CANUCKS (16-9-6) AT GOLDEN KNIGHTS (20-8-3)

10 p.m. ET; SCRIPPS, SNP, TVAS

The rumor mill continues to swirl as the Canucks are losing games to teams that last year's team would have won. You could blame the Petey/Miller controversy for the losses, since they had 0 points last night. You could blame the lack of first period drive, which continues to drive all of us crazy. You should blame the defensive core (except Quinn). The bottom 4 are a rotating lazy Susan at a Chinese restaurant. By the way, have you ever wondered about how that table got the name "Lazy Susan"....that poor woman could have just have had a bad day....anyways. I am officially changing the name of my rotating stand to "Lazy defenseman."

Tonight, the Canucks need to get going quickly against this high-scoring Vegas team. Last year the Canucks and Vegas split the 4 games they had. This year, the Golden Knights are a better team. I said it and the numbers back it up. The one thing the Canucks cannot afford to do is head to the sin bin. The Golden Knights powerplay is running a nice 27.6% and they have quite a few weapons. This divisional game begins a stretch where the Canucks play Pacific opponents in 5 out of the 6 next games.

LINEUPS

Canucks projected lineup

Conor Garland -- J.T. Miller -- Brock Boeser

Jake DeBrusk -- Elias Pettersson -- Max Sasson

Danton Heinen -- Pius Suter -- Kiefer Sherwood

Dakota Joshua -- Teddy Blueger -- Nils Hoglander

Quinn Hughes -- Tyler Myers

Carson Soucy -- Noah Juulsen

Derek Forbort -- Vincent Desharnais

Kevin Lankinen

Thatcher Demko

Scratched: Erik Brannstrom, Linus Karlsson, Phil Di Giuseppe

Injured: Filip Hronek (upper body)

Golden Knights projected lineup

Pavel Dorofeyev -- Jack Eichel -- Mark Stone

Brett Howden -- William Karlsson -- Victor Olofsson

Tanner Pearson -- Tomas Hertl -- Keegan Kolesar

Tanner Laczynski -- Cole Schwindt -- Alexander Holtz

Noah Hanifin -- Alex Pietrangelo

Brayden McNabb -- Shea Theodore

Nicolas Hague -- Zach Whitecloud

Adin Hill

Ilya Samsonov

Scratched: Kaedan Korczak

Injured: Ivan Barbashev (upper body), Ben Hutton (upper body), Nicolas Roy (undisclosed)

Status report

The Canucks did not hold a morning skate following their 3-2 overtime loss to the Utah Hockey Club on Wednesday. … Lankinen is expected to start after Demko made 28 saves Wednesday. ... Laczynski was recalled from Henderson of the American Hockey League on Thursday. ... Barbashev was injured during a 3-2 victory against the Minnesota Wild on Sunday and the forward is not expected to play. Dorofeyev will take his place on the first line.

GAME DAY CHATTER

Not much coming out of the Canucks today as they didn't have a morning skate. I am sure that GMPA is looking to address the gapping hole in the defense, but I am not sure who you would give up, that has value in the open market. GMPA doesn't strike me as a Benning type who throws away all the draft picks.

GAME DAY BATTLE HYMN

Less than a week until Christmas....if you entered a mall where I live, the songs have been playing since Nov 1. Of course, you would be hard pressed to find anyone down here playing this song, except maybe a hoser....eh.

Go Canucks Go!