Coming off an emotional, much needed win over the Oilers, the Canucks have a chance to win back to back for the first time in a long time, and get a little momentum heading into that rematch in Edmonton Thursday night, but they best beware, because tonight's tilt against their expansion cousins has all the hallmarks of a trap game.
Vancouver Canucks (20-15-10) vs. Buffalo Sabres (17-24-5)
7:00 pm PST; 10:00 pm EST
TV: Sportsnet Pacific
Radio: Sportsnet 650
We knew that Saturday night's contest against the Oilers was going to be emotional, but I don't think anyone had the Oilers media army and fans leading a campaign to have the biggest problem in hockey punished by decapitating Conor Garland on my bingo card. Yes, the only thing genuinely shocking was seeing the number of media people tripping over themselves to fire off ridiculous takes about how making Connor McDavid have to deal with the same stuff that the Sedin brothers were told to play through needed to be punished with potentially career ending headshots. I mean, we're used to seeing the crazy from the poor, hard done by Edmonton folks, and after 2011 and last year, we also shouldn't be too shocked that the mainstream mitten-stringers would be battling hard for the Oilers here.
Bottom line here is this. If you're not making life miserable for Connor McDavid, you're letting him win, and if he can't deal with it without responding with illegal, dangerous checks to the head or elbows (or uncalled high sticks), then the NHL has to do exactly what they did this week, and punish him with an appropriate penalty. And look, the DoPS is always going to be a joke, but this is as close to them getting it right as we've seen with George Parros behind the wheel. And that goes for Tyler Myers, too. Zero issues with that suspension. Bad response, though he probably went higher than he wanted to on Evban Bouchard. You can't say that about McDavid, and it's about bloody time he was held accountable. Now, they just need to be ready to do the same to Leon Draisaitl, because he's the more temperamental of the two. And you know it's coming...
So, that brings us to tonight's game, and the Canucks, feeling good about themselves go up against a Buffalo team that is once again floundering. It doesn't get anymore Buffalo than being the team of record that saw a goaltender score a goal and an assist in the same game for the first time in NHL history, and the fact that it was Pittsburgh, who are days away from having a fire sale, is even worse.
And that's the problem. Overlooking these guys ahead of a massive showdown in Edmonton. The Canucks cannot take their eyes off the task at hand tonight, and they have to come out of this one with a win. The Sabres have lost three of their last four, and just don't seem to be getting any better, in spite of some extremely high draft picks the last few years. It's fitting that they seem to mirror the struggles of the Canucks, though it really feels like their situation is a lot more hopeless. Honestly, both teams would be best served by new ownership above all else.
So with Myers out of the lineup, that's going to see the Canucks splitting up the Quinn Hughes/Filip Hronek pairing. It's a good news, bad news situation, I suppose.
LINEUPS
As seen on the ol' nhl dot com thingy...
10 p.m. ET; SNP, MSG-B
Sabres projected lineup
Jason Zucker -- Jiri Kulich -- Tage Thompson
JJ Peterka -- Dylan Cozens -- Alex Tuch
Zach Benson -- Peyton Krebs -- Jack Quinn
Beck Malenstyn -- Sam Lafferty -- Nicolas Aube-Kubel
Rasmus Dahlin -- Bowen Byram
Mattias Samuelsson -- Owen Power
Jacob Bryson -- Connor Clifton
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen
James Reimer
Scratched: Henri Jokiharju, Dennis Gilbert, Tyson Kozak
Injured: Ryan McLeod (upper body), Jordan Greenway (middle body)
Canucks projected lineup
Jake DeBrusk -- Elias Pettersson -- Brock Boeser
Pius Suter -- J.T. Miller -- Conor Garland
Danton Heinen -- Teddy Blueger -- Kiefer Sherwood
Nils Hoglander -- Max Sasson -- Phil Di Giuseppe
Quinn Hughes -- Mark Friedman
Derek Forbort -- Filip Hronek
Carson Soucy -- Vincent Desharnais
Thatcher Demko
Kevin Lankinen
Scratched: Guillaume Brisebois
Injured: Dakota Joshua (lower body), Noah Juulsen (undisclosed)
Suspended: Tyler Myers
Friedman gets the call up to replace Myers. He's steady and somewhat reliable, so this could actually be a good thing while it lasts, but it will be interesting to see how Hronek does uncoupled from Hughes tonight. Demko needs a big game tonight, and the Canucks can help that by making his night easier against a team that can be taken down mentally with a couple quick goals.
GAME DAY CHATTER
Happy Anniversary, to those of you who celebrate...
Pretty interesting, so if you have any additions/omissions, we'd love to see them in the comments.
The annual Lunar New Year celebration goes tonight, honouring the contributions of the Chinese community in Vancouver, and as always, these jerseys are straight fire...
GAME DAY BATTLE HYMN
We're back looking at some of the memorable releases turning 40 this year, and this time we'll go to the debut of a band that would become one of the big 4, and it all started out with a firing. When METALLICA fired guitarist Dave Mustaine, he swore he'd get his revenge by making a band faster, heavier and better than James, Lars and crew. While MEGADETH would become mega stars, they still don't have that household name recognition that Metallica would go on to get. The two bands certainly followed similar career paths, though it could be argued that in terms of most recent content, Megadeth comes out looking better.
Mustaine would recruit David Ellefson, who would be his partner in crime for years before being ejected in 2021 over a rather gross sexual misconduct allegation, one that he denies, as does the person involved in the accusations. The first version of the band included guitarist Kerry King of Slayer, who left before the band recorded 'Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good' for Combat Records. King was replaced by Chris Poland, and Gar Samuelsson was the drummer (a remixed and remastered version of the album was released in 2002, and it contained demo versions of Last Rites/Loved To Deth and Mechanix that may have had drummer Lee Rauch on one or both of the tracks). Poland and Samuelsson both had jazz backgrounds, which gave Megadeth's sound layers that other bands simply couldn't match, and forced the scene as a whole to step up their proficiency game.
The 8 song album featured a Metallica song that Mustaine wrote in it's original form. 'Mechanix' was already well known to people as 'The Four Horsemen' on Metallica's 1983 debut, 'Kill 'Em All'. It also featured a snarly, punk as fuck cover of the Nancy Sinatra hit 'These Boots'. We're gonna listen to my favorite track off that album, one that definitely hints at what was to come on the album that would break them into world wide stars: Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? This is 'Looking Down The Cross'. Crank this one!
Enjoy the game, everyone. Go Canucks Go!