Vancouver Canucks Prospects Playoffs Watch #4

The Vancouver Canucks prospects are withering away.

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A wave of four-game eliminations has swept through the ranks of the Vancouver Canucks prospects. The prospects playoffs watch is thinning down as the Canucks’ season does, too.

April is here. The NHL and the AHL regular seasons will end. The Stanley Cup Playoffs will begin. More importantly, the NHL Lottery Draft is in just 30 days. Next year’s prospects watch, I trust, will surpass this year’s prospect watch. I am pretty darn sure.

But for now, there were only a few prospects who could extend their season. The devastation was enough to force me to turn this into a single-page post and abandon the slideshow format for each league. But not all is lost. Let’s take a look at the week it has been for the Canucks prospects.

The NCAA

The Frozen Four is just a week away as Brock Boeser and Thatcher Demko will look to win their respective teams the national championship. The best case scenario for Canucks fans is for Boeser’s North Dakota to defeat Denver and for Demko’s Boston College to defeat Quinnipeg so the two NCAA Canucks prospects face off against each other in the Frozen Four finals.

Ahead of the semi-finals which take place on April 7th, here are the two Canucks prospects’ stat lines.

G Thatcher Demko
38 GP / 27W / 7L / 1.85 GAA / .936 SV% / 10 SO

RW Brock Boeser
40 GP / 26G / 28A / 54P / Plus-38

Jim Benning expressed tremendous excitement about being on a trip to Tampa Bay to watch these two future Canucks.

Who are you rooting for should these two meet in the finals?

The WHL and the OHL

The first four games of round one are complete in both the WHL and the OHL, and two Canucks prospects got a taste of the broom.; one for the better, one for the worse.

D Tate Olson

Tate Olson’s season is now over after getting swept by Matthew Barzal and the Seattle Thunderbirds in the first round. He concludes the season with 38 assists and 47 points in 65 games, which is enough to put him among the top-20 in WHL defencemen scoring. But this came from Sportsnet’s Thomas Drance and his interview with GM Benning.

"“He’s got a chance to be an NHL player,” Canucks general manager Jim Benning told Sportsnet of Olson this weekend."

C Kyle Pettit

Centreman Kyle Pettit was on the other end of the sweep, his Erie Otters advancing to the second round in 4-0 fashion. His three goals and one assist in four goals is great, but here’s something that we all seemed to overlook.

Best defensive forward in the Western Conference and the second-best penalty killer? One decent stat that he has and the Canucks don’t right now is the faceoffs percentage. In the last three games of the series, Pettit was 67.6 percent on the draws. He took more faceoffs for his team than any other Otter skater.

The QMJHL

Ready for some doom and gloom?

D Carl Neill

The Sherbrooke Phoenix, alongside captain Carl Neill, were eliminated in five games at the hands of the Shawinigan Cataractes. Neill concludes the playoffs with four goals and two assists in those five games, capping off the season in which he had 42 assists and 50 points in 64 games.

D Guillaume Brisebois

The same story goes for Guillaume Brisebois, whose Acadie-Bathurst Titans were eliminated in five games to the Saint John Sea Dogs. He finishes with two assists in those five games.

C Dmitry Zhukenov (#10 Chicoutimi vs. #7 Cape Breton)

All hail Dmitry Zhukenov, the lone survivor in the QMJHL. With one goal and three assists in five games, Zhukenov and the Chicoutimi Sanguneens will look to push the series to seven games when game six goes on Monday night.

Last note, remember how Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann joined the Utica Comets after their junior playoffs were over? That does not seem to be the case for Olson and Brisebois, according to Benning.

The Utica Comets could use some help, though. With seven games to go, they are struggling with all the key players that they have had to loan to the Vancouver Canucks. Of note, Jordan Subban has 11 goals and 35 points in 62 games.

Next: Canucklehead Lament: What the Fans Want NOW

And Alex Grenier seems to be putting nice numbers up after his call up to the Canucks. He now leads the Comets in scoring with 15 goals and 45 points in 63 games. Although not a scorer, he sure is playing great for the Comets.