The Vancouver Canucks have picked up a pair of wins to begin their first lengthy road trip of the season and now set their sights on the Washington Capitals for a Sunday morning matchup.<\/p>\n
Note Sunday\u2019s early game time of 9:30 a.m. PT.<\/p>\n
Conor Garland collected three points over the team\u2019s back-to-back on Thursday and Friday. Garland has been on the ice for four goals scored and two against in his 66:18 of five-on-five ice time. The Canucks have had 38 scoring chances for and 29 against when Garland is on the ice at five-on-five.<\/p>\n
Max Sasson has only played in two NHL games this season and has scored in each of those outings. He is playing on a line with fellow Calder Cup winners, Arshdeep Bains and Linus Karlsson. These three have spent a ton of time together in Abbotsford (AHL), and their chemistry is continuing to show up at the NHL level.<\/p>\n
Quick Hits on the Competition<\/p>\n
The Caps are on a four-game winning streak after losing their first game of the season.<\/p>\n
They have been playing good defence through the first five games, only allowing eight goals so far this season.<\/p>\n
Aliaksei Protas leads his team with four goals in five games.<\/p>\n
Tom Wilson leads them in points with seven (3g-4a).<\/p>\n
The Caps have the best goal share percentage at five-on-five in the league. They have controlled 78.6% of the goals scored through 245 minutes of five-on-five play (11GF-3GA).<\/p>\n
Alex Ovechkin is still producing at age 40. He has a goal and three assists and has not been on the ice for a goal against in 58:58 of five-on-five ice time, during which his Caps have scored five goals.<\/p>\n
On the backend, veteran John Carlson is still eating up a ton of minutes. He has averaged 23:48 of ice time per game.<\/p>\n
The goalies are both off to a great start this season, with their team\u2019s save percentage at .944% through five games. Charlie Lindgren had a 35-save shutout last week against the New York Rangers.<\/p>\n
The Story: Back-to-Back Wins<\/p>\n
There will be 13 sets of back-to-backs this season, and the Canucks came away with a clean sweep of their first one after getting wins in Dallas and Chicago.<\/p>\n
Head Coach Adam Foote was pleased with the team\u2019s ability to fight back in each of those two games, as the Canucks trailed 2-0 after the first period in both of their first two games of the trip.<\/p>\n
The team saw Teddy Blueger return to the lineup on his day after missing the opening four games of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was over pucks, he didn\u2019t try to do too much coming back from an injury,\u201d said Foote. \u201cHe gave us some good minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canucks\u2019 Top Performers over the Last Five Games<\/p>\n
Conor Garland: 1g-3a-4p
Quinn Hughes: 1g-3a-4p
Kiefer Sherwood: 3g-0a-3p
Brock Boeser: 3g-0a-3p
Filip Chytil: 3g-0a-3p<\/p>\n
When and Where to Watch<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s game is a 9:30 p.m. AM start time, and you can watch the game on Sportsnet or listen to Brendan Batchelor\u2019s radio call on Sportsnet 650 and the Sportsnet Radio Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vancouver Canucks have picked up a pair of wins to begin their first lengthy road trip of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-223327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}