A miserable road trip ends on a high note despite the sad news of the passing of a Canucks legend. Now they’re home, ready to pay tribute to Gino Odjick and get another crack at the Tampa Bay Lightning.

VANCOUVER CANUCKS (18-22-3) vs TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING (28-13-1)

7:00 PM PST

ROGERS ARENA, VANCOUVER, BC

TV: SPORTSNET PACIFIC RADIO: SN650

Man, has it been a long wait for this game. Part of it was probably the whole three games in four nights thing, so any gap between games becomes more pronounced. But between the need to pay tribute to the late, great Gino Odjick, and try and take our minds off that WTF of a press conference on Monday, this game is needed.

I stand by my position that the only thing the Canucks should be doing right now is sliding down the standings, but tonight they need to win. It’s been so bloody difficult following this team over the past couple decades. From the point the Griffiths family sold the team, it’s been mostly misery, heartbreak and frustration. From absentee owner John McCaw, who left us saddled with the emotional scars of bringing in Mark Messier at the expense of Trevor Linden, to the Bertuzzi incident, as well as the corporate logo that continues to represent little but how bad this team’s been since then, to the Aquilini family’s purchase, and after coming so close yet again, a descent that would seem ludicrous if made into a screen play. It’s just all bad, all the time.

Anything good that happens gets washed away by the latest bad thing, and we can never believe it will get better. So give us this. Please. Let us just have this night where we can remember a guy who will be forever remembered as a Canuck, and a win in his honour to do him some justice.

LINEUPS

Courtesy of nhl.com, this is maybe sort of what we’ll see tonight:

Lightning projected lineup

Brandon Hagel — Brayden Point — Nikita Kucherov

Anthony Cirelli — Steven Stamkos — Alex Killorn

Ross Colton — Nicholas Paul — Pat Maroon

Vladislav Namestnikov — Pierre-Edouard Bellemare — Corey Perry

Victor Hedman — Zach Bogosian

Ian Cole — Erik Cernak

Mikhail Sergachev — Cal Foote

Brian Elliott

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Scratched: Haydn Fleury

Injured: Rudolfs Balcers (upper body), Nick Perbix (upper body)

Canucks projected lineup

Ilya Mikheyev — Elias Pettersson — Brock Boeser

Conor Garland — Bo Horvat — J.T. Miller

Andrei Kuzmenko — Sheldon Dries — Jack Studnicka

Dakota Joshua — Curtis Lazar — William Lockwood

Quinn Hughes — Luke Schenn

Oliver Ekman-Larsson — Tyler Myers

Kyle Burroughs — Ethan Bear

Spencer Martin

Collin Delia

Scratched: Lane Pederson, Riley Stillman

Injured: Travis Dermott (undisclosed), Thatcher Demko (lower body), Tanner Pearson (hand), Tucker Poolman (undisclosed)

Doesn’t look like too many changes, apart from Kuzmenko getting shuffled down to the third line.

GAME DAY CHATTER

GAME DAY BATTLE HYMN

We’ve featured them before, and they’re back with a new album that came out a couple weeks ago. Here’s the title track from ‘Seize The Fate’, the latest from Japan’s NEMOPHILA.

Enjoy the game, everyone. Go Canucks Go! RIP Gino.