The Abbotsford Canucks did something different this week: they packed up their gear and hit the road.

Aside from a quick jaunt down to Southern California to split a pair of games with the Coachella Valley Firebirds, the Canucks have largely been stationed at home since the AHL’s regular season ended April 19. They hosted the Tucson Roadrunners for three games, knocked out the Firebirds at home following that brief trip to Coachella Valley, and took one of two games from the Colorado Eagles to open the best-of-five Pacific Division Finals this past weekend.

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Abbotsford Centre has been one of the AHL’s most energetic buildings this postseason. With the parent Vancouver Canucks finished for the season and a solid collection of prospects skating with Abbotsford, the AHL affiliate located an hour to the east of its NHL parent team. A 13-game late-season winning streak certainly piqued interest as well. 

In search of a more geographically friendly affiliation set-up, Vancouver opted to bring the AHL back to Abbotsford in May 2021. Having been located on the other side of the continent with the Utica Comets, Vancouver brought Abbotsford back into the AHL after having had to contend with moving prospects back and forth to the Comets amid border restrictions during the pandemic. Abbotsford finally had a home team that worked as well. The city had hosted the Abbotsford Heat, a Calgary Flames affiliate from 2009-14, but that team had failed to attract much fervor from local fans. Flames prospects playing an hour away from Vancouver? No amount of marketing could overcome that obstacle, and Calgary eventually pulled out. 

When the AHL moved five teams to the West Coast in 2015, that shift opened the possibility for teams like Vancouver to bring their affiliates closer to home. But Vancouver had a good arrangement with Utica and stayed with the Comets for six more years. Eventually, however, the logistics of having an affiliate nearby won out for Vancouver, to say nothing of keeping up with the competition. The Flames, Anaheim Ducks, Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings, and San Jose Sharks had all brought their AHL affiliates to California in that 2015 move. The then-Arizona Coyotes moved their prospects west to Tucson. The Colorado Avalanche had followed with the Eagles in 2018. By 2020, the Vegas Golden Knights had purchased an AHL franchise and set up the Henderson Silver Knights. And before the expansion Seattle Kraken had even played a game, they had started work on building an arena and building out an AHL franchise in Palm Desert, Calif., just outside of Palm Springs.

Retired Vancouver stars Daniel and Henrik Sedin now work in player-development roles for the organization. Abbotsford’s nearby location makes that arrangement easy, and Vancouver prospects have a chance to work closely with two Hockey Hall of Fame members. That goes for Vancouver management and scouts as well. Abbotsford generally has homestands between four and six games, facing opponents in two-game sets. That means plenty of practice time at home even for a team located a flight away from the rest of the AHL. When Abbotsford goes on the road, the team can fly to a major hub in California and bus around from there. Trips to Calgary, Colorado, and Tucson make for easy trips. Winnipeg, home to the Central Division’s Manitoba Moose, makes for another convenient jaunt.

After affiliations with Syracuse, Kansas City in the former IHL, Manitoba, Chicago, and Utica, Abbotsford has afforded the Canucks their most logistically convenient location set-up in the organization’s history.

Backed by that loud, energetic fan base, home ice has been good for Abbotsford. The team went 24-11-0-1 (.681) at home during the regular season, tying for the third-best mark in the AHL. A 5-2 home performance in the Calder Cup Playoffs has carried the team to the AHL’s final eight teams.  

Goaltender Artūrs Šilovs, a major figure in last year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs for Vancouver, had back-to-back shutouts as he closed out Coachella Valley and then blanked the Eagles in Game 1 last Friday. But Colorado pushed back hard in Game 2, burning Šilovs four times on 20 shots on their way to a chippy 5-3 win. It was the first win in six games in Abbotsford this season for the Eagles.

“It's what playoff hockey is,” Canucks head coach Manny Malhotra said after Game 2. “If you leave the door open and you make mistakes, the opposition will capitalize on it, and that's exactly what they did [Sunday].”

And now they go to Colorado, home to one of the loudest arenas in the AHL to play out the remainder of this series with the Eagles.

Located an hour north of Denver in Loveland, Colo., Blue Arena is a tight, compact, loud facility. Seating 5,089 for hockey and filled nightly, Eagles fans are a noisy bunch who show up complete with cow bells that they ring for the first minute of each period.

“We're going into a building that's very motivated,” defenseman Jett Woo said. “Their fans are loud and make a difference, and it's up to us to compensate for that and to show up there.”

Just as the Eagles had to contend with Abbotsford’s home-ice environment, the Canucks will have to do so in Colorado to take this series. Game 3 goes Wednesday night with Friday’s Game 4 to follow. If necessary, the series would close next Monday. Colorado had the AHL”s top regular-season home record at 26-6-2-2 (.778). The Eagles then took care of San Jose to open their postseason, using a pair of home victories to finish off the Barracuda.

Abbotsford finished seventh in regular-season road action, going 20-13-2-1, Malhotra is aware of what his team faces this week. 

Have the Eagles started to figure out Šilovs or was Game 2 simply an aberration? Certainly the Eagles can produce offensively. Their 3.47 goals per game led the AHL. Colorado’s power play tied for sixth in the AHL during the regular season at 20.1 percent. They are still averaging exactly three goals per game in the postseason, and that has been with two-time AHL most valuable player T.J. Tynan having been held to one assist in six games. It seems a reasonable expectation that eventually Tynan will break out offensively for a team that also has forwards Tye Felhaber, Jere Innala Jayson Megna, Matthew Phillips, Chris Wagner, and Jake Wise along with defensemen Jacob MacDonald (an AHL-record 31 goals for a blueliner), Jack Ahcan, and Calle Rosén among others to key its offensive attack.

“They're going to get a lot of energy and momentum from their home crowd,” Malhotra said. “Nothing changes in terms of our game plan. We have to match and exceed their level of energy and play our game better.

“We know that there's three more games coming, potentially, so we can't allow ourselves to take a breath. We can't allow ourselves to relax, and that's going to be the tail of the tape moving forward.”

One area of focus will be penalty trouble even though the Abbotsford penalty kill has excelled in going 26-for-26 this postseason. But forward Sammy Blais, the AHL’s second-leading scorer this postseason with 3-7-10 in nine games, got pulled into penalty trouble in Game 2. Eagles defenseman John Ludvig, who has quickly irritated the Canucks, mixed it up with Blais at the end of the second period as both players took double-minors. Twelve minutes into the third period, a net-front scrum with Colorado’s Wyatt Aamodt resulted in 22 penalty minutes and an early exit for Blais. The Eagles are capable of playing a feisty, emotional game at home, and it will not be a surprise if they continue to try to irritate Blais.

That said, the Canucks will have to counter aggression with aggression. The Colorado forecheck can overwhelm opponents, and part of Abbotsford’s task on the road will be to back off the host team.

“You have to play with aggression against these guys,” Malhotra outlined. “You have to apply pressure. If you're hoping and waiting for opportunities, they're just not being given to you, so we have to be the aggressors in trying to force the issue and create those turnovers and get some ugly ones around their neck.”

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