The Vancouver Canucks finally broke out of their scoring slump with a big 5-1 victory over the Nashville Predators on Thursday night that saw four of the five goals scored in the first period.
For the Canucks, however, just two of those five goals were scored on the power play. Normally that is a good statistic, but the Canucks were just 2-for-10 on the PP last night and have scored just four times in their last 25 opportunities with the man advantage. It isn't every night that a team gets to go on the power play ten times, and the Canucks need to take advantage of all their opportunities.
Alain Vigneault needs to keep Mikael Samuelsson off of the point on the power play. Samuelsson, who was once a specialist on the power play, has struggled over the last half season or so on the PP and is no longer effective.
The Canucks lost Christian Ehrhoff and his big shot in the off-season and need to utilize Sami Salo and Alex Edler's strong point presences and shots on the power play. Currently, Vigneault has the two playing together, but he should split them up abnd have one on each power play unit.
In addition to the Canucks' struggles f ...
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Article written by John Bain
Vancouver Canucks: Keys to Fixing the Canucks Powerplay
October 21st, 2011 by John Bain Leave a reply »
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