One night after an improbable victory in Las Vegas, the Vancouver Canucks (6-4) limp into Gila River Arena to face the Arizona Coyotes (3-5).
Already without top scorers Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser and checking forward Jay Beagle, the Canucks lost Alex Edler, Chris Tanev and Sven Baertschi to injury and still found a way to post the franchise’s first ever win over the Golden Knights beating Vegas 3-2 in a shootout. Bo Horvat scored both Canuck goals in regulation time, Markus Granlund scored the only goal of a four-round skills competition, Ben Hutton logged a career-high 29:25 and Jacob Markstrom posted 33 saves and four more in the shootout.
Through the injuries, the Canucks are 5-2 in their past seven games and currently sit in top spot in the Pacific Division with 12 points.
It’ll be a patchwork line-up tonight to conclude the Canucks first set of back to back games this season. Pettersson, Edler and Baertschi are all unlikely to play while the status of Boeser and Tanev remains unclear. The Canucks have recalled defensemen Alex Biega and Guillaume Brisebois from Utica. As well, Michael Del Zotto who has been a healthy scratch the past eight games and Darren Archibald are available.
Horvat’s on a tear scoring five of the Canucks last 11 goals since Pettersson left the line-up. He has seven goals in his past nine outings. To put Horvat’s exploits in perspective: since Pettersson left the line-up in Florida on October 13th, none of Loui Eriksson, Nikolay Goldobin, Jake Virtanen, Adam Gaudette, Antoine Roussel, Markus Granlund, Tim Schaller, Tyler Motte or Brendan Leipsic has scored a goal in the past five games and yet the team is 3-2 in those contests.
The power of Pettersson is evident in the fact that while he was in the line-up, the team’s power play was 5/19 in the first five games. In the five without the Swedish teen, the Canucks are 1/8 with the man-advantage and still managing to find ways to win.
The Canucks have surrendered the first goal in eight of the 10 games they’ve played so far this season including all seven on the road. However, they still have yet to trail 2-0 in any game and they have a 4-3 road record.
The Coyotes return to action after a 4-1 win in Columbus on Tuesday that put an end to a four game road trip. Christian Fischer had his first NHL hattrick against the Blue Jackets and now has four goals in his past two games. He’s scored four of the team’s past seven goals.
The Yotes seem to have found their scoring touch after getting shutout in back to back games to start the season and three of their first four games. They scored three goals in their first four games and have a dozen goals in the past four games.
Clayton Keller leads the club in scoring with five points (3+2) while Fischer is the team’s leading goal-scorer (4). Alex Galchenyuk, acquired from Montreal in the off-season in exchange for Max Domi, made his Coyotes debut in Thursday’s victory.
Darcy Kuemper will get the start in goal for Arizona. Kuemper made 35 saves in Tuesday’s win over Columbus and is 1-1 on the season with a 1.51 GAA and a 95.3% save percentage. This will be his first home appearance of the season.
These Pacific Division rivals will meet four more times this season but won’t see each other again until January 10th in Vancouver.
