[Hyack]

Vancouver at Edmonton

82

CANUCKS (31-40-10) AT OILERS (35-40-6)

Forward Daniel Sedin and center Henrik Sedin will play their final game in the NHL when the Vancouver Canucks visit the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place on Saturday.

The twin brothers, 37, announced they will retire after 17 seasons with Vancouver on Monday. Daniel Sedin was selected No. 2 and Henrik Sedin No. 3 in the 1999 NHL Draft.

Daniel Sedin scored the overtime winner, assisted by Henrik Sedin, in a 4-3 win against the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday for the Canucks, 6-1-1 in their past eight games.

Oilers center Connor McDavid can win his second straight Art Ross Trophy as the NHL's leading scorer. McDavid has 106 points (41 goals, 65 assists), six more than Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov, with 100 points (39 goals, 61 assists).

Vancouver and Edmonton each has been eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention.

Daniel Sedin (37 goals, 47 assists) and Henrik Sedin (17 goals, 67 assists) each has 84 points in his career against Edmonton.

McDavid has 35 points (14 goals, 21 assists) in his past 20 games. He won the Art Ross Trophy with 100 points (30 goals, 70 assists) last season.

Sautner will return to the lineup after being a healthy scratch against Arizona. … Lowe, the son of former Oilers defenseman Kevin Lowe, will play his second game.

Sutter has six points (three goals, three assists) in his past five games. … Nugent-Hopkins has 11 points (five goals, six assists) in his past 10 games.

Game time 7:00 pm PT

[N_Fiddledog]

Montreal tanked for the loss and Detroit only got a single point so depending on how we do tonight we'll either be drafting 5th or 6th before the draft lottery.

By my calculations the worse we could draft is 9th.

If I'm correct that's not horrible.

Be better to win the lottery though, of course.

[Hyack]

The Oilers opened the scoring at 13:52 of the 1st period while on the PP, the Canucks tied the score with a goal by Jokinen at 17:47, his 5th, assists going to Leipsic and Del Zotto. The Canucks took the lead at 11:45 of the second when Motte scored his 5th of the season, assists going to Sutter and Archibald. Edmonton then tied the game at 14:10. The game then went to OT which had no scoring, leading to the SO. Once again it went to the 8th round before the Oilers managed to end it, winning the game 3-2. The Canucks outshot Edmonton 38-33 and were held scoreless on their 4 PPs while the Oilers went 1/2.

[N_Fiddledog]

We finish the season to draft 6th before the lottery.

To belabor what's already well-known...

The teams that don't make the playoffs are in a lottery for the first 3 choices. Picks are weighted so the teams that finish the worse have the better chances.

So if worse comes to worse we could be pushed back to picking 9th.

Even so, in this strong draft that would set us up to pick somebody like this guy - Barret Hayton

Not bad.

But if Canuck luck or Bettman doesn't stop us, who knows...we're at least eligible for one of the top three picks.

Our prospects in Europe, at the farm and in College are looking aces.

And with the retirement of Henrik and Daniel, we have all that cap space to pick up a couple prime free agents if not in 2018 then in 2019.

I'm hopeful for the future. Maybe not next year but by the one after that at least we should start being dangerous, maybe.