NHL: Canucks

MARCH 7, 2011 -- LOS ANGELES -- Life is good in the Vancouver Canucks locker room these days. Between jokes about Janik Hansen’s voice and his penchant for scoring in practice, there were plenty of laughs to go around after a hard fought 3-1 victory over the Kings at Staples Center on Saturday.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is a decidedly lighthearted atmosphere among the team with the best record in the NHL. Not coincidentally, the Canucks also boast two of the top five scorers in the league – Henrik and Daniel Sedin – the second best power play and penalty kill units in the league, the second best team goals against average and rank a measly fourth in goals for per game.

The team has cooled off a bit of late, however, alternating wins and losses over a span of 12 games before shutting out the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday.

“It’s tough to go full throttle for 82 games,” said goaltender Roberto Luongo. “Obviously we feel that we’re not playing our best hockey right now but we’re still a .500 team. So, I think that says quite a bit about our group in this locker room.”

For the Canucks, comfortably above the fray in the Western Conference, the process takes precedence over the results.

“If we play our game it’s going to take care of itself,” team captain Henrik Sedin (left) said. “If we keep playing like this we’re going to win our fair share of games … For us it’s [about] the way we play, it’s been [like that] from day one and a lot of people are focusing on wins and losses. That’s important, I mean we want to win games, but at the same time if you only do that it’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster throughout the season.”

One area of concern is the power play, where Vancouver has only capitalized on one of their last 18 chances.

“We’re never going to score again,” Sedin quipped about the team’s struggles with the extra man. There’s room for levity because even though the team has only converted one power play in its last six games, they were clicking at 20.5 percent over their 12 game stretch of relative mediocrity and 23.8 percent for the season, putting them behind only Chicago in the league rankings.

For the Canucks, not considered one of the most physical teams in the league, an effective power play is their best deterrent to opponents roughing them up.

“I think any team that has a big power play is going to keep the other team real honest,” said head coach Alain Vigneault. “Whether you score or you build momentum and I think we built a little bit more momentum.” Now it’s just a matter of putting the puck in the back of the net.

“We could say power plays go in spurts,” Vigneault added, “but those are our best players and they’re aware that they’ve got to find a way to make it work.”

The solution? Simplify.

“It doesn’t have to be tic-tac-toe,” Sedin said. “Sometimes [you just need] a shot from the blue line and some scrambles and then you get a goal. We got a little bit more of that in the third [against the Kings] so that’s a good sign for us.”

In fact it was a goal off of a deflection that broke Vancouver’s streak of 17 unsuccessful power plays Sunday in Anaheim.

They may be coasting toward the playoffs right now, but once the power play gets back to its normal scoring pace those intermittent losses will dissolve into winning streaks.

The Canucks’ lack of consistent results over the past three and a half weeks can be chalked up to a slightly less efficient power play, the mid season doldrums, the frantic urgency of their opponents locked in an unbelievably tight Western Conference playoff race or all of the above, but it hasn’t dampened the spirits of the league’s best team.

As rosy as things are overall for the Canucks, they haven’t been without adversity. The injury bug has bitten and bitten hard on the Vancouver blue line. The team has had to use 13 defensemen so far this year, and not one has played in every game. Most notably, Sami Salo missed the first 55 games of the season with a torn Achilles’ tendon.

Currently they are without the services of Alex Edler (17 games, back), Andrew Alberts (eight games, wrist), Kevin Bieksa (seven games, foot) and even Lee Sweat who was called up from Manitoba of the American League in late January and only made it into three games before falling to a foot injury.

In the absence of so many regulars, naturally the organizational depth of the franchise has been tested. Of the four defensemen that made their NHL debuts this season for Vancouver, Christopher Tanev is the only one who has played more than three games. Other than 21 games played, 13:48 in average ice time and one assist his stat sheet is completely blank. Certainly, Tanev hasn’t been shouldering a huge load as a third pairing D-man, but an even plus/minus indicates a lack of mistakes from a young call-up.

The slack left by mounting losses throughout the defense corps has been picked up by all-world goaltending from Luongo as well as rookie net minder Corey Schneider, Selke Trophy caliber forwards like Ryan Kesler (left) and Manny Malhotra, who score two goals in Anaheim Sunday, making for and one of the league’s deepest and most potent offenses.

With this team it all comes back to attitude. The mental toughness to overcome a slew of injuries that most other teams couldn’t fathom, dissatisfaction with .500 hockey over the course of a few weeks, and the confidence to take it all in stride and push for more is what makes the Vancouver Canucks a team to be reckoned with down the stretch and into the playoffs.

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