Potential Playoff Opponent: Vancouver Canucks
Forwards
The Canucks boast some impressive firepower up front. At center they’re being led by JT Miller, who was heavily involved in trade rumours prior to the trade deadline, but the Canucks never did pull the trigger on a deal for him. He currently sits in a tie for 10th place in league scoring, with Mikko Rantanen of Colorado with 91 points (74 GP for him). He’s no Edmonton Oilers Captain Connor McDavid, but that’s pretty good.
Normally the second line center would be Bo Horvat, but in a huge blow to their lineup he’s injured right now. He’s apparently going to be out for at least two weeks, so I wouldn’t count on him being back prior to the end of the regular season.
In his place is a great replacement in Elias Pettersson, who’s second on the team in scoring with 29 goals and 63 points in 74 games.
Starboard side we have the other centerpiece of the Ekman-Larsson trade, Conor Garland. He’s got a shot at the 20 goal mark for the second time in his career, putting up 17 goals and 44 points in 71 games this season. On the second line is star player Brock Boeser, who is having an off year by his standards but has still cracked the 20 goal mark for the fourth time in five seasons, going 20-21-41 in 65 games.
However, the port side of the top six is currently the weak side of the Canuck’s lineup. With Horvat out and Pettersson moved to center, that means that the first line is manned by rookie Vasily Podkolzin, drafted 10th overall in 2019. He might be an impressive player one day, but that won’t be this season as he’s put up rather pedestrian numbers of 14-11-25 in 73 games. Not all that unusual for a 20 year old rookie, but I’ve got to call it as I see it.
On the second line – and whom I can only assume is the sub-in for Pettersson – is normal bottom six forward Jason Dickinson, who’s doing about as well as you’d think he is, 5-6-11 in 56 games.
Tough break as Horvat would move the needle for them, but the lack of depth to replace injured players and the loss of Horvat swings this much moreso to the Oilers.
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The bottom six has seen addition by subtraction as the Canucks got rid of a bunch of deadweight in the trade for Oliver Ekman-Larsson (more on this later on in the blog…).
Normally I’d be looking at key draft pick Nils Hoglander to lead the charge at third line center, but he’s injured right now, out indefinitely. A big blow to their secondary scoring, and they don’t have great depth to replace him as Juho Lammikko, a pickup from Florida over the offseason, is currently in that spot right now. He’ll probably pad his numbers a bit more before the season is done, but right now 15 points in 69 (giggity) games is…..OK, but not great. Certainly doesn’t hold a candle to Nuge’s 47 points this season. Three other regulars from their bottom six are out right now – Brandon Sutter, Tanner Pearson, and one time Edmonton Oilers forward Alex Chiasson. Pearson and Chiasson have both put up good numbers – Pearson has 14 goals and 34 points in 68 games this season, while Chiasson has 12 goals and 21 points in 62 games. As you would expect with the rebuilding franchise, they don’t have the depth to overcome this loss of secondary scoring.
On the fourth line we have Brad Richardson at center, a big scoop of vanilla who’s currently putting up 2-1-3 in 11 games. Can he get another five before the end of the season to at least equal the minimum you’d want in a fourth liner? Maybe, at this point it’s impossible to say. At Lahmikko’s left is more vanilla extract in Matthew Highmore, with 10 points in 40 games. At least they’re on the good side of +/-…..that’s something, I guess. To Richardson’s port side is AHL bubble player Sheldon Dries, who actually has 1-1-2 in five games. Probably not a future there for the 27 year old as he’s riding a 20% shooting % on five shots on goal so that tells you all you need to know for him.
Starboard side in the bottom six you have on the third line a 23 year old who hasn’t been able to find a way to translate his AHL offence to the NHL, Will Lockwood. Goose eggs all around in 10 games played. Not surprisingly, on the fourth line you have an AHL bubble player veteran in Nic Petan. He has a single assist in 14 games this season. I once saw a W5 spot on him about how he suffered through a family tragedy in past seasons. That’s what he’s most famous for to me now, on the ice he’s nothing special.
It’s pretty obvious to me at this point what’s going on – even when healthy the Canucks present more challenges at forward but still the Oilers edge them out here – and that’s when healthy. The loss of Horvat is bad enough, but losing two key bottom six snipers hurts almost as much. It makes their winning streak more mysterious and impressive, but they’re too injured and lacking depth at this point to be where the Oilers are at this point in time.
The Canucks D is exactly what you’d expect it to be – one superstar and then a huge drop-off after that.
The first pairing is manned on the left side by Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who Jim Benning “Peter Chiarelli’d” from Arizona. In other words, this move is one of the final middle fingers to the organization from a GM who had to know his time into the GM sunset was on the horizon. Just like Chiarelli signed Mikko Koskinen to a ridiculous contract the day before he was fired, Benning made a ridiculous trade with Arizona to bring on one of the worst contracts in the NHL.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised since both Benning and Chiarelli were co-workers in Boston when the Bruins lucked into a Cup win in 2011. The worst part is the Canucks dealt away $10 million of cap space that was all due to come off the books after this season. They would’ve been better off letting OEL rot in Arizona and keeping the bottom six players they dealt away which would’ve given them a huge haul in cap space after this season is up.
Anyway, Larsson has done….OK. He’s not the same player who put up multiple seasons of 40 and 50 points in Arizona, but he’s put up 27 points this season and cleaned up his +/- significantly from -17 with the Coyotes last season to +9 this season. Still, you’d expect better from a blueliner with a $7.26 million cap hit. This is vindication from earlier in my predictions for the Canucks. I can’t for the life of me find the blog anymore but I predicted OEL wouldn’t live up to the hype and so far he’s largely proven me right, despite many Canucks trolls insisting he’d return to form.
Anyway, now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, OEL’s partner is Tyler Myers, another guy being paid way too much money to produce way too little. For $6 million for this season plus the next two, the Canucks are getting a whopping 17 points. +22, a whopping 24 points better than last year in the +/- column, but you’d expect more offence for the money.
Vancouver is currently paying just over $13 million a year for two blueliners to combine for 40 points on their first pairing. Enjoy…..
The second pairing has the guy who is the future top pairing guy in 22 year old Quinn Hughes, who has a whopping 59 points on the season, good enough for eighth in the league in scoring amongst blueliners. His partner is the rather forgettable veteran in Luke Schenn, who was a part time bottom pairing guy in Tampa the last two previous seasons but is in the top four on an inferior team in Vancouver. Go figure.
The bottom pairing is more vanilla extract in Travis Dermott, ex-Leaf, who came over at the trade deadline and has a whopping no points and +3 in 12 games. Well, at least you’re only paying him $1.5 million to keep his head above water defensively and not produce offence. I guess that’s the bright side. His partner is ex-Oiler 33 year old Brad Hunt, who’s carved out a career as an average bottom pairing d-man on the right side. He’s put up 15 points with a -5 which is, well, unimpressive. OK but nothing that makes him stand out. Still better than his predecessor Kyle Burroughs, I guess, who put up 33% less points in almost the same number of games.
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I’m going to have to go with the Oilers on D too, due to better depth and secondary scoring from the stay at home guys.
I’ll give the Canucks credit for one thing in their goaltending corps – they’ve drafted a legit starter in Thatcher Demko. The guy has now assumed the starting reigns between the pipes for the Canucks for the first time in his career, and has set career bests in sv% and GAA with a .918 and 2.63 respectively.
However, as you would expect for a team that’s maybe 75-90% through a rebuild, there’s a lack of depth still in the organization, and that shows in goal where after Demko the Canucks have 36 year old Jaroslav Halak in net, and well, let’s just say he’s not aging as gracefully as Mike Smith.
They bought out Braden Holtby only to bring in Halak who hasn’t been much better, going .899 and 3.01 in 16 games this year. If I had to guess the Canucks might just make a big push for Mikko Koskinen in the offseason.
Assuming they do make the postseason somehow, they better hope Demko stays healthy otherwise the Canucks are dead in the water. Halak was at one point an elite 1A/backup goalie but it looks like those days are long gone for him.
This lack of depth doesn’t compare to the Oilers who have two hot goalies peaking at exactly the right time in the season. Neither one is better than Demko, but both provide a collective strength that’s better than the overall Canucks tandem.
If the Canucks win the series – Ever see that episode of Star Trek: Next Generation where there was an alien who was able to mysteriously heal people just by touching them with his hand? That’s the only way the Canucks win the series – if that alien makes its way to their medical bay. If they even make it, which is a maybe at best.
If the Oilers win the series-Their superior health, depth, and firepower overwhelm the Canucks as expected.
My pick for who would win the series- Oilers, no question. Think the LA Kings except more behind in their rebuild.
Now the Canucks trolls can come out of the woodwork and proceed to tell me how wrong I am based upon Vancouver koolaid. 🙂
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