The Canucks’ busy week begins with back-to-back road games against Wild and Avalanche

The Vancouver Canucks hit the road in search of more wins with three games in four nights including a back-to-back against the Minnesota Wild and Colorado Avalanche on Monday morning and Tuesday evening.

With their 18 road wins on the season, the Canucks rank second in the league for picking up victories away from home and are looking to continue to pick up points in other buildings aside from Rogers Arena.

Monday’s game is an 11:00 am PT start time with the Family Day holiday in British Columbia and Presidents’ Day down in the United States. The Wild and Canucks both saw a three-game winning streak snapped on Saturday night. The Wild fell to the Buffalo Sabres on home ice via a 3-2 overtime loss. On the season, the Wild hold a 25-23-6 record and are four points out of a wild card spot in the Western Conference.

This will be the third and final matchup of the season between the Canucks and the Wild. Casey DeSmith picked up a 26-save shutout on December 7th in a 2-0 victory. The Canucks fell to the Wild 2-1 in a shootout on December 16th. If the upcoming game resembles the prior two, we should expect another defensive battle between these two clubs.

Offensively, the Wild are led by Kirill Kaprizov, who has 20 goals and 31 assists for 51 points in 47 games this season. Kaprisov joins Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy on the top line and that trio has been very successful this season. All three players on the top line have 40 or more points and the trio has been on the ice for 15 goals scored and just six goals against.

On defence, rookie Brock Faber currently sits second to Connor Bedard in rookie scoring – he’s picked up four goals and 29 assists this year and is averaging a whopping 25:05 per night. He has been efficient on the first power play unit and will see time with Jonas Brodin as the top defence pairing for penalty killing.

Between the pipes, Filip Gustavsson and Marc-Andre Fleury are in a 1A-1B situation with Gustavsson picking up 31 starts to Fleury’s 22. The duo has save percentages right around .900 but Gustavsson has picked up a couple of shutouts this season and Fleury has one of his own.

Shifting gears to Tuesday, the Canucks will battle with the Colorado Avalanche in Denver for the second of their back-to-backs.

Tuesday is back to a more routine start time. Puck drop will be 6:00 pm PT as the Canucks battle the Avalanche for the second time this season. The Canucks fell 5-2 back in November and will look for revenge on a game that got away from them.

We will get a chance to see the NHL’s second leading scorer and this game will feature four of the NHL’s top-ten scoring leaders as well as the league’s top two scoring defencemen.

Nathan MacKinnon has been on an absolute tear this season and has 28 multi-point games including 10 games with three or more points. He’s scored 32 goals and has 25 of them at even strength. MacKinnon will play on a line with Mikko Rantanen and Jonathan Drouin. The duo of MacKinnon and Rantanen have been on the ice for 48 five-on-five goals this season and continue to be one of the most dangerous forward pairings in the league.

The Avalanche currently sit with a 33-18-4 record and hold onto the third playoff spot in the Central Division. The Avs possess the best home-ice record in the league and are 20-5-0 at Mile High.

They just wrapped up a six-game road trip in which the team struggled and went 1-4-1. They will play the Arizona Coyotes on Sunday and have a day off before the Canucks get there on Tuesday.