The Vancouver Canucks can head into the league-wide three-day Christmas break tied for the most points in the Western Conference. All they need to do is pick up a win at home on Saturday night against the team tied with the fewest points in the league, the San Jose Sharks.
The Canucks head into Saturday’s contest with 47 points, tied with the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, who play at Florida on Saturday afternoon. But Vancouver is listed ahead of Vegas in the top spot in the Pacific Division because it holds the regulation wins tiebreaker, 21-15.
So all Rick Tocchet’s squad, which failed to make the playoffs a year ago, needs to do to head into Christmas ranked No. 1 in the West is pick up a home win over San Jose. The Sharks, losers of four straight, have an NHL-worst 21 points.
“If we can get the next win, 49 points at Christmas time, that’s pretty good,” Tocchet said. “Played a lot of hockey games, a lot of grinding lately. We have to have that mindset for one more game. We’ve got to give it one more game and then we’ll have some time off to relax with the family.”
Vancouver, which is 12-3-1 at home, brings in an eight-game point streak (6-0-2) into the contest. The Canucks ended a four-game road trip with a tough 4-3 overtime loss at Dallas on Thursday night.
Conor Garland and Dakota Joshua each had a goal and an assist in the loss to the Stars, while Brock Boeser scored 24th goal and is among the league leaders. Garland’s goal gave the Canucks a 3-2 lead in the third period, but Stars defenseman Thomas Harley tied it with 3:30 remaining.
Matt Duchene scored the game-winner with just 10 seconds left in OT seconds after goalie Scott Wedgewood stopped a 2-on-0 break by the Canucks.
“That’s a really good hockey team,” Tocchet said. “We didn’t have a lot of energy, but I thought we grinded it. Their tying goal, we kind of made a couple of mistakes and it’s in our net. Then we had a 2-on-0 in overtime. So we had our chances to win the game.”
San Jose comes in off a 5-2 home loss to Arizona on Thursday. The Sharks, who began the season with an 11-game losing streak (0-10-1), have crept to within three points of seventh-place Anaheim in the Pacific Division despite their current four-game losing streak during which they’ve scored just five goals.
San Jose closed to within 3-2 on Thursday on a Filip Zadina goal early in the third period, but Nick Schmaltz and Lawson Crouse answered with a pair of goals for the Coyotes.
“I thought it was a little bit of a sluggish game for us from start to finish,” San Jose coach David Quinn said. “There was an uptick in our play in the third period, but it was just an OK game in a lot of areas, and OK isn’t going to cut it in this league. We’ve got to work from the get-go.”
The four-game losing streak is the second-longest of the season for the Sharks.
“We’ve been through this before,” defenseman Jan Rutta said. “Just got to get to work and not hang our heads that much.”
–Field Level Media
