ST LOUIS – The Vancouver Canucks (3-2) chase a fourth straight victory tonight when they face the Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues (3-1-2) at Enterprise Center. The Canucks have not won four in a row since finishing the 2017-18 season on a 5-0-2 run which included four straight victories.
The Canucks ran the table on a three-game homestand defeating Los Angeles 8-2, Philadelphia 3-2 in a shootout and on Tuesday downed Detroit 5-1. JT Miller scored twice against the Red Wings while Elias Pettersson, Alex Edler and Troy Stecher had the others. Thatcher Demko made 26 saves in his season debut in goal. He allowed a goal on the first shot of the game just 30 seconds after the opening face-off, but was perfect the rest of the way. Demko is now 4-1-1 in his last six NHL starts going back to late last season. He made 36 saves in a 3-2 shootout loss in St. Louis on the final day of the regular season last April.
The Canucks will go with the same line-up they used on Tuesday night with one minor switch. Josh Leivo will move to right wing with Bo Horvat and Tanner Pearson while Micheal Ferland slides to the left side with Brandon Sutter and Jake Virtanen.
After scoring just once in their first 14 power play attempts this season, the Canucks struck three times with the man-advantage on Tuesday. They’re now 4 for 19 (21.1%) on the season.
With contributions from Edler and Stecher, the Canucks now have six goals from defensemen in just five games. They finished last year with a total of 27 for the season.
Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson both ride three game point streaks into action tonight. Boeser has 1+4=5 while Pettersson has 2+3=5 over that span. Boeser had a hattrick and Pettersson had a five point night (1+4) in St. Louis last December.
Tonight, the Canucks open a four game road trip that will also see them visit New Jersey, the New York Rangers and Detroit. The team is 0-2 on the road after opening the season with setbacks in Edmonton and Calgary. The road has not been kind to the Canucks in 2019. Going back to New Year’s Eve, the Canucks are 5-13-3 with just one regulation win in that span of 21 games (February 2 at Colorado). Quite remarkably, Bo Horvat has just one goal in his last 23 road games – an overtime winner in Chicago last March.
The Blues have been off since a 3-2 overtime loss to the New York Islanders in Brooklyn on Monday. That was followed by the team taking the Stanley Cup to the White House on Tuesday. St. Louis has managed to pick up a point in five of its six games this season. That includes both home games so far this season where they suffered an overtime loss to Washington on opening night and followed that up with a 3-2 victory over Dallas.
Brayden Schenn leads the club with five goals and with seven points has a share of the team scoring lead with Ryan O’Reilly (1+6). Schenn was held off the scoresheet on opening night, but has scored a goal in each of the five games since then.
Jordan Binnington, who finished runner-up to Elias Pettersson for the Calder Trophy, has started five of the Blues six games this season. He is 2-1-2 with a 2.97 GAA and a 91.0 save percentage.
The Blues gave up a power play goal on opening night and have killed off nine straight penalties since. The Canucks have given up just one power play goal on the season so tonight is a battle of two of the top penalty killing teams in the league.
The Canucks went 2-0-1 against the Blues last season. This is Vancouver’s lone visit to the Show Me State this season. St. Louis will roll into Rogers Arena on November 5th and January 27th.
.
CANUCKS LINE-UP
Miller-Pettersson-Boeser
Pearson-Horvat-Leivo
Ferland-Sutter-Virtanen
Schaller-Beagle-Motte
Edler-Myers
Hughes-Tanev
Benn-Stecher
Demko
BLUES LINE-UP
Blais-O’Reilly-Perron
Schwartz-Schenn-Tarasenko
Fabbri-Bozek-Steen
Sundqvist-Barbashev-Thomas
Gunnarsson-Pietrangelo
Bouwmeester-Parayko
Dunn-Faulk
Binnington
