5 p.m. ET; The Spot, SNP
Our Canucks snuck out of Carolina with a loser point and now face both Florida teams in the remainder of this short road trip. Getting 2 more points in Florida would be nice. Did you know that the Canucks are only 6 points out of 1st place in the division? Me neither....what a fucking start to the season. It won't change my mind about this team though.
The newest Canuck, David Kampf, is not expected to play today, which is ok because he is not expected to score goals either. Brought in faceoffs and some defense, the Canucks are trying to field more than 2 NHL lines a game.
Sad fact: Canucks haven't won in Tampa since 2018
GAMEDAY LINEUPS
Canucks projected lineup
Evander Kane -- Elias Pettersson -- Conor Garland
Brock Boeser -- Lukas Reichel -- Kiefer Sherwood
Drew O'Connor -- Aatu Raty -- Jake DeBrusk
Mackenzie MacEachern -- Max Sasson -- Linus Karlsson
Elias Nils Pettersson -- Filip Hronek
Marcus Pettersson -- Tyler Myers
P.O Joseph -- Tom Willander
Kevin Lankinen
Jiri Patera
Scratched: Arshdeep Bains, Victor Mancini
Injured: Quinn Hughes (upper body), Thatcher Demko (lower body), Filip Chytil (concussion protocol), Teddy Blueger (lower body), Nils Hoglander (lower body), Derek Forbort (undisclosed)
Lightning projected lineup
Jake Guentzel -- Brayden Point -- Nikita Kucherov
Gage Goncalves -- Yanni Gourde -- Jakob Pelletier
Zemgus Girgensons -- Jack Finley -- Oliver Bjorkstrand
Boris Katchouk -- Curtis Douglas -- Scott Sabourin
J.J. Moser -- Max Crozier
Charle-Edouard D'Astous -- Erik Cernak
Emil Lilleberg -- Darren Raddysh
Jonas Johansson
Andrei Vasilevskiy
Scratched: None
Injured: Brandon Hagel (upper body), Nick Paul (upper body), Ryan McDonagh (undisclosed), Pontus Holmberg (undisclosed), Dominic James (undisclosed), Victor Hedman (undisclosed), Anthony Cirell (upper body)
Status report
The Canucks signed forward David Kämpf to a one year, $1.1 million contract Saturday. ... Demko, a goalie, was placed on injured reserve Friday. ... Mancini, a defenseman, was activated off IR on Friday. ... Paul, a forward, is expected to return as early as Tuesday, when the Lightning are home against the New Jersey Devils.
GAMEDAY CHATTER
The following is a recap of Rick Dhaliwal's interview of Halford & Brough
Sportsnet is trying to ragebait Canucks management by saying that Rutherford might want to rebuild...now
This discussion has been going on since the firing of AV and the decline of the Sedins. And each time Francesco has said no to any version of it as the team first got Brock....and Petey.....and Demko......and then Hughes. And each time, some Vancouver fans and media has said, "Now we will be great again!" So, if I am Francesco, why would I ever let management gut this team and have it suffer years of rebuilding....oh and miss out on being just good enough to get some playoff games. "Fans have demanded that we not rebuild!", would be my line. "If this team was healthy!" has been the rally cry for years and the fact that our best players always seem to go down to injury might be an indicator that they might not be the stars we hoped for. I admit that I don't want to go through 5 years of last place, but to be honest, 5 years of missing the playoffs by 2-8 points might be a more painful kicked to the balls.
My prediction at the start of the year was this team, healthy, was not a playoff team. The injury fairies are making things easier for me to be right.
News like this is hard to see.
The Vancouver media market is a crowded hot mess, but there are a few sites that try to give the news about our team in a fair light and PITB did that. I didn't always agree with Daniel, but I was sure as hell going to read what he had to say. I'm not sure what "Vancouver is Awesome" is thinking by abandoning their Canuck coverage. I guess they could just be saying that the Canucks aren't awesome so why cover them. It could be the fact that to them, the clicks aren't there. That's what happened to NM when we were slaves to SBN.
Media over the past 20 years has drastically changed from the Newspaper/TV domination to 100 different internet/podcasts about the team, but it's unfortunate when good writing is forced out. I think Jimmi, Kent, Thursday and I would love Daniel to write here. He would be fucking crazy to write for free. We all hope someone grabs him up and pays him to write.
GAMEDAY BATTLE HYMN
When Kent is away, the mice will play. Or at least put different music in this section to save us from the metal. Today I offer a Japanese group, Mono No Aware. They crafted a song about absolutely nothing called "かむかもしかもにどもかも！" Say that 5 times fast. I once looked up the lyrics....translated of course, and they literally made no sense......much like the Canucks penalty Kill.
Let's get a win today....Go Coconuts Go!
