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(SportsNetwork. Bills Jersey .com) - Just when the sun brightens a bit for the Vancouver Canucks, it is followed up with a torrential downpour. The Canucks will be without their leading goal scorer for the rest of their road trip, one that resumes on Friday night against the Washington Capitals. Wednesday should have been a night that left the Canucks feeling good about themselves. They snapped a seven-game road losing streak with a 3-2 shootout win over the Winnipeg Jets in the opener of a four-game swing and saw forward Alexandre Burrows net his first two goals of the season. Of course, the good came with the bad as Ryan Kesler left in the game following a knee-on-knee collision and went back to Vancouver for further tests. It is not known how long he will be out, but head coach John Tortorella did admit that Kesler will not play for the rest of this trip, one that includes games versus the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning. Kesler was mentioned in a number of trade rumors before last weeks deadline, but the Canucks did not pull the trigger on a deal to move the forward, who has 22 goals on the season. Keslers 40 points are tied with Daniel Sedin, currently out with a strained left hamstring, and one back of Henrik Sedin for the team lead. Minus the forward, Eddie Lack made 32 saves through overtime before stopping all three skaters he faced in the shootout. Vancouver then earned the extra point on Chris Higgins third-round tally. "We lose (Kesler) before the third and we get down, so yeah, I thought we played hard right on through. And thats two out of the last three games that we have played well in the third period, so good for them," Tortorella said. "Theyve hung in there, theyve hung together. Losing a big guy like (Kesler), I thought they stuck together as a group. It was really nice to see." So was the production from Burrows, who scored his first goals since April 15 of last year. That gave him a gap of 40 games between goals in the regular season. "It was one of those nights it seemed the puck was finding me around the net," said Burrows, who hadnt scored a goal in his first 35 games of the season. "I had a lot of chances. Honestly, I think I had four real good looks." Vancouver picked up its first road win since Jan. 21 in Edmonton and sits four points back of a playoff spot in the Western Conference. Lack, meanwhile, rebounded after giving up six third-period goals in a 7-4 setback to the visiting New York Islanders on Monday and is likely to face Washington tonight for the first time. The Capitals are looking to put their own struggles behind them as they were just swept in a home-and-home set by the Pittsburgh Penguins. That gave the club five losses in its past six games and Washington sits three points out of the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. After losing a 3-2 decision at home on Monday, the Capitals were blanked 2-0 in Pittsburgh the following night. Jaroslav Halak made 32 saves, but the Penguins Marc-Andre Fleury stopped all 32 shots he faced. "We were on our heels the whole first period, no question," said Capitals coach Adam Oates. "We turned it over too many times -- probably a little hangover from (Monday) night." Evgeny Kuznetsov failed to record a point in the two games, the first of his NHL career after signing an entry-level deal on Saturday. He was the 26th overall pick of the 2010 draft and the Russian-born forward had been playing in the Kontinental Hockey League. It has also been a rough few games for Caps forward Alex Ovechkin, who leads the NHL with 44 goals but does not have a point in his past four games. He is a minus-4 over that span. Halak, acquired from the Buffalo Sabres before the trade deadline, started both games versus the Penguins and is 4-3-1 lifetime with a 2.12 goals against average versus the Canucks. Fellow Washington netminder Braden Holtby has never faced them. The Capitals have lost four straight and nine of their last 10 meetings with the Canucks, including a 3-2 setback in Vancouver on Oct. 26. The Canucks have won four of their last five trips to Washington and are eligible to have forward Zack Kassian back in the lineup tonight. He finished serving a three-game suspension for a hit-from-behind versus Dallas last Thursday. Steve Johnson Womens Jersey ." Thornton went after Orpik during a stoppage in play a week ago, slew-footing him to the ice and punching him twice in the head. Orpik suffered a concussion and was taken off the ice on a stretcher and transported to the hospital. E. J. Manuel Bills Jersey . -- The Toronto Argonauts have their offensive leader back. NEW YORK -- As the NHL eyes expanded video review, its unlikely to solve problems with goaltender interference. The leagues competition committee met Monday, two days after a controversial goal in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final that involved contact on Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, and discussed making more situations subject to review. But because of the variables present, theres no comfort level about making goaltender interference reviewable. "I think the underlying fundamental here is that if youre going to go to video review in a given area, there is the expectation of certainty," said Mathieu Schneider, the NHLPAs special assistant to the executive director. "And its just not there. Its very difficult. The type of things that were talking about, a possible coachs challenge, are things that we might be able to be certain on. But theres still a ton of grey area." The Kings goal Saturday night that helped them build a 2-0 series lead was not the reason goaltender interference came up at the annual meeting, but its certainly a hotter topic because of it. The leagues general managers will discuss it Wednesday as well, but executive vice president and director of hockey operations Colin Campbell expects there to be more education on the subject in lieu of video review. "Education thats meant for our players and our referees regarding how to call goaltender interference in various situations, so to be more defined in that area -- if it doesnt take another step, meaning some sort of video review on it," Campbell said. Nothing was resolved in terms of defining what video review could include next season, something that the GMs could try to hash out later this week. There are many possibilities. "We talked about pucks over the glass, we talked about offside goals," Campbell said. "Then, it comes to the question if its an offside play: how much time? Is it five seconds? Is it 10 seconds? Change of possession? On the rush? Puck leaving the zone? What if a minor occurs during that time and a goal was scored but the play was offside? Does the minor come down? Does a double-minor come down? Does a major come down?" A coachs challenge system could be part of that process, requiring a timeout to use one. But coaches would not be able to request a review on goaltender interference. The competition committee made some more solid recommendations on rule changes that GMs discussed at their March meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., most of which are designed to create more goals, including a more lenient interpretation of kicked-in goals and moving the faceoff-circle hashmarks back from 3 1/2 to 5 feet to give offensive teams more room to operate. "Theres a feeling that, again, this can create more offence, that forwards on a won draw in the offensive zone will have more time to make plays, more room to make plays off winning draws," Schneider said. "And then on the flip side, its going to reduce the amount of scrums that we have off faceoffs separating those two players a little bit more." If approved by the GMs, board of governors and NHLPA executive committee like all of these changes must be in order to go into effect, on icing calls, the offending team wont be able to replace the original player taking the faceoff as a way of delaying. Aaron Williams Bills Jersey. One violation would bring a warning and second would bring a minor penalty. Small overtime adjustments also got the green light from the group, which included GMs Ken Holland of the Detroit Red Wings, David Poile of the Nashville Predators, Don Maloney of the Phoenix Coyotes and Peter Chiarelli of the Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers chairman Ed Snider and players Ron Hainsey, Kevin Shattenkirk, Daniel Winnik, Michel Cammalleri and Cory Schneider. Teams will change ends and the ice will get a dry scrape before the five-minute overtime in the regular season. The goal is to have more games decided in overtime and fewer in shootouts, with the long change like the second period representing the first step. "Historically in our league, more goals are scored in the second period than the first and third, and were hoping the long change would affect in a positive way goal scoring so we change ends in overtime now in the playoffs, so we thought why not," Campbell said. "We thought that was a silly reason to not change ends." One new recommendation is to make the trapezoid behind the nets four feet bigger to give goaltenders more room to handle the puck. Schneider has pointed to the safety of defencemen as the reason. "Weve been talking about the trapezoid for a couple of years now, and the idea of either eliminating the trapezoid or expanding it to give more relief to defencemen going back to retrieve pucks," Scheider said. "Goalies would have better opportunity to get their defencemen out of danger zones." And while there wasnt much of a consensus about video review, embellishment seems to be a different story. The next step is figuring out how to solve the issue. "We feel embellishment in the game is a real problem today," Campbell said. "We understand players try to draw penalties. We feel its out of control, and weve discussed another approach at embellishment, similar to the rule thats already in the rule book. But there would not be a game suspension attached to that, there would be a warning and fines." That could include fining coaches and organizations along with players, Campbell added. While that could help curb one problem that has been part of these playoffs, goalie interference remains an almost unsolvable issue. Even the Game 2 situation brought what Schneider called a "split room" on whether it should have counted or not. "Theres a lot of instances where you have two reasonable people looking at the same video and have two different interpretations, and goalie interference is certainly one of those," Schneider said. "I think the education process is whats going to be most important for the officials, for the players, and I think Colin alluded to, we want to maybe err on the side of the goalie more often. Well, thats the direction we have to give to the officials. "The education process is going to be key. And to have certain telltale signs." ' ' ' |
