NEXT GAME VS. WINNIPEG JETS
Tonight: 7 p.m. | TV: Sportsnet Pacific | Radio: Sportsnet 650 AM
HEADING INTO TONIGHT’S GAME
New Canucks era gets an extended home run
It’s a new era in Canucks management, with the hirings of Jim Rutherford as president/interim general manager and Bruce Boudreau as head coach.
Will things actually be any different in the short term, though? Owner Francesco Aquilini clearly still has hope that the current roster can sneak into the playoffs, but given the early-season hole they dug for themselves that’s a huge, huge challenge.
And yet, here we are.
Bruce Boudreau has promised more attacking hockey. It’s what he believes in. He certainly has a talented group of forwards. The question is whether the defence can keep up with what is required.
At the tail end of the Travis Green era — yes, just last week — the Canucks had actually started playing a very tight style and it was giving them a chance to win in games.
Tonight the Canucks welcome the Winnipeg Jets back to Rogers Arena for the second time in three weeks.
Last night, Kyle Connor scored twice, and Connor Hellebuyck made 25 saves for his first shutout of the season and the 25th of his career as the Winnipeg Jets defeated the host Seattle Kraken 3-0.
Dominic Toninato also scored for the Jets, who won for the third time in their past four games. Connor’s two goals gave him 17 for the season, tied for third in the National Hockey League behind Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl and Washington’s Alex Ovechkin.
— Patrick Johnston with files from Field Level Media
TALKING POINTS
• Two games for Bruce Boudreau, two wins. Of course, his two victories took very different shapes. Monday’s 4-0 shutout of the Kings was pretty comprehensive. But Wednesday’s 2-1 shootout win over the Boston Bruins was more of a struggle.
• The Canucks have spent much of the season posting record-setting bad penalty-killing markers. They’ve gradually been getting better. In fact, they’re now just 0.3 percentage points back of the Jets for second-worst penalty kill in the NHL.
• The Jets shut out the Kraken last night. Two weeks ago the Jets came in on a Friday night, having played the night before in Edmonton. The Canucks held on to win that night 3-2. The Jets are just 3-6-1 in their last 10 games.
FRONT OFFICE
Canucks hire Jim Rutherford as president of hockey operations
Jim Rutherford knows one person on the Vancouver Canucks really well: Bruce Boudreau.
“I’ve known Bruce forever, from back when he pPittsburgh Post-Gazette via APlayed junior,” Rutherford said Thursday from his home in Raleigh, N.C., hours after he was officially announced as the new president of hockey operations for the Vancouver Canucks.
“We’ve always kidded it would be great to work together one day. We certainly stretched that,” he joked.
Rutherford takes over his third NHL club, having led the Carolina Hurricanes (2006) and Pittsburgh Penguins (2016, 17) to the Stanley Cup.
Is there a secret sauce to his approach? He said he didn’t know.
“I guess there must be but I don’t know what it is. In Carolina we were trying to build a new market here and I did both jobs, ran the business side and the hockey side, probably shouldn’t (have) done that. Was hard to do,” he said. “In Pittsburgh we were always a cap team, it was all-in at all times, so we traded a lot of futures away, but that was our philosophy.”