Welcome to FlyerTalk, miserkris.

True Standard awards won't disappear anytime soon. They'll stay around as long as there are at least 3 seats really* for sale in coach.

(*3 seats for sale in coach when coach is oversold don't count.)

Now, seat selection may better when booking Standard awards further ahead of time, but other than that there's no real reason to rush.

Meanwhile, keep in mind that niether UA nor Miles&More may show all Saver availabilty online. Now that you're a FlyerTalk member, you qualify for a number of free searches at www.awardnexus.com. At the bottom right of the main page there, click on "more signup options" in the bottom right (under the green Purchase Membership button) and it'll let you input your FlyerTalk info to create a logon there. Once you have an account established there, do a search using the Star Alliance selection (which enables both Air Canada and ANA searches).

If Award Nexus does seem to show Saver avilability, you can try calling UA on the phone and seeing if they can book it at Saver rates. That may or may not incur a phone booking charge (sometimes they waive that once you explain that you couldn't book it on ua.com, but I can't guarantee they always will), but even if they charge that, that might be worthwhile if it gets you the flight at half the miles or so.

Another thing to look at is if they have 1 or 2 but not 3 saver award seats. Finding 3 Saver award seats on the same flight may often be tricky. If you can split it up to have 2 people fly one routing and 1 person fly a different routing, that may be easier to find at Saver levels. Or even on the same routing, you may be able to get 1 or 2 people at Saver levels but the rest at Standard levels. That's still better than everyone at Standard levels. But you can't figure that out unless you search for 1 person, then 2 people, then 3 people on the same dates.