Vancouver Canucks and the Playoffs: Not Dead Yet

It’s a three-step process for the Vancouver Canucks.

Beat the Seattle Kraken and have the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Dallas Stars in regulation on Tuesday night.

Next, beat the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night, after having the Vegas Golden Knights lose in regulation to the Chicago Blackhawks and the Dallas Stars lose in regulation to the Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday.

STOP.

OK, if we get that far, I’ll be happy to begin preparing the resurrection story, although at that point you’d still need the Vancouver Canucks to beat the Edmonton Oilers on Friday and the Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights to lose their final games in regulation.

Of course, as the old saying goes “stranger things have happened.”

This unfolding would be more extraterrestrial or divine intervention.

Vancouver Canucks Mindset

We’re not sure each and every Vancouver Cancucks player actually realized this was a possibility when they arrived at practice on Monday. Defenceman Luke Schenn pretty much admitted it.

One guy who was definitely paying close attention to recent NHL results elsewhere, Vancouver Head Coach Bruce Boudreau.

“Crazy things can happen in sports, I’ve seen it happen on the last day of the year,” Boudreau said after practice on Monday. “Where a team just has to win the game and they’re heavily favoured and they don’t win. So, if you give up hope, you’re done, so you always have to believe there’s a chance … that means we can live to fight one more day.”

“Still nothing really changes from what we were saying in late December after we threw together that nice win streak after Bruce got here,” pointed out Vancouver Canucks leading scorer JT Miller. “If we want to play in the playoffs we have to win every game almost, so it’s no different this time of year for us. I wouldn’t say we’ve slipped lately, but we haven’t won the last couple of games, so we’ve made it a bit more difficult for ourselves. But we’ve done a lot of good things in the last little bit here and we know if we still want to have a chance, tomorrow is a must-win again.”

Kraken Heads

The first-year Seattle Kraken, who didn’t really develop into an intense Pacific Northwest rival for the Vancouver Canucks this season, hopefully will do so down the road with some more development and roster building.

Thus far the Canucks have pretty much owned the match-ups, winning the Kraken’s franchise home-opener back on October 23rd by a score of 4-2, winning again in the Emerald City on New Year’s Day 5-2, and then handling the visitors from Washington State a defeat at Rogers Arena 5-2 on February 21st.

Keep in mind since then, at the trade deadline, the Kraken moved their original captain Mark Giordano to the Toronto Maple Leafs with journeyman winger Colin Blackwell for three draft picks. Seattle has the third fewest points in the NHL (58), with only the Arizona Coyotes and Montreal Canadiens being worse.