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Canucks Hat Trick: Saad tale; Sestito scores and sits; hitting the road

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Three thoughts following the Canucks’ sobering 5-2 loss to the Blackhawks:

1. The star players got it done for Chicago, but if you watched the game on Wednesday night, you could see how much of a contribution the Hawks’ lunchpail players made a difference in the game. Yes, the Blackhawks were led on the scoresheet by their elite forwards: Marian Hossa, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Sharp all scored big goals, to pull their team back from a 2-0 deficit in the second period.

But look at the play of the likes of Brandon Saad, Andrew Shaw and Marcus Kruger and that tells the story of the dominating win as much as the score sheet. What do these players have in common? They are all young – Saad is 21, Shaw is 22 and Kruger is 23 – they play significant bottom-six forward roles and they were drafted and developed by Chicago in the last five years.

Saad got himself into the spotlight against the Canucks, scoring twice and adding an assist in an efficient 13:43 of ice-time.

The Canucks? They have just Jordan Schroeder (22nd overall in 2009) in their current lineup to show for their drafting of forwards during the regime of GM Mike Gillis that began with the 2008 draft. You could add Zack Kassian to that short list, as he was traded for 2008 first-rounder Cody Hodgson.

Saad, who has 17 goals and 39 points in just his second full season in the NHL,  was taken 43rd overall by the Hawks in 2011, the year Vancouver took Nicklas Jensen 29th overall. Shaw was drafted 139th overall that same year, while Kruger, in his third full NHL season, was selected 149th in 2009.

It simply shows that it’s hard to build a championship team without developing your own players.

2. Guessing his foot speed worked against him considering the opposition was the uber-fast Hawks, but wasn’t it a bit odd that fourth-liner Tom Sestito scored a goal at 2:44 of the second period, then got a grand total of two more shifts in the game. He was on the ice for two more shifts in the second and stapled to the bench in the third. But maybe he could have made something happen when the top-six forwards could not.

3. Looking ahead, it doesn’t get any easier for the Canucks as they head out on a five-game road trip to finish up their pre-Olympic Break schedule. For a team that appears to have hit rock bottom, it’s a stretch that could well determine their season and potential to make the playoffs. It starts in Winnipeg on Friday, with the Jets playing much better under new coach Paul Maurice. But it only gets worse from there, with four games in six nights – which begins in Detroit, the next day in Boston and finishes up in Montreal and Toronto.

 

 



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