Playoff hopes fading fast for Canucks, Flames as season winds down
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The Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames are on the outside of the Western Conference playoff picture with hopes of earning a wild-card spot fading fast.
The red-hot St. Louis Blues (40-28-7, 87 points) have pulled away from the pack thanks to a nine-game winning streak and now hold a six-point cushion over the Canucks (34-27-13, 81 points) and a seven-point lead Flames (34-26-12, 80 points) with just over two weeks to go in the regular season.
The Canucks' hopes took another big hit on Sunday as the team fell 3-1 to the Winnipeg Jets.
“You know the big picture, obviously,” Canucks forward Pius Suter said after the loss. “But you can only focus on one game at a time and just battle hard and make sure the next game we get two points out there, and then go from there.
“You can't really think too much at this point about all the other teams. You’ve just got to win.”
The Canucks, who went 2-2-2 over a six-game road trip that ended Sunday, have eight games remaining beginning with a home game against the Seattle Kraken on Wednesday.
“We battled right to the end and couple of unfortunate breaks in the third,” defenceman Tyler Myers added. “And then it’s hard to come back because that team defends pretty well. It was tough to get to the net, but we’ve got to stay positive.
“Given the situation we’re in, we had situations for more and guys worked hard. We can’t get discouraged or negative. We’re going home to get some momentum and keep pushing. You never know what can happen.”
Flames face must-win games in hand
The Flames are also in a tough position, despite earning a point in five of their past six games. Calgary has three games in hand on the Blues and two games in hand on the Minnesota Wild and will need to quickly make up ground to put themselves back in the conversation.
The Flames held the lead late on Saturday against the Edmonton Oilers but allowed the tying goal with less than four minutes remaining in regulation and lost in overtime as Leon Draisaitl scored his 50th and 51st goals of the season.
"It's tough, we kind of blew it at the end there," Flames forward Brayden Pachal said Saturday. "These two points are the most important thing at this time of year in the race that we're in, so it's disappointing to lose that one tonight. I think we played pretty well for 55, 56, minutes but moral victories don't matter right now. We came here for the two points and we didn't get it."
"There were parts of it I liked and there were parts I thought we sat back and just didn't have that assertiveness or that killer instinct tonight that I thought we needed," said head coach Ryan Huska. "So, it is a tougher one, but as we've said over the last little while, you have to quickly turn the page and move on and get ready for our next one."
The Flames have 10 games remaining on the schedule, including a key game against the Wild on April 11.