(upbeat music) - Canuck Central Tuesday at Stan Reicho, big bizarre here in the Kintech studio. Canuck Central is for Enzahn Pacific, Vancouver's premier Chrysler. Ramm and Jeep Superstore on 2nd Avenue between Canby and Maine, or at Enzahn Pacific Chrysler.ca. Kintech, Canada's favorite orthotics provider, powered by thousands of five-star Google review. Soarfeet, what are you waiting for? We were waiting to start the show to, you didn't wait at all to just lean into this guy. Right off the bat. I thought maybe you'd wait 'til the end of the break or something like that. Usually producer of this fine program, Canuck Central, Josh Elliott-Wolf is filling in for bignessar on The People Show from three to four. And he had a great conversation with Yannick Hanson, which I'm sure you heard, because it went on for hours, it feels like. The show's only an hour and yet-- - You're so unreasonable. (laughing) - Late start today, we were joined in progress here on Canuck Central. - Yeah, 404 start. It was 405. - We should've played the joint in progress. - I feel like we need to be better to our listeners, kind of like a baseball first pitch. It's not seven o'clock, it's 7.07. They tell you exactly the time that it is going to start. - Don't even let him in the room. - Don't let him. - Do not give him a microphone. - Uh oh. (laughing) - You had your airtime, what are you doing in the studio now? - You know, I was, even before the show started, I was willing to let this pass. You know what, I gotta be accountable, I don't break on time, always. Josh is always yelling at my ear, got a break, got a break, got a break. And then it was like 404 and I'm like, wow, this is just next level. - The end of show break, you're good. - The end of show break, you generally try to hit on time. - Look, we have rules here and we try to push them and bend them as much as we can. - Yes. - The mid-break. - Yes. - We push a little bit. - The top-hour break, we usually try to be pretty good. And especially the end of show break. - Yes. Especially on a one-hour show, what's going on? - Josh, you're ripping into the standard that I set. - All I'm gonna say is Dom was producing. (laughing) He's gotta keep me in. - Wow, where's the accountability? - Throws the guy under the bus that's not even here. - Yep. Dom's just somewhere in the tunnel, traffic. They're like, what? This coward's calling me out right now? Throwing me under the bus. - Rough one. - Rough one. Fair play though, fair play, well done. (laughing) - Good interview. Josh. - Josh can paint extra for those minutes. - No, he's not. No, no, he's not. It's Stan Riccio and Vic Newsar. All right, kidding aside. - At 407, let's start the show. - I feel like we need to be more accountable on my own right. So I'm gonna make sure that I break on time every single break today. - 425, I'm keeping an eye on him. We've got 18 minutes around through the round up in the open. - 425, 454. Is it 454? - Yep. - Okay, I knew that. (laughing) - We know. We know these things. - 525 and 554. - Ladies and gentlemen, you're gonna see a perfect game today from Stan Riccio. - It's a perfect game. All right, it's Canucks Central. Let's get to the open. (dramatic music) - Welcome to the open. (screaming) - That's your home! Are you too good for your home? Answer me! - The open where we bring you the latest on the Vancouver Canucks and... Well, lay the hammer down after a loss to the LA kinks. Lay the hammer? Yeah, it doesn't feel like that was that kind of a loss last night, does it? - No. Oh, I thought you were gonna lay a hammer down. - Yeah. - No, I think you're more worried about it than I am. (laughing) So, we had the post-game show last night and certainly more level-headed than some others on it. Shouts to Wes and Coquitlam, they didn't like our take on the referees. Still haven't let that one go. He seemed like a nice man, but he was just coming after me. - He might use the steep overnight for the post-game show just to let it all go. - That's why I'm so tired today. I just stayed up all night thinking about Wes and Coquitlam's take. I re-watched the game, make sure my take on the refs wasn't all that wrong. It was. - You are all cranky about 404. - Yes. (laughing) I don't know how sad does the post-game show all the time. You guys, you're unbelievable, anyways. So, the more I thought about it today, and no, I'm not here thinking that the LA Kings are an extremely worrisome first round opponent for the Vancouver Canucks. I've come to the conclusion that there's not really a layup in the Western Conference this year. You're going to be in tough, no matter what seed you are, who your first opponent is. Sure, you'd rather face the LA Kings or the Nashville Predators then say the Edmonton Oilers are Colorado Avalanche, maybe even the Dallas Stars, but every team in the Western Conference going to be a tough out. - Yeah, it's gonna be difficult. And hey, I guess that's a credit too of the eight teams are gonna make it. And now it seems like the gap has started to form with Vegas beating St. Louis. The eight teams are pretty stout, no matter what. - And right now, the LA Kings, they've played the Canucks a lot in recent weeks. We've seen them frustrate the Canucks to no end because that's what they do with that 131. And the biggest issue against the Kings specifically is allowing them to get ahead. And in all three games, the Kings scored the first goal. Now the Canucks won that second game in overtime, even though the Kings scored that first goal. Last night, they made it 1-1 after the Kings scored the opening goal. So it was all square until the end of the second period when the Canucks crumbled a little bit and let the Kings take that two goal lead. And once they have that going into the third, you're going to be in tough. But that third period, it showed a lot of my biggest concerns for the Vancouver Canucks. And it was highlighted even more by the absence of Elias Lindholm, who I know hasn't scored much and hasn't provided a lot on the offensive end for the Vancouver Canucks. But you can't tell me that the Canucks don't feel even more shallow as a team offensively without Lindholm on the line sheet than they do prior to having Lindholm in the lineup. You take that even a step further. And when they made the Lindholm trade, hey, they had Kuzmenko at least. Now they don't have Kuzmenko or Lindholm with this current injury that he is going through. So it adds an extra layer of now you're down essentially one scorer from before the trade deadline to a team that was already pretty reliant on its top end characters to provide the offense. - The thing is, but I disagree with the Kuzmenko thing. He wasn't playing well enough to suggest that there was any sort of impact. - That's fair. - Oh, that, if he's out of butt. - But he was still a scorer. - And it was a top six forward. - He was scratched. - Yes. - Frequently. - Yes. - He didn't play much. The coach had zero confidence in him. It seemed like. - It's the thing, you know, we discussed basically since preseason is they moved some goals out. Horvat and all that sort of stuff. Where are they gonna come from? Now they've done it by committee extremely well. And you throw Kuzmenko's goals as well. He moves on. Have they done enough to at this stage of the season now to brace themselves for what that's gonna look like? It took 65, 70 games. But I think we were at the reality now that we think we thought in preseason. But they're still qualified to do it. They're still qualified to score goals. They got three guys above 80. Obviously they got Brock Besser who's been fantastic this year. He's up over at 37 now. - They've, since the All-Star break, they've scored the 13th most goals in the league at five on five. - Which is a fine rate. - It's a fine rate. It's no longer aided by PTO and PTO and shooting percentages and all these different types of things that people were looking at. So it's a lot more of a clear picture on what the offense of the Vancouver Canucks is like. But when you don't draw penalties and get extra power plays through the night, what did they, they had one power play, right? Couldn't generate anything in the third period until they pulled the goalie with four and a half minutes left and went six on five. Prior to that, it was a ghost town. You could see a tumbleweed going through the LA Kings defensive zone for how little action was going on in there. And I just, right now when I look at this lineup and I look at other lineups in the Western Conference playoff, even the LA Kings with Kempe and with Arvitson back in their lineup, you see where the Canucks do kind of come up short in some instances, at least on paper. Yeah, they'll get Dakota Joshua back. I'm sure they'll get Elias Lindholm back at some point. I just, I wonder if there's a, if the ultimate downfall, I don't wonder. I think the ultimate downfall of this team will be that they can't score enough. For as good as their defense is, I think ultimately their path through the Western Conference, I just see a scenario playing out where Miller and Patterson don't score enough and all of a sudden, you know, you're down 2-0 in a series and it's almost climbing uphill to something that you can't really overcome. Well, you heard me say this, it's common refrain that your strength is what gets you to the playoffs, your weakness is what defines your playoffs. And we've seen teams have that struggle, right? At some point, your flaw gets exposed. That's what playoffs is. So if we're sitting here talking end of season, the Canucks get bounced, you're declaring the flaw is, we'll look back over a series and say, "Hey, they just couldn't score enough in that series." Yeah, generating offense. There's only so much they can do as a team. And Rick Talkett mentioned it last night. We've talked about this backdoor play, we want to execute this backdoor play. And he echoed execution a lot last night. Yeah, so do you have the talent to execute against a really well-drilled, disciplined defensive team in the LA Kings to make those things happen in a playoff series, to connect those plays? Because it seemed like the only guy making things happen last night was Quinn Hughes. And when Quinn is on the ice with JT or when he's on the ice with Pedersen's line, that is where you get an abundance of offense where you tend to generate a ton of chances. For whatever reason last night, it seemed whenever Quinn was generating offense, whenever he was doing his thing, we mentioned this on the post game last night, it was with the Lafferty Mackayev line. It was with the bottom six out there. Or Tyler Meyer, Sneaking in it. Or Tyler Meyer. So, you know, the deployment suggested maybe they were trying Heronic and Zadorov with some of their top six lines more often, and that didn't really work. It's like, there was a lot about last night that was too experimental for my liking this late in the season. Can you afford to be experimental though? In a game with LA, where you know you're playing them one more time. Yeah. Look, you're gonna get that X next to your name when a lot of focus was on it yesterday. But it's not as if they're in the spot where they're clamoring for these points right now. They're gonna win the Pacific. A lot of things have been taken care of and, you know, the deep hearings yesterday also felt experimental. Yes. That are they allowed to be in this reality where they can try some things and see if some of this stuff translates to the next season. 'Cause I have time for that argument that they can just see if they can live in a Hugh's Heronic split-apart world. If you can try this different game plan, whatever it looks like. 'Cause yeah, there were moments yesterday that were very uninspiring, but by and large through this season, they have been good in states where they're trailing, in states where they're down one. I think they're ninth or 10th in high danger chance generation, per 60 at five on five in those states. I just wonder if it's a versus LA type thing that the way they play, and I love defensive hockey. Yeah. That was like a aggressive-- Big defensive hockey more than anybody, but that is like an extreme negative version of what the Kings do. Big fan of John Gruden's Buccaneers squad. Yeah, yeah, hey, man. Rondae Barber, Derek Brooks, and all those guys. Warren Sapp. Yeah. Big fan of the Detroit Pistons Championship winning basketball team. Man. Yes. Speaking of my heart. Yes. Prince, all those guys, man. It was fantastic. Tasha on Prince Rashid Wallace. Ball alive. Yeah. Ben Wallace. Big Ben. Yeah. Chauncey. Yes. Pure point card. No great player on that team. But man, they won a title. It wasn't even, like we've seen teams have like the counter-attacking style, right? Calgary's done it in a few recent years. Seattle obviously last year. It's not a new concept to sit back and try to pounce on opportunities. The other Kings don't even really do that. Yeah. It's defend to do more defending and they don't really play fast going the other direction. No. They're almost waiting for like very specific styles of turnovers. Yeah. Rather than just, hey, we'll win at the red line and now you're caught up and we can go three on one, three, two, two on one scenarios. This one, if the one three one is so goat, like everybody is talking about it, then why don't more teams try it kind of confused, please enlighten us. Teams do play one three one. One of the things that the Kings do is essentially what you mentioned, just there, Bick, is like they just stay in the one three. Well, they're so dedicated to it. Yes. And they don't push forward so much. Nikita Zadoraov, if you read Ian McIntyre's piece at sports.ca recapping last night's game, Zadoraov talks about it as like they're not playing hockey and they force you into not playing hockey. Yeah. And they just rim the puck around and then they sit back and they're one three one and that's when they have a lead. Obviously they'll change it up a little bit when they're pushing in a third period trying to come back in a game. But look, a lot of teams will play a one two two or some version of two one two if they're trying to push and be a little bit more aggressive with their, their neutral zone. But this one three one, it's not really a new concept. It does make it difficult for teams to play through you. The extra layer for the LA Kings is that they just, they choose not to attack very often. And you saw that quite a bit last night, but when they did attack and this is one of the differences in the game, they were able to connect play. When they scored those two goals in the third period, what was it? Connecting play in the offensive zone, making cross seam passes that force the Canucks into a little bit of chaos. But even that was slow 'cause it starts with a one on two rush. Yes. And they get the penalty. But it took a while for them to even get to the sequence of creating a, and it all starts with a, you know, a bobbled puck in the neutral zone, which how often is that gonna happen? Execution. Well, if you're the Canucks maybe too often. It's happened, right? Yeah. And look, it happens. I'm not saying like all the goals created 'cause in those Hoagland or anything like that. It's a natural happenstance in the NHL, or a pass just goes off a stick, man. It's a rubber object on ice. It's pretty difficult. The bottom line here is for me right now, I gotta, I wouldn't say I'm like a 10 on the worryometer for the Canucks offense, not nothing like that. But it is ticking a little bit higher here. And some of that does have to do with their star players. Pedersen's got six goals in his last 21 or so games. You know, that's gotta get better. I think he's playing better of late, but it hasn't resulted in any bottom line. So there is more that needs to come from this team as their stars have started to slow down their scoring, even Hughes's scoring has tapered off a little bit. You've seen some of the, I would say holes in their offense and their team build right now and where they still need to get to over the next couple of years with this regime. It's just the power play for me. That's the thing. Oh, you gotta get power play. The power play has to be clicking. Yeah, it's eight to 64 over the last little stretch here. I think going back to the last 23 games. 22 games somewhere on that stretch. It's like 12 and a half percent. Yeah, that's, if that's the thing that you can live in this low event world and your edges of the power play, then okay. But right now the power play is searching. And it's probably leaving up a lot of people in the same state you're in right now. Canucks Central round up couple of things to get to before we hit the break and we gotta hit it on time. NHL playoffs to begin April 20th. So that is an adjustment. It was set to begin on the 21st. It will now begin on the Saturday and the Canucks final game of the season is the 18th. In Winnipeg. Yes. So they'll come back home, get that day off and then right back into it. I think the Oilers, we've talked about the Oilers schedule. They play, I think a couple of back-to-back five games and seven nights to close the season or something crazy like that. I just don't get this urgency. Like I know you want to stay in the public eye and everything like that. I don't understand it. But like, there have been scheduling moments even in the bubble when they have like back-to-back and you could say, "Oh, there's no travel and all this." I don't just take the extra day. Yeah. Just take the extra day. It's okay. We'll see how it plays out and how they end up going with the schedule of teams playing on the 18th. We'll then wait to play on the 21st to start their playoff series. We'll see how they end up scheduling it out. The Rangers can clinch tonight. There's like a thousand different scenarios for them to clinch so it could very well happen, especially if they just beat the Philadelphia Flyers Canucks missed their chance of being first to clinch yesterday. Jonathan Lekromacki practiced with the Abbotsford Canucks. Won't play this weekend, likely won't play this weekend but could see game action as early as next week with the Abbotsford Canucks before heading back to join training camp with the Swedish national team for the World Championships. Vegas took a stranglehold on the second wild card with a win over St. Louis last night I believe they're over 90% to get to the playoffs now after that when you could very well say that the Western Conference playoff picture is all but done. And the Canucks most likely playoff opponent as of today is the Nashville Predators. We'll dissect that a little bit more plus get Erfangafar into the conversation. It is Canucks Central on Sportsnet 650.
