing to the level of 50% of that amount in this post-season.  MIA.

 

Zero pressure in that he's not the Captain (and the headaches associated with that responsibility) as well as JT Miller taking a bunch of the media stuff/questions.  All EP has to do is 'play the game'.

 

This is the game where he can silence the critics.  

Edited May 20 by NewbieCanuckFan

[Rip The Mesh]

4 minutes ago, IBatch said:

 UFA portion of his deal yes.   Same as JT Miller  in TB, until the UFA portion starts, Vancouver owns his rights, so next year until  2025-2026. and yep a full NMC after that.    

 

 

Remember the good ole days of performance clauses?  

[VanOriginal]

21 minutes ago, Rip The Mesh said:

Didn't he get the no trade clause anyway? Maybe I'm wrong on that?

I can't remember when it kicks in but I think it's next summer, so thteam would have another year to see

Edited May 20 by VanOriginal

[Nucker67]

8 minutes ago, NewbieCanuckFan said:

Well to be fair, he's not a 11.6 million the start of the next season.  But yeah, he's not even playing to the level of 50% of that amount in this post-season.  MIA.

 

Zero pressure in that he's not the Captain (and the headaches associated with that responsibility) as well as JT Miller taking a bunch of the media stuff/questions.  All EP has to do is 'play the game'.

 

This is the game where he can silence the critics.  

 

Pettersson doesn't deserve his current $7,350,000 the way he's played in these playoffs. Petey needs to dig deep and play his little heart out if the Canucks want to win. 

 

Will we be talking about how awesome Petey was in Game 7 and the rest of these playoffs or will we spend the summer complaining about how Petey will become the most overpaid player in the league? More to come.

 

C'mon Petey, do it for Brock

[Jaimito]

 

The Eagle chimes in. 

[grumpyone]

steaks are ready for the grill... lyonaise potatoes and greek salad for sides tonight.

No Boeser sucks, hope he gets better soon. 

[Slegr]

Woke up this morning with more hesitation than optimism. It’s harder to see a path forward in these playoffs without Boeser. But screw it. There’s only five teams left standing in a 32-league team, and we’re one of them. We just need to take it one shift at a time. I hope we give the Oilers nothing tonight. Play them hard. Even if we get called on it, at least we’d go down swinging.

Edited May 20 by Slegr

[Rocket-68]

4 hours ago, Rip The Mesh said:

Didn't he get the no trade clause anyway? Maybe I'm wrong on that?

 

According to NHL Cap Friendly, Pettersson's contact has no trade or movement protection for the first year (was corrected by @Canucks164cup). Having said that, I don't think management will move Petey any time soon unless an offer was made that PA/JR can't refuse. Petey is still "young" at 25, having had career years with better years on the horizon. A year or two with 100+ pts and we will look back at this contract in a few years as a good one. 

 

I for one am rooting for Petey and believe he will come through tonight (and for years to come).

 

 

Canucks have about $24,778,333 in Cap Space to play with and a fairly solid roster already under contract. Coilers on the other hand have a bit of a problem with only $9,833,333 in Cap Space available with part of their roster populated with AHL players under contract with gaping holes. That and Dry-my-Saddle in his final year of his contract. This forces a "Cup-or-Bust" mentality thus I really hope we drop the "BUST" part on them tonight. Will make for exciting times next year for both our Beloved Canucks and the Coilers. But that is a discussion for another day.

 

GO CANUCKS GO!

Edited May 20 by Rocket-68

[Rip The Mesh]

I Looked and saw May 20 6pm and went, wth? Had to look it up, Queen Victoria day/ The one I never remember. hope it brings good luck.

One would have to surmise to Vancouver cause Edmonton's a dump.

[Jaimito]

 

 

Canucks Game 7 roadmap: How to defeat the Oilers without Brock Boeser

 

It’s impossible not to feel for Brock Boeser.

 

The 27-year-old Vancouver Canucks star was in the process of capping off a career year by elevating his game in the Stanley Cup playoffs. He’s been Vancouver’s leading goal scorer all year, while curating a collection of stunning, clutch moments over just the past two weeks to rival most NHL stars over entire careers.

 

On Sunday, Irfaan Gaffar reported that Boeser wouldn’t be available for Game 7 of the second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman followed up that report with details about a blood clotting issue that will keep Boeser out of action indefinitely.

 

All indications are that Boeser isn’t facing a life-threatening issue and is going to be OK, which is what really matters.

 

It’s a tough blow, though. Not just for the Canucks and their hopes of victory in Game 7, but for Boeser personally.

 

Given what he’s accomplished this season and given the personal ordeals he’s endured over the past few years, to have this potentially crowning moment in his career halted just like that seems grossly unjust.

 

And yet the show must go on for Boeser’s teammates. Game 7 will be played on Monday night at Rogers Arena, and Boeser’s expected absence will loom large over Vancouver’s effort to upset the heavily favoured Oilers in a do-or-die Game 7.

 

The book makers have already adjusted the odds, accounting for Vancouver playing without their leading goal scorer. Prior to the Boeser news, the Canucks were priced on the money line as +120 underdogs (a roughly 46-percent implied probability of victory). After the Boeser news, the line moved to +135 (a roughly 42-percent implied probability of victory).

 

That’s a meaningful difference and it reflects the reality that losing Boeser weakens Vancouver significantly. This Canucks have already struggled mightily to generate shots and goals, struggled on the power play, and are coming off a Game 6 performance in which they failed to contain Connor McDavid.

 

Those are all aspects of the game in which Boeser is a key contributor. Without him, some of this team’s biggest weaknesses could be thrown into even starker relief in their most important game of the season.

 

Still, this is playoff hockey we’re talking about. And it’s only one game.

 

Weird things can happen in a single game. Anything can happen, even.

 

A bounce, a deflection, one missed assignment may ultimately decide Monday night’s contest, and this playoff series. There is a very real path for the Canucks to complete this underdog upset script and advance to the Western Conference Final — even with Boeser and starting netminder Thatcher Demko sidelined.

 

Let’s explore five things the Canucks will need to do on Monday night to finish off the Oilers.

 

Get home on the forecheck

This series has turned primarily on whether Vancouver’s forechecking pressure has disrupted the Oilers breakout, or not.

 

When Edmonton is able to get out of their end of the ice cleanly, they’ve dominated the puck. And often, they’ve been able to get loose off the rush as well, producing most of their key moments on sequences when they’re able to skate with speed at and beyond Canucks defenders.

 

When the Canucks are able to force turnovers, however, Vancouver has been able to skate with Edmonton at five-on-five. In Vancouver’s most impressive games of this series — particularly Games 1 and 5 — the forecheck served as a bottleneck on the Oilers attack.

 

In those games and in those moments, the Canucks have been able to cut off Edmonton’s dynamic offensive attack at the stem, while regularly producing key counterattacking goals, several of which — Boeser’s second goal in Game 3 and Phil Di Giuseppe’s game-tying goal in Game 5 — have been absolute daggers.

 

It’s all tied together at five-on-five, and it goes beyond the forecheck. Turnovers high in the offensive zone have also fed the Oilers’ rush attack, so Vancouver’s puck management will also have to be sharp in Game 7.

 

The Oilers have had a significant five-on-five edge all series, and while that territorial edge has been blunted by feeble Oilers goaltending performances earlier in this series, it’s still a major factor that Vancouver will have to overcome in Game 7.

 

That starts with getting after the Oilers defence at even strength, disrupting their breakout, and using those moments when Vancouver is able to catch Edmonton leaning the wrong way to establish zone time and some measure of control of the overall game environment.

 

Be opportunistic

Vancouver has been a wildly efficient finishing team all season.

 

After struggling to convert chances in the first round, the Canucks exploded in the first three games of this series, chasing Stuart Skinner from the series temporarily and stealing Game 1 despite falling behind 4-1 and Game 3 despite being severely outplayed for long stretches of the first and second periods.

 

Now, the Canucks will tell you that their opportunism is by design; they are loaded with one-shot scoring threats, are masters of finishing through screens and layered traffic, selective in the shots they take, they look to create second-stick opportunities and deflections and strike quickly off turnovers in the neutral zone to drive their efficient shooting. There’s some measure of truth to that.

 

In going about creating offence, the Canucks lean on higher variance methods of finishing. Vancouver might be great at shooting through traffic, but the types of rush chances the Oilers generate are always going to be a more reliable source of goals over the long haul than a shot from the point — no matter how good the screen or how sharp the deflection.

 

And, of course, when the Canucks’ preferred method of creating goals doesn’t work, the team can appear to be completely out of answers offensively— as it did in Game 6.

 

Vancouver’s shooting fortunes have trended down as this series has progressed. Up 2-1 in the series going into Game 4, Vancouver just needed to prevent the Oilers from winning four of five to advance to the Conference Final. Since then, they’ve scored just five total goals across three games, despite the spotty goaltending performances of Oilers netminders.

 

Game 7s are often nervy, low-scoring affairs. And a 2-1 game would certainly serve Vancouver’s interests.

 

Nonetheless, given how difficult shots on goal have been to come by, the Canucks need to cash in on a couple of the high-variance scoring opportunities that have been this team’s bread and butter.

 

 

Giving Elias Pettersson some time on J.T. Miller’s wing seems like a necessity. (Bob Frid / USA TODAY Sports)

Find an answer on J.T. Miller’s wing

Even as Vancouver has gone on an exciting, successful and memorable playoff run, there’s been a constant sense that this is a lineup that’s short a top-six calibre forward (or two).

 

This isn’t exactly a secret. There’s a reason the club bid for the likes of Jake Guentzel and Tyler Toffoli ahead of the NHL trade deadline, even after adding Elias Lindholm in a massive deal during the All-Star break.

 

This is where losing Boeser really stings. He’s arguably one of this team’s two bonafide top-six wingers, so his loss compounds what was already a shortage.

 

Amping up the difficulty of moving forward without him is the work he’s done defensively. Boeser’s size, battle-winning avilify along the wall and all-around hockey IQ have made him a high-quality two-way winger. He’s eaten a ton of minutes for Vancouver in a matchup role riding shotgun with J.T. Miller, and that’s included a steady diet of head-to-head minutes against McDavid in the Edmonton series.

 

In Game 6, the Oilers used home-ice advantage to duck the McDavid-Miller matchup to some extent. One would expect Vancouver to hunt that matchup with more discipline in Game 7, but even beyond Boeser’s scoring touch and playmaking from down low, his absence from the lineup hurts the two-way chops of the Miller line.

 

Replacing Boeser isn’t really possible with what Vancouver has at its disposal, and even recreating his impact in the aggregate is a significant challenge. Let’s go over Tocchet’s options here. For our purposes, we’re going to assume that Pius Suter and Miller continue to skate together in Game 7 and that Elias Lindholm returns to play with Dakota Joshua and Conor Garland on Vancouver’s second line:

 

• Ilya Mikheyev is probably the best defensive option, but he’d remove a fair bit of scoring pop from the Miller line, which the Canucks can’t really afford given how difficult goals have been to come by.

 

• Sam Lafferty can bring some speed and, hopefully, physicality if played up the lineup, but he’s a bottom-of-the-lineup piece with just four goals scored since January 15th. He’s also not nearly as impactful a two-way winger as Boeser.

 

• Nils Höglander scored in Game 6, but hasn’t often played more than fourth-line minutes in the postseason and still has some distance to travel to earn Tocchet’s trust as a defensive winger. It’s hard to imagine a player with that profile being tasked with chasing McDavid and company in a do-or-die game, but Höglander could be a situational option when Vancouver is looking for offence and a high-work-rate forechecking presence.

 

• Vasili Podkolzin succeeded on Miller’s line toward the back half of the “Bruce There It Is!” season, but hasn’t produced much or been heavily utilized by Tocchet at any point this season.

 

• Di Giuseppe is an interesting option here, especially given his chemistry with Miller from earlier in this series. If Tocchet opts for something predictable and defensively reliable, Di Giuseppe could be a tempting option to draw the assignment.

 

• Elias Pettersson is surely going to spend some time on the ice with Miller in Game 6. We’ve seen Tocchet load up the Lotto Line on occasion throughout the playoffs, and he has sent Miller out situationally with Pettersson on occasion independent of that, most notably in Game 5 when the two combined on a game-winning goal in the final minute. Given Vancouver’s lack of other high-end options capable of both driving play and producing offence, double shifting Pettersson to give him some looks on the Miller line seems like a necessity.

 

Don’t lose the special-teams battle

The Canucks have done incredible work limiting the Oilers’ power play over the past three games, killing 10 consecutive opportunities. Perfection isn’t possible given how proficiently the Oilers’ PP1 generates scoring chances, but truthfully, there aren’t likely to be many power-play opportunities remaining in this series either way.

 

Given what we usually see in Game 7s, when penalties become exceedingly tricky to draw, there’s only another Oilers power play or two left to kill. Actually killing those opportunities, if they happen, will go a long way toward giving the Canucks their best chance of victory.

 

As for the Vancouver power play, it’s been ineffective and often frustrating to watch, but it’s cashed three goals in the series. At the very least, in combination with Vancouver’s stout penalty killing, the Oilers have only managed to net a plus-2 goal differential in special teams across six games. That’s a reasonable margin, and a major reason the Canucks have forced a seventh and decisive game.

 

Vancouver has lost a key power-play weapon in Boeser, but at least Garland had some reps playing down low in Boeser’s usual spot on the Canucks power play down the stretch. They’ll still be able to ice five guys with some familiarity with one another, with Miller, Pettersson and Quinn Hughes around the outside.

 

Scoring a power-play goal and winning the special-teams battle in Game 7 would be a bonus, but at least managing a special-teams draw is going to be crucial for Vancouver.

 

Get a bounce-back performance from Arturs Silovs

Thatcher Demko won’t be back for Game 7. Tocchet confirmed as much on Saturday.

 

Unless the club throws a shocking curveball and starts Casey DeSmith, who hasn’t played since he sustained a minor injury in Game 3 of the first-round series against the Predators, it’s going to be Arturs Silovs’ net.

 

Silovs has been calm, cool and collected for Vancouver in this playoff run. He pitched a shutout in a crucial Game 6 against the Predators, out-dueling a perennial Vezina candidate in Juuse Saros and permitting Vancouver to advance to the second round.

 

And he’s been clearly better than Edmonton’s tandem in this series, an edge that has helped Vancouver earn this opportunity.

 

That’s a low bar, however, and Silovs has still stopped a below-expected number of goals against the Edmonton attack. And he’s coming off a tough outing in Game 5, in which he surrendered five goals.

 

Silovs seems relatively unflappable. His World Championship experience on home soil last year and his performance in key games against the Predators means that he has some experience on a big stage.

 

If he can bounce back, if Vancouver can maintain the edge in net they’ve had throughout this series, then this team will still have a chance at

eliminating the Oilers and shocking the hockey world.

 

 

[-dlc-]

Watching the news and they said athletes can be subject to blood clots due to injuries where blood pools/clots and takes time to break down. Family history can come into play as well.

[Canucks164cup]

Tickets on sale still, starting anywhere near $400-500 for cheaper, but up to $1000 for others. Just reported on global news.

 

Stay away from the one she saw for $12,000 

Edited May 20 by Canucks164cup

[Joe King]

10 hours ago, mmkk said:

We are winning game 7 tomorrow no doubt about it. Victoria day means Victory for Vancouver.

That's the attitude. 

 

[-dlc-]

1 minute ago, Canucks164cup said:

Tickets on sale still, starting anywhere near $400-500 for cheaper, but up to $1000 for others. Just reported on global news.

LOL they also said they've seen resellers trying to get.....$12,000.00.

[NewbieCanuckFan]

12 minutes ago, Rocket-68 said:

 

According to NHL Cap Friendly, Pettersson's contact has no trade or movement protection. Having said that, I don't think management will move Petey any time soon unless an offer was made that PA/JR can't refuse. Petey is still "young" at 25, having had career years with better years on the horizon. A year or two with 100+ pts and we will look back at this contract in a few years as a good one. 

 

I for one am rooting for Petey and believe he will come through tonight (and for years to come).

 

With a cap hit of 11.6 million, I would think a 100 point season would be the minimum expected.

Edited May 20 by NewbieCanuckFan