The Canucks play their final game before Xmas and the last game after a punishing 27 games in 53-day stretch.
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When and where: Saturday, 7 p.m., Rogers Arena
TV: Hockey Night in Canada. Radio: Sportsnet 650
The buzz: Andrei Kuzmenko is back. And he’s with the best centre he’s ever played with: Elias Pettersson.
The direction from Rick Tocchet is obvious: get to the net. Get on the puck. Don’t be afraid to be creative with the puck — but make sure you’re shooting the puck. And just more energy overall.
“He can’t be the third forward up the ice all the time,” Tocchet told the media Saturday morning.
Tocchet said the coaching staff had worked on some specific issues in a practice this week in Dallas and the head coach is clearly pleased with the response.
“I think he’s got some juice.”
It’s all about timing.
“You’ve got to get inside and you got to shoot the puck and I think if he does that, he’ll get (goals). I want him to do spin-a-rama. I love that! I told him to in Dallas. I think he wants to learn so much. ‘Hey, Coach, when can I do my stuff?’ Well, you can do your stuff. You just got to be calculated. If you have no speed and you’re at the blue line, probably not the right time to do a spin-a-rama, right? But you’re down low and you’re one on one with a guy, yeah, have a party man.”
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• No team has given up more goals this season than San Jose. No team has scored more goals this season than Vancouver. The Canucks have played a game every other day since Halloween. They’re prone to fatigue mistakes. The Sharks have been busy too, playing four games over the past week ahead of this contest. They lost all four.
The Canucks have scored 3.6 goals per game over their last 10 games. San Jose has given up 3.7 goals per game in that stretch. This game could see goals aplenty.
• Busy busy days.
Brock Boeser said he’d never been through a stretch like the Canucks have been on since Hallowe’en, playing more games than any team in the NHL.
“I think it kind of feels like it’s kind of that stretch at the end of the season where you’re, you know, it’s game, what 70 to 82 or whatever. I think our schedule has been pretty crazy so far. But I think we’ve made the most of it,” he said.
“We got back on track these last six games … We’re playing the right way. Playing hard.”
The history: The Canucks throttled the Sharks in their first two meetings of the year, 10-1 and 3-1. But the last time these teams faced each other, right after U.S. Thanksgiving, the resurgent-at-the-time Sharks pulled off a 4-3 upset.
The hope: Vancouver’s offence has carried them of late, but their goaltending has been stout as well. The Canucks remain hot, even if they have hit the energy wall. There is plenty of reason to think they’ll be their usual powerful selves on Saturday.
The fear: The Canucks finally will get some respite over the next week — they’re unlikely to let themselves look ahead, but you never know.
#Canucks Quinn Hughes has 2+6=8 in three games against San Jose this season. Nux PP is 6/12 in those games. Will those trends hold true again tonight?
The top guns: Three Canucks remain in the top-10 of NHL scoring: J.T. Miller is third with 46 points, Quinn Hughes has 42 points and is tied for seventh, while Elias Pettersson is 10th with 41 points. Brock Boeser has 24 goals, second-best in the league. Tomas Hertl leads the Sharks with 26 points. Jacob MacDonald has scored four goals over the past 10 games.
The wounded: Canucks: Carson Soucy (leg fracture, LTIR) and Guillaume Brisebois (concussion, LTIR). Sharks: Ryan Carpenter (undisclosed, day-to-day), Logan Couture (lower body, week-to-week), Matt Benning (lower body, indifeinite), Ty Emberson (lower body, week-to-week), Nico Sturm (hand, indefinite), Calen Addison (lower body, day-to-day), Mitchell Russell (undisclosed, indefinite).
The quote: “We play a system that rewards hard work.” — Conor Garland, keeping it simple about how he and his teammates have found success.
The lineup:
Forwards
Mikheyev-Pettersson-Kuzmenko
Höglander-Miller-Boeser
Joshua-Blueger-Garland
Åman-Suter-Lafferty
Defence
Hughes-Hronek
Cole-Juulsen
Zadorov-Myers
Goalie
Thatcher Demko
The prediction: This is going to be a wild one, with the tired Sharks more likely to be thinking about getting home and set for Christmas. The high-flying Canucks will have their way in a 5-1 win.
FAN FORUM: Do you have a specific question for a player? Pass it along to @provincesports and we’ll get it in a future edition.
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