Wednesday, March 30, 2011

March 30th: Canucks vs. Kings plus Manitoba Moose Update

It's going to be an awesome game tonight. Luongo starting for the Canucks and Quick starting for the Kings. Quick has a .919 save percentage this season and they have Bernier as a backup putting up decent numbers. Kings are in the same situation as the Canucks, two good goalies on the roster gives both of them the option to trade their backup for prospects in the offseason. If the Canucks do move Schneider, I hope they would try and get a second/third liner for him, and not draft picks. We've spent so much time developing Schneider it would be a shame to trade him for draft picks, which means more hardwork developing another player. If we move Schneider we have to fetch an asset that will be able to help us immediately in the 2011-2012 season. There's the possibility of keeping Schneider and having an excellent backup to Luongo, however we all know that Schneider will walk as a UFA at the end of the 2012 season, because god knows Gillis won't be able to afford him.

With Kopitar out, the Kings will be running a top line of Smitty-Lewis Brown. Interesting to note that in the Kings last game, Doughty was on the second PP unit. Not sure if Coach Murray was trying to tell Doughty something. If Doughty is in a power-play slump, there's no better team to come out against than the canucks, who he demolished on the power play last playoffs. It got to the point last year where every time the canucks took a penalty you knew it was going to end up in the back of the net. Thats part of the reason how everyone came to hate Alberts so much, because of the stupid penalties he took against the Kings that led to bad goals.

In other news the Moose beat the lowly Rochester Amerk's in a shootout. Hodgson was a -2 but only because the majority of the Moose goals were scored on the PP. Hodgson also had an assist and a shootout goal. Hodgson is still not dominating the AHL like Vigneault expects him to do before he gets the call up to the Canucks. Schroeder played for the Moose and coughed up the puck while on the PP to Bill Thomas again. It was the second time in two nights that Bill Thomas got a shorthanded goal on the exact same breakaway play. Two nights ago it was Hodgson who coughed the puck up to Bill Thomas while the Moose were on the PP. The Moose are now atop the North Division, but its a close race with a few games left so a lot could change. Yann Sauve scored tonight, coming up big for the moose again tonight. The way Sauve is playing he should be able to make the Canucks next season. If he hadn't got injured at the start of the season its possible that Sauve would be on the Canucks right now instead of Tanev. The other Moose defenseman that has been standing out is Mark Flood. He's outscoring Shirokov and Hodgson over the past couple weeks, all the while doing it as a defenseman! Not sure if the Canucks have the rights to Flood, but they should definitely lock him up because Hodgson has a knack for finding Flood, and Flood has a knack for shooting the puck into the net.

Enjoy the game tonight. And oh yah! Flames are done son!

-HArk

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