December 14th, 2024
JC Clemas
The new year is almost upon us, and new issues have presented themselves for the Vancouver Canucks since the last Panic Meter edition a month ago. Though the team has had decent results since I last did an edition, I don’t think any Canucks fan is quite satisfied with the team’s performance in that time. I’ll discuss their main issues in this article, and determine whether they’re actually worth worrying over.
Defense
The most prominent issue for the Canucks right now is the defense. Filip Hronek was injured a couple of weeks ago in a game against Pittsburgh, and the defensive group immediately became a concern. How could it not? Filip Hronek had been solid in the weeks leading up to the injury, and besides that top pairing, the defense was already scaring me. Tyler Myers was boosted into the role of top-pairing defenseman, which is probably not something that a contending team would want. Credit to Myers, he has assumed the role pretty well. The real issues come below that top pairing. Tuesday’s game against St. Louis was the worst display of defense I’ve seen from the team this season, and of course, it occurred in Demko’s return game. It all started with Erik Brännström being healthy scratched, a decision I still do not understand. The four defensemen who made up the bottom two pairs were Carson Soucy, Noah Juulsen, Vincent Desharnais, and Mark Friedman. Carson Soucy has been having a tough year, and the other three are 7th defensemen at best. Replacing Desharnais with Forbort against Florida seemed to be a golden move, as the Canucks posted a shutout, though I still don’t understand how Brännström didn’t find his way back into the lineup.
Scratching Brännström took away one of the only healthy guys on defense who knows what to do while possessing the puck. Quinn Hughes is obviously one of the best in the league with the puck on his stick, and I also have faith in Tyler Myers to make smart decisions. They both happen to be on the same pair though, leaving us with two pairs that cannot move the puck. Noah Juulsen and Mark Friedman particularly concern me in this field, as I full-body cringe every time they have the puck in their own zone. Moving forward, I don’t want to see both of them in the lineup at the same time anymore. Friedman and Forbort were actually decent against Florida, and there is literally no reason Juulsen should be in the lineup over Brännström right now. It’s really just about survival until Hronek returns, and I think using Hughes, Myers, Soucy, Brännström, Forbort and Friedman offers us the best chance at surviving these 8 weeks.
PANIC METER: 7/10
Nils Höglander
I had talked about Höglander in an article recently, but the problem has not come close to solving itself. It has now been EIGHTEEN games in a row without a single point for Nils. In that time, he’s taken penalties at terrible times, lost way more puck battles than he did last season, and has clearly found himself in the coach’s doghouse. I’m not going to lie: I’m pretty worried about this situation. Not because I think he’ll never figure it out, but because Allvin and his management group have not had a lot of patience for players in the past 3 years. Ilya Mikheyev has a bad season? Gone. Andrei Kuzmenko has a bad first half of a season? Gone. Daniel Sprong has a bad 9 games? Have fun in Seattle, buddy.
Now, I am definitely worried about the negative impact Höglander currently has on the team. Though he’s played some good games recently, the games where he fails to provide anything are starting to outweigh them. Last game, he got the chance on Miller and Boeser’s left wing and still failed to produce a point. I would not be surprised if this was Höglander’s final opportunity to show that he’s worth keeping around. If he still cannot put up a point in his time on a line with two all-stars, he’s the most obvious choice to trade for a defenseman of anyone in the system. I don’t want that to happen, but I think we’re slowly creeping towards that reality.
PANIC METER: 9/10
Team Analytics
Debates will be had on whether advanced analytics even matter at all. We know that a lot of NHL players are not very fond of them. I can see both sides of the argument. I do think these analytics can tell a story that we don’t necessarily see, though. And for the Canucks, it is not telling the most pleasant story. The term PDO is something that we heard a lot last season, and it is something the Canucks are high on the rankings of again. For those who don’t know, PDO tracks “team luck” by combining a team’s save percentage with their shooting percentage. The Canucks currently sit at 5th on this ranking, at 101.6. PDO rates are meant to be around 100, meaning the Canucks could be due to regress at some point.
PDO isn’t the most advanced analytic, though. I can compare the Canucks’ goals for per 60 (GF/60) with their expected goals for per 60 (xGF/60), and their goals against per 60 (GA/60) with their expected goals against per 60 (xGA/60) to support the argument of an impending regression. The expected numbers track the goal probability of all unblocked shots. The Canucks’ actual numbers are significantly outperforming their expected numbers in both goals against and goals for, per evolving-hockey.com. In fact, the Canucks rank 30th and 27th in the NHL in xGF/60 and xGA/60, respectively. This helps to support the idea that Canucks’ goaltending has been overperforming, and their shooting percentage is unsustainable. I would agree with these suggestions. When you think of how many games Kevin Lankinen has stolen for us, and how brutal the offense has looked at times, it’s pretty clear that the team is insanely lucky. The Canucks need to find new ways to generate offense, and need to help out Kevin Lankinen on the defensive end a lot more (that second point is obvious). Maybe we just have plot armour, though. That could always be the case.
PANIC METER: 7/10
Home Play
It’s no secret that the Canucks have struggled in Rogers Arena so far this season. The team has a record of 5-6-4 in Vancouver, as opposed to their astounding away record of 10-2- 1. Of teams that have played more than 12 games at home, their 5 wins are tied for the fewest. It’s not like they’re playing well and just getting unlucky in the results. They are playing awful, and making mistakes no NHL team should be making. For instance, they kept Sunday’s game against Tampa Bay close late in regulation. With 6 minutes left in a tie game, they took a too-many-men penalty, and the Lightning ultimately scored on the ensuing power play. There are some penalties they can take where I think “okay, yeah, I can see how that might have happened.” How can you possibly take a too-many-men penalty in such a pivotal moment of the game?
It’s interesting, too, that some of their wins on home ice look worse than some of their losses on the road. A comparison of the game in Minnesota and the game versus Columbus is proof of this. In Minnesota, they were at the end of a 6 game road trip. They played their hearts out, outshot the top-seeded Wild team, and managed to force overtime before getting Kaprizov’d. I was very happy with that effort, especially the fact that they still had their legs in the 3rd period. Against Columbus, one game later, they had ample time to rest up and I assumed we’d see a dominant performance by the team. They proceeded to play their worst period of the season in the 1st, managing a measly 2 shots. The Canucks ended the game being outshot 32-17, were luckily bailed out by the fact that Elvis Merzļikins didn’t feel like saving a puck, and won 5-2. The effort was significantly worse.
It’s hard to say what their problem is at home because at the end of the day, it could just be a coincidence that their worst games come on home ice. It’s also only a 15-game sample size so far, and there are 26 games left to go on home ice, so we can just hope the issue doesn’t persist. J.T. Miller’s return seemed to provide a spark for the team against Florida, as that was clearly their best performance on home ice this season. We cannot just expect our goalies to bail us out every time though. It’s time for someone besides Kevin Lankinen to be the player of the game.
PANIC METER: 4/10
Dakota Joshua
Dakota Joshua has had a slow start to this season. With just 3 points in 14 games, Joshua is a long way off the points pace he set last year when he produced 32 points in 63 games. I’m just gonna get this out of the way right now before going any further: this doesn’t really land anywhere on my panic meter. As we all know, Joshua was disadvantaged coming into this season due to the treatment he received for testicular cancer. He missed training camp and the first 14 games of the season following the treatment. Just the fact that he’s back so soon is incredible to me. Despite struggling to produce on the offensive side at the same level so far, he’s still working his way back to full speed and has provided value in the form of his forechecking and defensive ability.
Joshua has the largest leash of any Canucks depth player in team history. He doesn’t need to score 18 goals again this season. I am satisfied with his play just as long as he continues to demonstrate the same heart he became a fan favourite for last season. That being said, I would assume that his production goes up as we progress. He’s been finding his spots a lot recently, and I feel has been robbed of a couple of assists he deserved (the Myers missed tap-in against Buffalo, the Desharnais failed breakaway against Columbus, etc.). Nobody would have blamed Dak if he took a couple of months off, but he is clearly dedicated to this team and came back as soon as he could. That’s the kind of guy we want on this team.
PANIC METER: 0/10