For the better part of two weeks, the Vancouver Canucks have been doing their part to stay with the pack in the Northwest Division and in the mix for a Western Conference playoff spot. They’ve been doing it by winning key games on their schedule. And as strange as it sounds, winning those games is the easy part. That’s because there have been—and will continue to be—nights when the Canucks aren’t playing but the teams they’re battling with are. For professional athletes, there are few things tougher than sitting and watching and knowing there’s nothing they can do about the results on the out-of-town scoreboard.

While fans and the media are consumed by what’s going on around the National Hockey League on a nearly minute-by-minute basis at this time of the year, the Canucks themselves vary in the amount of attention they pay to the goings-on around them.

“The bottom line is whether you check or not, you can’t change the result, so it will be as it will be,” Trevor Linden told the Georgia Straight after a recent practice at G.M. Place. “At this juncture of the season, we’re more worried, more concerned about what we’re doing. I don’t know if now is the time to be hanging on every score that comes in, because the bottom line is we’ve got to win games and look after our end of it a little bit. Certainly down the road, as we get closer to the end of the season, I’ll keep a better look at things. But right now, sometimes I’m doing other things and sometimes I’m asleep before all the games are over.”

Linden is in the minority when it comes to needing to know results. But many of his teammates share the veteran winger’s conviction that the best way to minimize the impact of the out-of-town scoreboard is to continue to make the most of the games the Canucks can control.

“We’ve got to worry about ourselves first,” says Ryan Kesler, one of several Canucks who prefer to get their out-of-town scores on-line rather than on television. “If we scoreboard-watch too much and don’t worry about ourselves, that’s what we’re going to be doing for a while in the summer is scoreboard-watching. I tend to screw around on the computer for a couple of hours at night going on different sites, and usually I’ll end up on the NHL site.”

Kesler’s linemate Alex Burrows and rookie Mason Raymond are among those who like to log on to do their scoreboard-surfing. Taylor Pyatt, however, is a little more conventional when it comes to getting his hockey information.

“Usually I’ll watch the sports shows and check out the highlights to get the scores. If there’s a game on, sometimes I’ll stop and check it out, but I don’t watch a whole lot,” the big winger says. “We’re so busy with what we’re doing ourselves that if I get a day off, I try to relax and not worry about it too much. But it makes it tough, especially when it gets down to the end of the season and every point means so much.”

A year ago, the Canucks could focus their attention on the Minnesota Wild and the Calgary Flames. It was a three-horse race for the Northwest Division title, but the Canucks had the luxury of knowing late in the season that even if they didn’t win the division they had still sewn up a playoff spot.

That’s hardly the case this year. They’re still slugging it out to defend their division crown, but they’re also in a battle to simply lock down one of the eight playoff spots up for grabs.

That means keeping an eye not only on the teams in front of them but on the teams around them—and a few of the teams behind them in the standings. And some nights—nights when Calgary plays Minnesota or Colorado faces Nashville—it’s hard to know what result the Canucks want. They just know they don’t want those games going to overtime, where both teams gain ground in the standings.

“I like to see what happened around the league before I go to bed,” says Byron Ritchie. “Obviously, I’m interested in the divisional games, so I usually just go to a sports channel and watch the ticker. It’s not really fair to my wife if I say I’m going to sit down on the couch and watch hockey. I like to give her a break from hockey, and I like to spend as much time as I can with my son.”

Although Canuck players have enough going on around them to keep their minds off the playoff chase when they’re not playing, the same can’t be said for their coach. Alain Vigneault readily admits he’s consumed by his job and his team’s quest for a postseason berth

“Every night when I get home, at 4:35, it’s channel 200-and-something and I go through the games till they’re over. That’s the way it is. That’s all coaches do, is watch games, so I’m pretty up-to-date with what’s going on,” he says with a laugh. “Obviously, right now there’s a lot of scoreboard-watching from everyone. For me, I want our guys and myself and our crew to focus on our play. If we win our games, we don’t need to watch the scoreboard.”

Vigneault has been pleased with the recent focus of his team, which strung together four wins for the first time all season and which, despite injuries and inconsistency, found a way to pick up at least a point in eight of its first 10 games in February.

The Canucks play their final game of the year on April 5 at home against Calgary. They better hope their playoff spot is sewn up by then, because the season ends the following day with Minnesota, Colorado, San Jose, Anaheim, and Phoenix all in action.

If the Canucks don’t take care of their own business, they’ll have no choice but to scoreboard-watch on that final Sunday. And at that point, their postseason plans could very well be in the hands of others.