Harsh Poonia
Vancouver: December 15th, 2021 – The Vancouver Canucks grab their 5th win in a row after cleaning the house of their coaching staff and replacing them with veteran coach Bruce Boudreau and Scott walker. They improve their season record to 13-15-2 with 28 points on the season as they continue to climb the standings and push for a playoff spot.
The game was a thriller comeback for the Canucks after they fell 3 nothing to the Columbus Blue Jackets, in just the first period. They began the comeback by scoring 1 goal in the second period and scored 2 more in the third period. But before the game ended the Canucks came away with both points as they scored the game winning goal in the very last minute of the game.
With 2 games remaining to go 500 on the season the Canucks go on the road to San Jose but that’s not without any complications because 5 players from the team were added to the Covid 19 positive list and possibly more to be added within the next day.
This could potentially mean postponing the game to another date. Due to the border restrictions and Christmas, no player would be wanting to self-isolate. They would ultimately miss Christmas with their families if they tested positive.
If the San Jose game gets postponed, the next game is against the Toronto Maple Leafs back in Vancouver, and I don’t foresee that game getting postponed because both teams are in Canada as of right now.
In other Canucks news, the Canucks have filled one of the vacant assistant general managers (GM) roles by hiring Derek Clancey today. They have now 2 more assistant GM role spots still left to fill and have no head GM as of right now. The new president of hockey operations Jim Rutherfurd said via zoom on Monday when he met with the media for the first time since being hired, he is going to take his time filling the GM position as he has 40 different candidates he is going to be or already has spoken with. He is giving this hiring a thorough look in finding the right person for the job.
Jim Benning, the previous GM was given 8 years to build a Championship team and has nothing but negative and poor results to show for, so Rutherfurd taking his time and doing his due diligence is key in picking the right person to anchor this team to once again reach and ultimately this time win the cup much less like the great 2011 team.