Game Notes: Oilers @ Canucks — Game 30

After sweeping their three-game series with the Ottawa Senators, the Oilers will head to Vancouver looking to keep their winning streak going against the Canucks.

1. Canucks fans are dealing with something fairly similar to what we as Oilers fans went through a few years ago. Vancouver made the playoffs last year, won their play-in series over Minnesota, took down St. Louis, the defending Stanley Cup Champions in the first round, and then took Vegas to Game 7 in the second round, leaving them just one win shy of reaching the Western Conference Final. It was a fun and exciting run for the Canucks, a team that had been out of the playoffs for four years and who hadn’t won a series since being in the Stanley Cup Final in 2011.

2. The comparison here, of course, is the 2016-17 Oilers. Edmonton snapped a decade-long playoff drought that year and they won their first playoff series since their run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2006 when they beat the Sharks in the first round. The expectation was that young Oilers team was just getting started. Instead, the team fell flat in 2017-18 and 2018-19 and missed the playoffs in both years. While many Canucks fans likely expected the team to build on last year’s run, it appears now that Vancouver has a long way to go to turn themselves into a contender.

3. I always found it shocking that the Canucks were in the conversation for the top team in the Canadian Division heading into the 2021 season. Though they went the furthest in the playoffs of any Canadian team, they were just a middling team in the regular season and they might not have even made it in had it not been for the playoff field expansion due to COVID-19.

Also, nobody had a worse off-season than Jim Benning did. He backed himself into a corner with a wealth of terrible contracts and wound up losing multiple key players in free agency. Jacob Markstrom was their MVP last season and the Canucks let him walk to a division rival. They spent a second-round pick and a quality prospect to acquire Tyler Toffoli and, again, they couldn’t find a way to afford him.

4. How much longer does Benning have to figure it out in Vancouver? Benning said in 2014 that he felt that he could turn the team around quickly. He said earlier this month that the Canucks are going to be competitive in two years’ time. That certainly isn’t a very quick turnaround.

The Oilers gave Peter Chiarelli the 2018 off-season to turn things around after the 2017-18 season and then finally let him go in January of 2019 when it was clear he didn’t have a solution. I imagine Benning will get this upcoming off-season but the leash can’t be very long.

Thinking about all of this has me incredibly grateful for Ken Holland.

5. As of right now, the Canucks own a 12-16-2 record. They’re sixth in the Canadian Division, five points behind Montreal for the fourth playoff spot and the Habs have four games in hand. The Canucks also rank 25th in the league in terms of points percentage, ahead of only Nashville, New Jersey, Anaheim, Detroit, Buffalo, and Ottawa. It’ll take a huge run in the second half for them to be in the conversation for playoff hockey this spring.

6. The biggest issue for the Canucks this season has been keeping the puck out of the net as they rank 30th in the league in terms of goals against. Thatcher Demko has been solid this year with a .914 save percentage in 19 games while Braden Holtby has struggled to a .893 save percentage in 11 games. These struggles can’t be placed entirely on the goalies, though, as the Canucks are the worst team in the league in terms of Expected Goals Against (based on shot volume and quality) according to Natural Stat Trick. Like with Ottawa, this match-up is one that the Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl combo can feast on.

7. The Canucks have won four of their last six games, which represents their best stretch of the season since late-January when they swept the Sens in a three-game series. That sweep over Ottawa and a recent three-game streak that featured back-to-back wins over the Leafs and a shootout win over Montreal represent the only times this season that the Canucks have won consecutive games.

8. Edmonton and Vancouver have played four times this season and the Oilers lead the head-to-head three-to-one. The Canucks won the season opener but the Oilers have won all three games since then. Most recently, Edmonton pulled off a come-front-behind win after going down to the Canucks 3-0 early on and then shut them out the following game to earn a two-game sweep.

9. Tonight’s game will be a bit of an uphill battle for the Oilers given the fact they’re coming off of a game on Friday night and they’re travelling to Vancouver while the Canucks have been off since Wednesday. That said, the Oilers have been very, very good in back-to-back games in the Dave Tippett era. Under Tippett, the Oilers are 11-1 in the second leg of back-to-backs and they’re 4-0 in such games in 2021. Two of those were wins over Ottawa, one was that 7-1 pounding of the Flames, and the other was the team’s second game of the season against Vancouver.

10. A win tonight would put the Oilers at 19-11-0 through the first 30 games of the season, an impressive record given the team’s slow 3-6-0 start out of the gate. After 30 games last season, the Oilers were 17-10-3.