After stellar trip, Canucks return home to face Caps (Oct 26, 2017)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- A funny thing happened to the Vancouver Canucks on their first extended road trip of the 2017-18 NHL season.
They did not just bond, as most teams attempt to do on the first travels. They won consistently, posting a 4-1 record.
That was not exactly anticipated from a youth-laden, rebuilding Canucks club expected to miss the playoffs for a third consecutive season. However, after passing one big road test, the Canucks (5-3-1) are now challenged with establishing more consistency at home, starting Thursday against the Washington Capitals (4-4-1) at Rogers Arena.
The game will be another chance for 20-year-old Canucks winger Jake Virtanen to shine with twins Daniel and Henrik Sedin.
Virtanen, who spent last season in the minors as he battled poor conditioning and inconsistent play, has two goals in his past two games. He stood out during most of the road trip.
"I like the way he's playing with the twins," new Canucks coach Travis Green, who coached the youngster for AHL Utica last season, told Postmedia. "Right now, it's a good combination. His speed is helping them, and they're helping him with his speed."
The contest will also be another chance for Canucks goaltender Anders Nilsson to prove that he can be consistent.
Nilsson, a 27-year-old Swede who joined Vancouver as a free agent from Buffalo in the summer, posted shutouts over Ottawa and Minnesota during the road trip. However, he was pulled from the game in between in Boston, where he gave up four goals in the first 11 minutes.
"He either pitches a shutout or he gets out of there in 10 minutes," Green joked to Postmedia.
Nilsson, who had previous tenures with St. Louis and Edmonton, is one of the tallest goalies in the league at 6-foot-6. He has attempted to refine his movement this season after leaving bigger holes than he liked in the past.
But he struggled to feel right in his early days with the Canucks.
"I don't know if 'uncomfortable' is the right word, but I didn't feel I was performing at the level I can perform," Nilsson said. "I wasn't satisfied with the way I started out training camp, especially the first two games. I was not satisfied with the way I played. I knew I could play better than that."
The Canucks are banking that he can as they deal with injuries to key defensemen Alex Edler and Troy Stecher and winger Loui Eriksson, who are all out for extended periods.
They will be hard-pressed to stop Washington's Alex Ovechkin, who has 10 goals and an assist in only nine games. However, the Capitals will be facing a significant loss of their own Thursday as forward Alex Burakovsky begins to recover from thumb surgery that he underwent Tuesday.
Burakovsky is expected to miss six to eight weeks. Struggling to find secondary scoring, Capitals coach Barry Trotz was hoping the 23-year-old would fill at least one of several gaps created by the offseason departures of key offensive players.
After a slow start, Burakovsky scored his first goal in Detroit last Friday.
"He just finally broke through and got a goal, and we were hoping he'd get some traction," Trotz told The Washington Post. "Then he got hurt."
While he tries to get his forwards back on track, the coach will be looking for more big things from unheralded rookie defenseman Christian Djoos, who has two goals in his first six games.
Djoos, who hails from Sweden, was chosen 195th overall in the 2012 NHL Draft and has worked his way up from teams in his homeland and the minors.
"I didn't have any hopes really," he told The Washington Post while recalling his draft day.
