Though they're still holding down a playoff spot in the rough and tumble Western Conference, the Vancouver Canucks have been limping along of late.

Vancouver has only won four of its past ten games, and the Canucks' underlying numbers have cratered significantly over the past month.

Some of the club's recent struggles have been papered over of late by the stellar play of Ryan Miller, who has apparently shaken off the early season cobwebs. It would appear that Canucks rookie head coach Willie Desjardins hasn't been fooled though and he quite rightly concluded that a shake up was needed as he rejigged his forward lines at practice on Monday:

The most notable change is that Canucks forward Alex Burrows is back with the Sedin twins, with whom he's spent the vast majority of his 5-on-5 ice-time over the past half-decade. So far this season Henrik and Daniel Sedin have skated with Burrows for less than 20 minutes at even-strength.

It's perhaps not at all surprising that Burrows is looking forward to getting a look as the Sedins' triggerman.

"[Desjardins] talked to me about the change and it's been a while, but I'm excited," Burrows said on Monday.

Burrows' ascension to top-line duty works to push Radim Vrbata onto a second-line that has provided little in the way of offensive pop in recent weeks. Perhaps Vrbata's crafty scoring ability will help get Nick Bonino (one goal in his last 23 games), and Chris Higgins (one goal in his last 14 games) going.

Ultimately this move is more likely aimed at helping out the top-line. The twins are playing decently after a miserable 2013-14 campaign, and are comfortably on pace for 70-plus points. Their two-way game has fallen off somewhat though, as Daniel and Henrik are controlling just about 53 percent of 5-on-5 shot attempts at even-strength this season.

That mark is well below the 60 percent Corsi For percentage the twins have managed in nearly 1500 minutes with Burrows over the past four seasons.

On a team level, Burrows has been Vancouver's best two-way forward at even-strength and it's not all that close. All eight skaters with whom Burrows has logged at least 75 minutes at 5-on-5 this season have done better by Corsi For percentage when sharing the ice with Burrows than they've done otherwise.

Recently the under-rated defensive forward has been caddying for 19-year-old Bo Horvat on the Canucks' fourth-line. Burrows' diminished role at evens can be connected with troubling directness to the massive drop off in the Canucks' overall form at 5-on-5 over the past two weeks.

Here's an annotated graph from hockey advanced statistics site war-on-ice, charting the Canucks' 10-game rolling average unblocked shot differential:

(Courtesy: war-on-ice.com)

Realistically, the Canucks aren't a good enough puck possession side to hide a player of Burrows' two-way abilities on the fourth-line. That he's being moved up the lineup seems a sensible experiment, particularly considering the difficulties the Canucks have had controlling play in recent weeks.