NEXT GAME VS. COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS

Tonight: 7 p.m. | TV: Sportsnet Pacific | Radio: Sportsnet 650 AM

HEADING INTO TONIGHT’S GAME

Boudreau, Canucks aim to continue strong play vs. Blue Jackets

The Vancouver Canucks are playing some of their best hockey of the season under new coach Bruce Boudreau.

Whether it’s good enough to end their recent struggles against the Columbus Blue Jackets remains to be seen.

The Canucks aim to remain undefeated in five games with Boudreau at the helm tonight, when they’ll also try to avoid a fifth consecutive loss to the visiting Blue Jackets.

The Canucks aim to remain undefeated in five games with Boudreau at the helm tonight, when they’ll also try to avoid a fifth consecutive loss to the visiting Blue Jackets.

Vancouver won back-to-back contests only twice in its first 25 games of the season. But, since Boudreau replaced Travis Green – who was fired amid somewhat of a front-office shakeup on Dec. 5 — the Canucks have won four straight, all at home. That made Boudreau — who served stints coaching Washington, Anaheim and Minnesota — the first coach in Canucks’ history to win his first four games.

“Let’s go for five,” said Boudreau, whose club still resides in the bottom half of the Western Conference with 26 points. “We’re behind the eight ball. We’ve got to keep going after it.”

The Canucks have given up five total goals since Boudreau took the reins of the club. Thatcher Demko, who has stopped 128 of 133 shots faced while starting all four during the winning streak, made 28 saves in Sunday’s 2-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes. It was Vancouver’s sixth win in seven games.

“It’s working well so far,” Canucks’ right wing Brock Boeser, who has three goals with two assists in the past five games, told the NHL’s official website. “We’ve got to keep building, getting better at our systems and keep getting wins.”

Beating Columbus, however, has not been easy for the Canucks in recent seasons. Vancouver has dropped its last four meetings with the Blue Jackets, most recently 4-2 at Columbus on Nov. 26.

Demko faced just 20 shots in that game, but allowed three to get past him in a 4-2 defeat. Meanwhile, in the same game, Columbus’ Elvis Merzlikins made 39 saves.

Merzlikins is 2-4-0 with a 4.68 goals-against average on the road this season. On Saturday, he made 28 saves as the Blue Jackets blew a 4-1 lead at Seattle, only to win 5-4 — thanks to Jake Bean’s goal in overtime — in the opener of a five-game road stretch. The victory snapped a five-game road losing streak for the Blue Jackets, who are 5-8-0 away from Columbus this season.

Vancouver’s J.T. Miller has two goals with seven assists over the last seven games, but he has been blanked in his last two contests against Columbus.

– Field Level Media

TALKING POINTS

• The Canucks haven’t strung together five-consecutive victories since their 2020 Edmonton bubble post-season run with three wins over Minnesota in the qualifying round and two over St. Louis to start the first round.

• Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson not only scored Sunday in a 2-1 win over Carolina, their instinctive quick-release wrist shots to pick the short side bode well for becoming more of an offensive force. Credit new coach Bruce Boudreau, whose infectious personality and pushing the right competitive buttons, has reached the impressionable pair of snipers.

• The Blue Jackets, who are the league’s youngest team, have an inability to exit the defensive zone when pressured.

FRONT OFFICE

In what is often a connect-the-dots business of hiring executives, Jim Rutherford can draw countless lines to former colleagues.

Aside from presenting his franchise vision at an introductory press conference Monday, the new Vancouver Canucks president of hockey operations knows there’s much to address and hopes to hire an assistant general manager this week.

“I’m waiting to see if that’s possible or not,” said Rutherford, who’s also interim GM. “The hockey department is light and we’ve got to get a few people in place. We’ve got the salary cap and the analytics departments covered now — co-ordinated with league to make sure that everything is right — and we’re going to strengthen that as quick as we can.”