The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 322: A Team Like That

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

Thomas Drance joins the show to discuss the Canucks scorching hot start, what's driving it, just how sustainable it is moving forward, and a whole lot more.2:30 The Canucks glow up from last season9:00 Taking care of business against inferior teams15:00 What makes Elias Pettersson special22:00 How to sustain shooting efficiency year over year30:30 The new look offensive skill in today's game 37:00 Lack of predictability in the standings this season 51:00 The instant effect Quinn Hughes has had 54:00 Feeding your best players prime minutes 1:00:00 Poking holes in the Canucks early resume See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich. And joining me is my good buddy Thomas. trans Thomas what's going on man oh not much dmitri happy to have you in my space i'm hosting this one today this is beautiful this is i wish i wish this was a video podcast where the listeners could see the uh the luxury we're living in right now the delightful mountain view on a on a rare sunny day in vancouver no it's uh it's a great day for for hockey and a great day to get into the western conference it is and i can't believe i'm saying this but we're going to talk about like i think

arguably the most interesting slash exciting slash talked about team of this season, the Vancouver Canucks. It's a sentence that I would have probably started off a podcast with last year ironically. And now it's the real deal. And I did a couple podcasts last week, I was one of the biggest surprises in the league.

And I purposely didn't want to touch on the Canucks because I wanted to save all of my takes for this episode. And this is exciting. You cover the team, obviously, for the athletic Vancouver now and you're doing a bang-up job. And so I'm excited to really unpack this because there's so many layers to the story. It's crazy.

The Canucks are actually good, maybe. And, you know, I've been waiting for the bottom to fall out of a variety of things. And not just the results, but there are strong underlying performance. And, you know, at this point, we're still early for 14 games into the season for the Canucks. But aside from strength of schedule and genuinely their QOC has been low, the lowest in the league to this point. Yep. You know, but they're throttling teams on the shock clock. They are scoring goals and bunches.

There are signs of legitimate high-end performance. And it's shocking. It's shocking. They're fun to watch, too. They're, you know, definitely the most fun team. The Canucks of Iced in 10 years, probably, since the 10-11 season. And, you know, this core group of players is dynamic, interesting enough that they have a chance to be, you know, in that sort of West Coast.

era, West Coast Express era conversation for, you know, a memorably, sightly group of hockey players. Well, it's funny. You ring out 2010-11 by most metrics, the Bruins and Canucks are in the two best teams in the league. I know. I saw that on Moneypuck.com that's the most likely Stanley Cup final matchup. Someone brought it up to me. And I just said, you know, we're only five weeks removed from them having 25% odds of even making the playoffs by that same model. So I'm not getting too excited. But I do think the excitement level is something kind of worth hammering home here because I think this was a franchise that there were worse teams the past couple years, but like just in totality from the highs they'd come from during the peak sedene years to the lows of the past couple years,

like that type of a drop off and just sort of like, I don't know if it was like how we describe it. It was such a mediocrity that it felt like fans were just like so checked out. Oh yeah. It was so hapless and so lifeless. And it does feel. like we'll get into the sustainability and the wins and losses in the production. But just how watchable this team's been and how many things they are to cling on to for hope and for like reasons to tune in is so night and day compared to even as recently as last year that it does make this a story worth talking about beyond just their record early on. Absolutely. I wrote a piece on the athletic today actually that, you know,

included the line in the per over the previous four years. If you were described the Kinnucks as offensive, it would only be to talk about the experience of watching them, right? We're talking about a team that was shut out 11 more times over the past four seasons than the next closest team. You know, 30th in goals four per game over the last three seasons. So to go from that to what we've seen over the first 15 games, you know, Elias Pedersen putting on a show every night, what Quinn Hughes can do, you know, and sort of the possibility that in this new NHL, right, this undersized center and this undersized defenseman could be the template, you know, potentially for.

of a rebuilding club, you know, we're premature to sort of say that's cemented for certainly, but you can begin to sort of side-eye a new way of sort of thinking about core pieces. And that's got to be exciting for Kinex fans. Well, and I think this is exciting for you and I. I can only speak for myself here. I don't know if you agree, but this is one of my favorite parts of the job where it's obviously nice to be right and to have stuff to look back at. I'd be like, oh, see, I called it or be like an early adopter of something. But I love when we're wrong and we can learn from it and when you have takes before the season or during the season and then it winds up being different because it's all a learning experience. It's the fun part of the job.

It'd be boring if we just knew everything was going to happen. And so I very clearly made a lot of fun of jim betting of the way this team's been run, a lot of their decisions. This summer, I was critical of their moves because I thought like from an opportunity cost perspective, they didn't get nearly better enough for the price they were paying with giving up a first and some of the contract. tracks they hand it out. But there's no question that they've just blown all of those expectations out of the water. They've really rewarded all of the loyalists or all the, all the people that were high on this team. And so I'm perfectly okay and willing to take an L here and kind of recalibrate on the fly because we do only have what 14 games or so of this team so far, but there's a lot of stuff beyond the nine wins and the however many ridiculous goals are scoring to

suggest that this is just flat out going to be a much better team than we had any right to believe. Yeah, and you know what, I'm so fortunate here because I would have been echoing a lot of those critical comments during, you know, July and whatnot. But I missed it, right? I was muzzled through the end of July. And by the time I started formally at the athletic, it was September 3rd. And there's just no reason to be pessimistic, generally speaking, in the first week of September. I mean, that's just not the way to build relationships when you're coming in to be a beat writer with a new team. So, you know.

Well, and the team was selling hope. The team was selling hope, for sure. Almost, I think all 31 teams probably do heading into the year. It's the most optimistic time of year, and that makes it a nightmare to cover, right? But the, you know, I sort of, I wasn't pulling punches, but it wasn't the time to get deep into relitigating the Myers deal or the J.T. Miller trade, right? Which, you know, I mean, I did think at the time, and I still sort of think that you can't readjust an evaluation of the trade based on the first 15 games. But to give up a first with where the Canucks were at. that, you know, I saw it as reckless, personally.

I thought it was a huge bet. Now, Miller's come in and been... Amazing, yeah. The perfect fit. You know what? It reminds me a little bit of Mikhail Samuelson when he was sort of brought in from Detroit during the, you know, sort of pre-peak years of that Cedina era. And, you know, he was a 20-goal guy in Detroit, but limited minutes, right?

He was a third liner there, a supporting piece. But he came to Vancouver and he had multiple 30-goal seasons because his minutes went up and he had, you know, some of those things that do matter. that we kind of make fun of sometimes, but they do matter in terms of that fitness level and having seen players win and having been deep in the playoffs. And I think J.T. Miller's been a great fit.

You know, the thing about some of what we're seeing from this Canucks team is there's still some smoke and mirrors going on. I mean, this has been such a snow day for Vancouver so far this season, that there's things working out like recasting Brandon Sutter as a sheltered scoring center. Right. And he's currently produced. even strength points at a comparable rate to Sydney Crosby.

I mean, there's some stuff that'll change. Two great penguins legends. Two great penguins legends. Yeah. So, you know, we'll see how durable this proves. They've got a nightmare November schedule here. And it starts pretty quick. You know, they just played back to back in two different cities.

They'll play sort of their, the St. Louis Blues at home on Tuesday. Then they've got a back-to-back through Chicago and Winnipeg. And while I think we can expect them, to ventilate both of those teams offensively. You know, that's tough travel demands. And then they come back and host an afternooner on Sunday against the New Jersey Devils. I mean, that's a schedule loss.

And then it just gets tougher from there. There's a lot of like Vegas and Nashville in there. Right, exactly. But still, you know, they've got seven game road trip to end the month. And then they play just a brutal schedule right through Christmas. I mean, you know, games in quick succession against Toronto, Vegas and San Jose again and on and on. So, you know, there's a lot of work to run yet.

but if they can continue to put in the underlying performance that they've put in, you know, they'll be positioned to weather sort of the slings and arrows of outrageous puck luck. Okay, well, let's go through both the pros and cons, because I do feel like this is an interesting exercise to kind of, I guess, view all those factors and try to figure out what's real and what's not. And, you know, they started off the year of those two losses in Alberta. And I thought particularly in the Calgary game,

it kind of looked a little bit like, oh, here we go again, where they just really couldn't get going at all. And I think there was a lot of reason to believe like, oh, well, here we go again. This is going to be the same story again. And since then, they have rattled off quite the tear. I mean, they're 9-1 and 2. They're outscoring teams 49 to 27 in that time.

I mean, all of it is obscene. They're over four goals per game in that stretch. I mean, they have seven, five-go-go-game. All of it going down the line is remarkable, and this looks like an offensive juggernaut. Now what I will say, and you mentioned the easy schedule. They plays the Kings twice, and the Red Wings twice.

And I think those two teams are right there with Ottawa as the three worst teams in the league. Absolutely. And they're up 23 to 8 in those four games against those teams. So I think when you have a plus 15 goal differential against the Kings and the Red Wings, you know, the Kings are under a division. They're going to play them a couple more times. But they're done with the Red Wings, unfortunately, for now on their schedule. And so I don't know if it's going to be tougher sledding moving forward.

You mentioned the November schedule. There's also a lot of games there. They catch the flyers when they're still kind of jet lag from Europe. They play the capitals the end of a Western Canada road trip. The same with the Panthers. Like there's a lot of games where they've inflated their totals. Now, I think there's a big difference to be said about a team taking advantage of the schedule and rattle and squeaking out a couple wins. And a team that is just routinely.

Throttling. Not only outscoring, but so drastically out shooting. There were times in that California trip where they just like didn't leave the offensive zone. I mean, you look at the shot totals against Anaheim and San Jose. and it was like 20 to 8 in like the first period or start of the second and you're just like okay like this is what you want to see as an indicator that even when they do play tougher teams the bottom is not just going to completely drop out because it's not like they're like kind of hanging on for dear life and relying on their goalie to carry them through the stretch

well and they were early in the season right you remember they got out shot 16 to 5 in the third period by that philadelphia team obviously we know philadelphia controls play you know the way you or i breathe oxygen right but the rangers outshot them by an identical margin two weeks later in New York. And then they lose the lead to the Capitals. They're leading 5-1 in the Capitals, come-back score four goals on seven shots. Capitals didn't actually play that well in the period.

They just sort of had one of those... There's a lot of Michael Kepney from the point. Yeah, a lot of... It's one of those classic sort of random distribution moments where your goaltending just kind of gives out, and that's going to happen to every team over the course of the season. That experience, though, the Canucks... about it a lot, right? Like, Travis Green plays it down. Well, we're never looking back because he

doesn't want to discuss it. But the players, you know, especially on this California trip, kept bringing it up. And they kept bringing it up in the context of this league, there's so many comebacks now. We learned from that game. And then you see that Florida game, right? The Canucks go up 5-1 in the first period. They out shoot the cats over the last 40 minutes. We don't see that a lot just based on the phenomenon of score effects. The same thing happened in LA. And then the same thing happened not entirely through the third period, but for the first 15 minutes of the third period where the connects were actually out shooting the sharks despite leading by four.

Right. And, you know, that's the sort of thing where you begin to look at a team that, I mean, maybe sort of has that has a gear that, you know, could help them weather what's coming for them. And what's coming for them is a lot of really good teams in short order. Yeah. I don't want to get ahead of results and call the Canucks a great team. No, they're not.

But they're doing what great teams do, which is like when you play a bad team, you like, you just hammer that point home. Like mercilessly. You're not like letting them off the hook. Totally. And we see the teams like the Bruins do that where it's like you're just peddled to the metal and you're just running it up on them. Well, and let's remember this is a league in which more than half the teams make the playoffs.

Like if you're just able to beat the teams you should beat, you're generally a low end playoff team. Right. So, you know, I think the Canucks have shown, and going into the season, I think we, I certainly expected the Canucks to be among the most improved teams in the league. Now, I thought they were maybe going to be improved in a unsustainable way in which they'd perhaps prioritize the near future a little too much, but, you know, I did think that they were going to be a team capable of improving by eight to nine points, which is significant.

Have they shown that they could be a lot better than that? I think they've shown enough to believe that it's possible. Have they necessarily changed our perspective and entered the sort of conversation as a contender? I don't think so. No. No. Yeah. The perspective here is important,

although obviously 15 games from now, if this is going on. But we're coming from such a low bar, right? That it's like, wow. Right? Whereas, I mean,

this is something I've been pointing out consistently. Like, how many points more than the Maple Leafs do the Canucks have? Right. I think it's something like two. Right. In Toronto, in Toronto, it's like nuclear fallout, right? Like literally Toronto sports radio is taking place on the road.

You know, it's just savage. And then, you know, Kinnock Sports Radio right now is like elf. And everyone's just so excited for Christmas time. But the difference between the two teams, at least both in terms of underlying and, you know, bottom line performance, is pretty negligible. It's just, you know, expectations are a hell of a drug. But the improvements are very logical if you look at it from the perspective of they cover both angles where if you want to view hockey as sort of a team-driven game or sort of, you know, depth is very important, especially in the regular season. I think sometimes we can understate the importance of like taking guys who shouldn't be playing regular NHL minutes and replacing them with like average to above average guys, which they did across the board basically this summer. And then if you want to view it as like a superstar driven sport where the top guys do all the heavy lifting, like all what we've already seen from Elias Pedersen and Quinn Hughes in terms of the effects they have when they're on the ice.

There's a little bit of that as well. So it's like you can, depending on your preference, there's an interesting angle there to push of like this is why this team is better. Yeah. I mean, having had an opportunity to watch Pedersen play and discuss hockey with him daily on a daily basis, or near daily basis over the past, you know, two months. That guy is insane. And what's funny is if, you know, he just won first star of the week. And, you know, I didn't talk to him at practice today.

But I'm pretty confident if I went up to him and said, where's your game at? He would be very restrained. Yeah. But not an annoyingly full humble way. No, no, no, no. Like, oh, me. No, in a, in a, I'm a killer. Yeah.

And my expectations for myself are actually beyond that nine points and four game stretch that I just authored. Yeah. Because I missed a couple shots too many. And I think I can be more dangerous on the rush. And, you know, when Hughes went out with injury, I don't think PP1 was good enough. And it's on me to step that up. You know, like this is a guy who you ask him about McDavid and he's not cowed.

He's, he wants to take that run at him. You know, he's just that guy. and those are his baseline expectations for himself. They're through the roof. And what he can do on the ice and the way he thinks and processes the game and the way he sort of sees everything as a challenge to work harder toward,

you know, it's pretty stunning. Yep. And I think we're seeing, you know, a lot of evidence of a player who's got, you know, a chance to be special and not that, and not that like all-star caliber player special, but maybe that tier above. And that's got to be.

exciting. The crazy thing about him is he has the clear, like, obvious physical tools and you watch of like the hand eye on that goal he scored against the sharks, like some of the stuff he does with both the shot and the pass. It's like, okay, like on the surface, there's only certain number of people in the world that can do that. But I think like the psychological component of the game where like for you and I, when we watch NHL hockey being played, especially with how fast it is in 2019, sometimes it's like such

a blur and it's like disorienting. Right. The puck's just bouncing around. You're like, that's got to be like. like a lucky bounce because it's like there's no way someone could have orchestrated that and I do genuinely believe I'm I'm Patterson's wanted me over so much that like it could take like the flukeest random bounce and I'd be like he meant to do that because he saw that happening in advance and the game is going so slowly for so so you know I was I was sort of laughing in the press box as

you know joking about how I'd never seen a rush deflection before right and so after the game in mcintyre goes up to in sports nancy in mackettier goes up to Elias Pedersen and he says, do they have baseball in Sweden? And Pedersen kind of laughs at him and says, no, you know, but I played a lot of badminton in the summer. So I sort of share that quote on Twitter and someone tweets a video that was shot by Afton Bladet, like a notable Swedish publication. And it's like a three minute video of Pedersen playing badminton with like one of their

photojournalists. And he's just ruthlessly schooling him for three minutes on the badminton court. I was just losing it. I just couldn't believe that there were receipts of the hand I work that Pettersen put in over the summer in some sort of like Swedish badminton lodge. Well, and you know what is the most impressive play he's had this year and there's so many to choose from already? But I think it didn't get enough pub.

Was that one Brock Besser power play goal against the Kings where he like he puts all of it that he can into a shot that just like destroys Alec Martinez's soul basically to a point where. Martinez looks like he literally wants to just leave the ice because of what just happened. And then they get a lucky balancer. The puck goes back to the point. And it comes right back to him. And he, like, loads up like he's going to take another shot.

And you can, like, see, like, everyone in the Kings is bracing themselves for it. And he just, like, does this cross-ice pass through traffic on Brock Bessor's tape. And it's an easy goal for him because everyone's committed to the shot. And I don't remember what forward it was. But what's so funny about it is the forward who is, you know, sort of closest to Pedersen in that situation, right? knows that the D has already blocked a shot and isn't going to get in the lane. So he already is cheating on the flanker, basically, on the flank side to try and sort of get a stick, at least in the lane. When the puck comes back to PD, he sells out for the block shot.

He's trying to get his stick in the lane. And so he sort of does that lean and his feet are wide apart. And Pedersen ends up putting the pass right through his feet. Like, without the threat of the shot, that space is just not there. And yeah, no, you know what? I agree with you. I actually think that was easily his best play of the year to this juncture. And,

yeah, to this juncture is important because there's going to be more. Well, you know, because one thing, one thing you notice is that there's, well, there's two things.

One is on the power play, the connects are dropping on their neutral zone set to Miller and Bo Horvett. Yeah. Which, you know, leaves Pete, he's sort of waiting at the left wing. And his body language tells that he,

at least, my perception of his body language is that he thinks he should probably be getting the drop. But he, so he's not entering the zone with a ton of speed right now. And additionally, at five on five, I think teams aren't letting him get that speed. I think that's been a real focus.

And the connects are going to have to find ways of figuring that out, because when Pedersen has a full head of steam, as we saw in his worky season, that's when he starts sort of doing magic pixie dust kind of things. And currently it's like he's produced all these points, but he's done it in this more mature controlling way on a line that's controlling 65% of shot attempts, which is awesome.

But he hasn't been producing it with the same level of, you know, dynamism off the rush that he did in his rookie season. On the whole, that's probably a good thing for the Canucks. It suggests that this is a more sustainable sort of PDE. But I do think that there's a chance that he can graft sort of both together and, you know, look out if that happens. Well, you know what's interesting, you and I were talking before we went on the air about,

sort of because the percentages are so sky high. And I remember we had this conversation with like during Hennerd-Sidine's heyday, for example, in terms of like a player's ability to constantly create better looks for his teammates and therefore have a higher on-ice shooting percentage or even personal shooting percentage than you'd expect from your average NHL player just because they're that good. And, you know, I've been burned a little bit recently because like I was all in on the Patrick Latin A experience. I was like, I know people don't shoot 17, 18, 19 percent because we just know time and time again,

these guys come back down at 11, 12 percent. But his shot was so good for like a year and a half, even two, two and a half years. It was like, all right, maybe he's the next Colchuk where the next stamp goes during his prime. And then because everyone knows about that shot, teams start overplaying it and you start decreasing some of those looks. And that's happened with him. And now he's back to like league average, basically. with Pedersen, there's no real way to defend him because we see the shots where he just goes barred down if you give him time and he's going to pick that corner and beat a goalie cleanly, which like 10 people in the world can basically do.

But if you overplay that, he will gladly make that type of a Brock best pass the Brock Bessor which we're talking about. And so like if you're an opposing defense and you're trying to game plan or you're opposing defenseman and you're trying to play this guy positionally, I don't really know what the answer is beyond like hoping he settles for a blow look opportunity. which he doesn't really do because he does think the game at a higher level to go along with those physical skills. Yeah, and, you know, the smartest thing that the connects have done is, in my view anyway, is that they've got both Brock and Elias Pedersen switching sides on the power play. So sometimes they'll be on their one-timer side. So for Petey, that would be at the, you know, right half wall of a one-three-one. And sometimes he's on his downhill side, which would be the left side of the one-three-one.

And, you know, against the Kings, for example, he scores a, you know, you know, absolute bar down laser. And he did that from his downhill side on the left side half wall. The play that we're talking about, the cross seam to Besser that was opened up by his one-timer threat, that was him at the right side half wall. And that sort of versatility there, I think also helps protect it because this is a guy who can take two steps and sort of, you know, step into just a ridiculous wrist shot. But he's also got a, you know, absurd one-timer that, you know, he can uncork and that

the Canucks could if they decided to. build, you know, their whole power play around. Now, he probably is not a high enough volume shooter for that. Like, I just don't think he has the instincts to do it because he's, you know, a little bit of a make the right play kind of efficiency guy. But, you know, it is a excellent weapon. And it's one thing that, you know, will make him a little bit more resistant to the type of book building that you're talking about that's impacted Lione.

You know, it's just a credit to what a special player he's already shown himself to be. And he doesn't turn 21 until later this month. I mean, it's pretty ridiculous what he's managed to do. He's got a real chance to be among the game's best. And, you know, from a reporter covering the team side, I mean, great. Like, it's just awesome to have a chance to, you know, potentially help tell those stories because those are the stories you want to tell. You don't want to tell the story of another failed rebuild, right?

You want to tell the story about what makes this insane person so effective. Well, yeah, and on the topic of versatility and sort of his, unpredictability and shooting percentage and how you can maintain it moving forward. I don't know how you feel about this, but, you know, true, like, true shooting talent is certainly one thing. And I think it's fair to say that not every player, a shot from two different players is going to lead to different results, even though we expect them to hover around a certain range. But I think sometimes we don't talk about, like, what is baked into that shooting percentage. And for me, a lot of it, as I've thought about this more over the

years is like the ability to get to those spots because like once teams have tape on you and know your tendencies or know where you're going to shoot from what you're going to do, they can kind of play you a certain way to take you out of that comfort zone. And then if you can't beat them in different ways, it's going to be tough for you to repeat that from one year where you're shooting 20% and you're scoring a bunch of goals to the next year when they're keying in on that certain area of the ice. And that's for lining, I think that's been the challenge where everyone knows where that shot's coming from and what he wants to do.

and he doesn't have nearly the playmaking element where Peter Pedersen does. So for opposing teams to try and slow him down, I do believe he can be a well, well above average shooter moving forward just because it's kind of impossible to move him away from those spots because that means you're just leaving something else wide open,

which he, as we said, he'll gladly make that play because he doesn't want to shoot it four or five times a game. Yeah, you know, I think these, like the relatively fixed nature of save percentage in the contemporary game was a real light bulb moment for me when I first began sort of understanding and looking into hockey analytics.

Like one thing that I always found really powerful was that over a large enough sample of five on five ice time, something like 90% of the league is going to fall within a range of 7 to 8.5%. And at the very bottom end, you're going to have some guys who have some muffins, but mostly you're going to have guys who, you know, dump and change and are counted on to play responsible games. I think of a Travis Mowen as an example, you know, from a few years ago. I think that's the first time anyone has ever said his name on this podcast. He's a fascinating analytics guy, so I'm surprised by that. You know, and then on the top end, you've generally had guys like Cindy Crosby who have just ridiculous hand-eye and can finish in all sorts of weird ways, but also guys like the Cedine twins and guys like Stamco's who is clearly and still is the NHL's premier marksman. And, you know, that's just, the product of

goalies sort of winning the overall war against shooters. And it's sort of coming around a little bit here, but not a ton. And as a result, you know, PDO, for example, has so much value,

just as something to be conscious of. And when you look at a guy like Pedersen and just to sort of finish off the thought with this, you know, if I had a farm, I would bet it on him being multiple standard deviations above mean shooting. percentage over the next five years. And, you know, there's a few players like that around the

league and, you know, sort of the understanding of that and then using sort of qualitative information to describe it. That's sort of where I think the job as a beat reporter or hockey analyst gets really exciting and fun to read. So, you know, it should be a lot of fun to cover and it should be a lot of fun for fans to watch. Sponsoring today's episode of the HockeyPedio guest is Seek. Seekek is making getting tickets. to events easier than ever before. They've built the fastest way to find tickets so you can stop searching for the perfect seat

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And coaches even are sort of softening up to the idea that you're going to let players experiment and try new stuff because the positives outweigh the negatives, right? And that's generally speaking. There's certainly coaches out there that will punish a player for making a mistake because he tried to do too much, no doubt about it. But we see Svechnikov's lacrosse school. We see Matthew Kach's absolutely obscene, which I actually thought was a higher degree difficulty.

Oh, so sick. You know, you see guys like Matthews, Foresburg, even Pedersen, shooting from these, like, wild angles and getting still peak velocity and peak accuracy on these shots. And I think there's, that's going to be something fascinating to follow, like the trickle-down effect on shooting in shape percentages, where goalies for a while, you kind of knew what to expect from a shooter. It's like they can only, they have only so many tricks up their sleeve. And now it's much tougher to be set and know where the puck is coming from if guys

are doing all these crazy things that we've never really seen before. Yeah, and, you know, it's also that these players, I mean, this was a Ryan Miller thing from back in the day, but Ryan Miller talked about when he was in Vancouver and the Canucks were integrating Jared McCann and Jake Vertan into the lineup. But he talked about McCann's wrist shot, right? And McCann's never really figured out the accuracy of his wrist shot, but the velocity that he can get on a quick release is pretty ridiculous. us. And, you know, Miller used to talk about how shots from players have signatures and you're

able to sort of read them. And for a guy who's been around a lot and seen a lot of changes in the game, he finds that kids who grew up shooting with composite sticks have these unique, hard-to-read shot whispers that he always found really challenging and that he sort of enjoyed practicing even just against Vertan and McCann because he thought it maybe let him sort of see more rep. against players who sort of fit that mold. And that's always sort of stuck with me. And, you know, we have seen shooting percentage around the league go up a bit. We have begun to see.

I mean, we're not in 80s territory yet. We're not even in early 90s territory yet. But the, you know, average shooting percent, I mean, we now see an average shooting team shoot eight and a half, you know, where it was closer to seven and a half even 10 years ago. And, you know, that's good for the game at the end of the day. And it'll be sort of fun to continue to track and fun to monitor. But I do think what's exciting about it is how many different ways there are to skin this cat and how, you know, guys like Sean Monaghan drive shooting percentage typically by just being beasts five feet out.

Yeah. And a guy like Goddrow can do something similar, but he does it by being just a ridiculous shifty playmaker and having a deceptive backhand and Patterson does it with efficiency and Crosby does it with hand-eye and Stamcoast does it with, you know, unrivaled marksmanship. I mean, that's that's sort of the space where, you know, people say, oh, numbers take the fun out of the game. It's like, I actually think when you look into it,

tell such an amazing story. Right. And when you, and when you sort of look into it and think about, you know, all the different ways that guys are achieving these outlier results, you know, there's this descriptive space that for me anyway is sort of where the fun and the joy and the, you know, amazement really sort of lands. Well, that's like, I think that's like the, there's two ways where a player

greatness reaches the upper echelon for me. One is like the guys like Crosby, anyone that plays with them is going to have just amazing numbers because he will drag them to it, right? And we've seen Connor McDavid do that as well with Alex Chassan and Zach Cassian and so on and so forth. The other one is guys who like, the opposing team knows exactly what you're going to do

is like the Larry Bird and you're just like calling your shot. You're just going to do it because you're that great. And that's like the Alex Lovetchkin where it's like, he just does the same thing, but no one can physically stop it and he's just going to keep doing it. He's been doing it for over a decade now. And so I'm really fascinated in like how different players are managed to sustain their effectiveness. And Monahan's a great example of Mark Shrevely. There's like guys who are like somehow always have these 15, 16 percent shooting percentages, even though they're not like your traditional sniper like

Stamco's, but they just get to these areas. And a lot of it is playing with great playmakers like we learn Goodro who can get them the puck in those spots. Yeah. Absolutely. No, it's, it's, it's fun. And it's been fun to watch. And hopefully this sort of new offensive calibration of the league continues. I think these comebacks are good. I think these, you know, skilled players sort of shining through is good. You know, I think speed on the back end is good. I think a lack of fighting is good.

I mean, you know, the NHL may have been behind the NFL and the NBA. You know, obviously we know what the NFL has done in terms of protecting quarterbacks and sort of massaging the rules over the course of a generation to incentivize the passing game. And it's obviously improved the product, you know, a significant exponentially, exponentially improved the product. And similarly with the NBA and hand-shaking rules and what's that, what that's done in terms of opening up the game, you know, the NBA has got some issues potentially with too many three-point shots. But nonetheless, like what they've done to open up the game has been good for the sport. And the personalities kind of take it from there in the NBA's

case. The NHL maybe was a little bit behind the eight ball, but in terms of where the game is gone and how good the product looks to me in terms of the speed and how that sort of results in a playoff product that is among the best in pro sports entertainment. I think there's, you know, a lot to be said for belatedly the league has made some pretty significant strides or at least notable strides. And, you know, just as a game center live junkie, I've been enjoying it. So the game's in a great spot, no doubt about it. When I was doing my watch it, rankings before the season and I had the Canucks at 22 and obviously they'd be higher now although I thought at the time that was even a generous ranking that was just like a lot of respect being paid to

Elias Pedersen's greatness but um there was like no teams where they had like no reason to watch even like Ottawa it's like I want to watch Thomas Shabbat and Brady Kachukh uh Detroit I want to watch Anthony Mantha and Dylan Mark and like every team has at least a couple guys so the league's in a great spot from a talent perspective now this might be just like a random them the first month thing that doesn't actually will either normalize or isn't something that like there's anything concrete to take from but i've been thinking about this because it ties to the conucks we're talking about the conucks early schedule where they played all these bad teams and we were talking about this before as well there's like there aren't that very many great

teams right now like i think boston i'm very comfortable saying they're really really good absolutely washington as well um you know Vegas there's like a handful of teams but beyond that who are some of the that a good dominant Canucks victory against them would even like change this narrative of an easy schedule. Like we saw them. That was an impressive come from behind win in St. Louis, for example, although now St. Louis doesn't even have Teresanko. So they play them next. But if they beat them is that like, I know they're defending champions, but I don't think it's like, holy crap, this Canucks seems for real because they beat St. Louis. There's so few teams as like a sort of barometer or litmus test for being good, you need to beat them.

Which makes it like there's, it's good because there's a lot of unpredictability. variability in the results and we don't know what's going to happen. But it is also like tricky to sort of look at a team schedule because it does feel like a lot of these teams are playing worse than we expected from them. Yeah, absolutely. I still think Toronto's legitimate. I still think Tampa Bay is legitimate. In the Pacific, I think you're right, though. I think Vegas is the surest bet of the group, partly because that top six is just clearly the best in hockey for me. but even then, you know, I sort of look at a blue line and think that there's some issues there. Calgary, I think, quietly sort of had a tough summer, and I don't think they're quite what they were a year ago.

And then the central, I mean, I guess I look at Nashville as a really potent offensive team that's sort of reinvented themselves, I suppose, by swapping out Subanford-Duchain. And, you know, they're, I think they're the top offensive team in hockey. so I'd maybe put them there, but you're right. It's not like a very stratified. There's seven contenders and everyone's below them or five contenders and everyone's below them. I think there's four or five proper elite teams, another three or four that could get there or will get there once sort of their percentage is normalized and they have a chance to feel their way through, you know, 30 plus games.

And then, you know, beneath that, you have sort of the fringe playoff teams and it looks a lot more. open than I would have expected. Like just looking at the Pacific division, for example, you know, Arizona, I mean, I don't think they're going to be able to score enough necessarily, but defensively, I think there lights out. Yeah, the benchmark they have to clear offensively to like win a lot of these games is so low for that. So low. And, you know, I mean, they've, yeah, I think they've got a real shot at making some noise and, you know, San Jose's struggles. I mean, I, on the one hand, there's just too much talent there that they're going to figure it out. But on the other, you know, I just watched that game live on Saturday and they were a mess. So, you know,

and you don't expect their goaltending to sort of lead the way and bailing them out from that. So, you know, if San Jose falls out, for example, if Dallas falls out, for example, if Winnipeg falls out, I mean, then you're looking at sort of three playoff spots that, you know, three playoff teams from last year that maybe, you know, there's open season on those spots. And, you know, there's a lot of teams with that sort of level of ambition and level of talent to maybe make it happen. Arizona, Vancouver, sort of foremost among them. But Edmonton, too, I think, you know, they've clearly hired the right guy to grind out wins with an undermanned roster. Got to give Dave Tippett a ton of credit.

And, you know, the central remains a bit of a knife fight, even though we haven't seen sort of that one team kind of emerge or sees the mantle as the team to beat there. Yeah. So the reason why I was so critical in bringing us back to the game. to the Canucks at the start of the year was I just thought the price they paid to miss the playoffs again was just like I couldn't reconcile that like getting up a future first signing a guy like Tyler Myers for six years or whatever beyond this year I was just like I just don't see how the math there checks out and part of my calculus for that was thinking even if I was like Calgary didn't have a great summer I just thought like they had so much room to drop from last

here to still be the third best team in the Pacific. Vegas was going to be great. And I expected San Joseo once again be good. All depth concerns aside, all goaltending stuff, I just thought, if you have Burns and Carlson out there pretty much at all times, and then you have that top six of four words, you're going to score enough goals to cover for a lot of those warts. And so far, the door has been wide open where even in the central with Winnipeg taking a massive step back with Dallas not generating nearly enough offense and their goaltending not being as good as it was last year, it's not a lock that there's even going to be five central teams to make the playoffs. So it's like now the door's wide open not only in the Pacific, but in the wildcard race out west as well.

And so, I mean, got on the Canucks for sort of stepping into this void. But it does speak to that sort of like unpredictability where I really did not see, especially San Jose. Like you saw you, you got to see them recently, as you said. And I've been following like their just underlying performance. and there's something weird going on there. It's easy to be like, oh, Pete DeBore needs to go. Everyone likes to blame the coach. But it's like, who are you going to bring in that's going to suddenly turn Mark Edward

Blasic into Prime Mark Edward Blasic? Like, there's a lot of players playing minutes on that team where it's like, this isn't nearly the team that we thought they were going to be. Also, Pete DeBore, I mean, let's not forget that, you know, a lot of the things that Nashville and Pittsburgh, especially have sort of excelled at over the, last five years, just in terms of like challenging teams with verticality, sort of not necessarily prizing possession across zones so much as pressure across zones and sort of skating

onto the pucks with speed and really focusing on that part of the game. You know, a lot of that is Pete DeBoer hockey, right? Like that style of game really was popularized by him earlier this decade. And it's won a lot of cups. It's sort of changed a lot of how teams are constructed. I mean, you get credit for that from my perspective anyway. And I mean, I think he's a, you know, certainly a competent above average NHL coach. But, you know, it's so hard to figure out what's going on there. I mean, I look at Logan Couture who, you know, I could barely tell you that he played on Saturday night. He has one goal in his first year as Sharks captain. I mean, you know, so many great players on that team, guys like Tim O'Mire, who were just quiet, you know,

it didn't feel like they were, they didn't feel like they had a chance of impacting the game. And, you know, I look at that team and I just don't see, I just don't see the level of dynamism, or at least I didn't see it live. But then, you know, earlier in the day, on that Saturday, I pulled up the Winnipeg game that they played.

Yeah, they had 50 plus shots, right? And, you know, it was just like wave after wave of white and teal, right? Like, they looked terrifying. I thought, oh, boy, I mean, if there's a game where the connects are going come back to earth it's this one and quite the opposite happened i mean they were dominated by vancouver i wonder how much of it is like they are a pretty old team with a lot of miles on them and maybe play and they lost a lot of depth so playing in a second of a back-to-back certainly hurts their case but i mean it's been happening all year where it's not just that one kind of example you can

pick from and i mean while you're talking i was just putting up their cap-friendly page and i mean first off ottawa has their first round pick this year and the 30th and 31st ranked teams right now i think are Ottawa and San Jose. So that's, that's, that's, uh, an interesting little subplot. I, I don't think either was expecting San Jose to finish 30th, but what a hilarious sort of reverse, right, considering what it happened with the the bone Byron pick. Yeah. But like with Vlasic Burns Carlson, they owe those guys 27 million combined for at least six more seasons and those guys are all going to be in their mid 30s. Uh, you know, they still have five more years on Martin Jones at 5.75. The contracts they gave especially in a mature like eight years for a 30 year old.

I understand he's a captain, but, you know, with him and Kane, like they're so much money tied up in guys who either have a lot of miles or on the wrong side of 30. And they're in a tough spot where I think we sort of penciled them in to be a lock in the Pacific because of how talented they are, because of the names they have, because of how they look last year, quite frankly, where they were the best possession team in the league. And that hasn't been the case. So it's like watching them, basically they still have the same defensive flaws and the same goaltending issues, but they just offensively are.

a shell of what they were and you put that all together and you have the 30th ranked team. Yeah, I mean, you know, and it's not as if this is, you know, a low save percentage binge that they're on that's correct. No, it's not going to get that. Right. Like their underlying performance and small sample yet, but their underlying performance, they need to play like they played against Winnipeg every game. And, you know, based on what we saw the very next game against Vancouver, it's an open question as to whether or not they have it. You know, I'm not saying goodbye to the sharks as a relevant team in the Pacific yet. You know, I'm not penciling that pick into the lottery yet for Ottawa,

but, you know, there's certainly enough red flags, enough cause for concern that there'll be a club to monitor closely over November because they're either going to figure this out in a significant way over the next three weeks, or it's going to be dramatic. Yeah, I will say they do look old and slow, which is a bad formula in today's NHL. So back to the Canucks here, let's keep this pro Canucks podcast. I wonder, I wonder what the people who think that I'm overly critical of this team are going to sort of poke fun at.

But the third ranked offense behind only the Capitals and the Predators. Yep. They have the sixth highest shot volume. They're getting 34 pucks on net per game. Yeah. They're up. So they were 21st and 515 pace last year. They're up to eighth now.

And I think that's not even telling the full story because there's teams like Ottawa, New York and Chicago ahead of them who are high in pace. just because they're so bad defensively that they're just giving it all up. They're not actually playing fast. They're beating up the teams, as we said, that they should beat up in a very substantial way. Their third-rank penalty kill, 13th-ranked power play. I think, you know, showing you this clip against the Sharks from their game over the weekend. And the eye test checks out for me with this team where they're kind of doing what

Vegas took the hockey world by storm with, which is like this like relentless forecheck. that just creates so much offense from defense, which leads me to believe that there's a certain level of sustainability with this, even when the shooting percentage comes down, even if there are injuries where if you're just that suffocating in the neutral zone, where you're just constantly bringing it back in, you can keep winning games just because the volume is going to be there to compensate for whatever percentage struggles you might have.

Yeah, and, you know, they're, yeah, this is across the board, right? Like they are top five by most volume-based metrics, you know, at even strength. And their power play is sort of on the fringes of the top 10 by most sort of indicators, but that includes a large sample where Alex Edler was still on PP1. And once you put sort of Quinn Hughes's on ice numbers, I mean, the connects are generating 76 shots per hour with Quinn Hughes on the ice on the power play. I mean, that would be literally unrivaled in the NHL. So the, you know, there's reason to believe they could improve there. Yeah.

And, you know, the shift that you're talking about against San Jose. I mean, that was a shift where the Canucks had Brandon Sutter, Josh Levo, and Jake Fretanin on the ice. You know, so they were looking like that with... Against Burns and Qatar. Against Burns and Qatar. Yeah, they were looking like that with pretty clear supporting pieces on the ice. And, you know, if that. Yeah.

You can say worse things about those forwards. These guys are NHL players. They're NHL players. They're NHL players. Right, yeah. And Levo and Sutter actually might have something weird going on that makes them effective. But we'll have to sort of see if that plays out as the sample expands. Anyway, I'm not sure that the Canucks high-end goal tending is going to last based on what we've seen from Markstrom and Demko.

All of the indicators that I look at show that they are at best an average defensive team. Yes. But in terms of what part of the Canucks early season performance do I buy the most, it's that offensive game. And I think that's sustainable, not maybe to this ridiculous, like score five or more goals in seven of their last 11 games sort of rate. But I do think that there's something real going on in terms of this club having the skill to fill the net and throttle weaker teams and force teams to be on their game when they play them, lest they see three pucks or four pucks, sort of. of behind them and the red light flashing. So, you know, that is the part of the Kinnock's game that I do believe in the most. And, you know, I think that's a really good thing for a club in a market like Vancouver that has, you know, become a Raptor City, become a Seahawks

city, become a Blue Jays city since they last were a Kinnock City. You know, goals and wins sell. And certainly the Kinecks are producing both in the early going this season. Well, one of those big driving forces, and we've rarely, we've hardly brought up his name 45 minutes under the show is Quinn Hughes. Right. Just the, the poisey plays with the sort of offensive instincts and awareness and sort of stuff he tries to do. It's like, it's, I know him and Kil McCar are going to be kind of lumped together because like they similarly, they're coming into the league at the same time. They're in the same call. They're a discussion.

Like, they do a lot of things on the ice in a very similar ways. But it really does sort of hold true to form for me, just watching. like there was that one goal I believe I think Besser scored it against the capitals where Hughes like fakes like he's going to do the draw pass yes brings it in himself and like goes all the way down and then create something out of nothing and like stuff like that I mean for a young defenseman to be doing that and to be empowered and credit to Travis green as well for like not if he messes that up like he's not just going to staple him to the bench and and put him in the press box the next game like for them to whether it's by necessity or but designed to allow him to do

that is one thing and then for his ability to execute that is like it's so fun to watch he's an unbelievably deceptive skater and he does all sorts of weird things to throw players off just in terms of what he does with his skates and with his hips and he's not i don't think he's super aware of it because you know there was a connect's player telling me the other day about how they've noticed quinn sort of starts to do moves by sort of faking forwards out with his hips even before he gets the puck and how, you know, for most players, a coach would hate to see their defensemen do that, but for Hughes, everyone sort of understands that he can pull it off. And I went to Hughes to talk about it or just get his sort of perspective on it.

And he, point blank was like, no, I don't think I do that. And I was like, no, you do that. Like, here's clips. And then literally Troy Stetcher intervened and was like, this is what he means, Quinn. And Quinn was like, oh, yeah, I guess I do that a bit. So I think in Hughes's case, you know, Hughes comes from this hockey family where, Obviously, his brother was a high-end player. You know, his dad is involved in the game.

His youngest brother is likely to be a top pick. I think they've spent so much time watching and playing hockey at high levels, you know, in Toronto and then with the U.S. national development team. And, you know, I think there's things that he knows that he doesn't even know he knows. Like, I don't even think he, whereas PD, I think, is a little bit more aware that he... Right. More calculated. More calculated. I think Quinn just has this sixth sense, this crazy awareness.

that's natural, organic for him. And yeah, no, the drop pass goal that you bring up is a really good example. And I think it's a really good example because it was he did not telegraph the drop with his hands or even with his feet. He did it entirely with his pace, right? Like it was just a pace change. And he slowed down to make it seem like, you know, the moment the Capitals Defenders bit, he was out wide. And he was out wide in a way that made it look like he didn't even have to break a sweat to sort of be ahead of the rush. I think that's a really good play to isolate because I think that's a perfect sort of encapsulation of, you know, how deceptive he is and how simply he manages to be deceptive.

He's not selling it that hard. But you know what, credit to Travis Green in this as well, because last year he took a lot of flack for a team that was like basically, I best describes like a skeleton crew. I mean, like, Ben Hutton was their second, in terms of 515 usage, Ben Hutton was second, Alex Biego was fourth, Eric Good Branson was seventh, Derek Buellia was ninth, Michael Delgado was ninth, Michael Delzato was, and there's like only so much you could do and like that's the personnel you have. Now, I certainly have time for their argument that they didn't squeeze the most out of other guys and maybe like there was some questionable lineup decisions. But this year, what I love to see from them and what I think they should be doing and what credit to them

before doing it is the usage, especially in terms of their skilled players, where I don't know if you've noticed this, but Elias Pedersen's usage in terms of how he's being deployed is like Henrik City slash like Cody Hodgson levels of like trying to squeeze the most out of your offensive talent where Cody Hodgson, wow, but coho reference. No, I know exactly what he was sort of like the test case for them trying to squeeze the most value out of them and sell him, right? Yep. In terms of. No, I just love the, I just love the deep cut.

But I have this stat for you. He started one out of his 235, 5-on-5 shifts in the defensive zone. Now, Travis Green will quibble with that, because I actually brought this up to him, and Travis Green says that they missed one in Edmonton. Oh, okay. Yeah, so he says he says they think they've missed a couple. Yeah. But him and Hughes are right up there.

I think Keith Yandel and Torrey Krug are the only defensemen who have a higher sort of slanted offensive zone start percentage than Hughes does so far. you know, a lot of the game is played on the fly and there's only so much you can do in terms of managing that. But in terms of like, if you have a draw on the offensive zone versus the defensive zone, I guess when you have Jay Beagle and Bohorabat and Brandon Sutter, you can afford to give those guys those minutes and then allow Elias Pedersen to do what he does best, which is just wreck havoc with the puck. Absolutely.

So, you know, if Green has this habit of making guys earn PP one time, right? Like the one thing you're not gifted under green is P-P-Time, right? Like it took Brock Besser six weeks to earn his way on the Canucks. The first unit, Kinnock's Power Play, and that team scored like, I think, 60 goals over the course of a full season there here, something like that year. Something like that. Obviously, I'm joking. But the, you know, Pedersen in year one, right? Travis moved him to the center, which was a pretty big gamble considering Pettersen weighed something like 160 pounds soaking wet.

And stuck with it and took his lump. and it worked out and paid off. The Canucks entered this season and sort of didn't put Hughes on to PP1 despite kind of telegraphing that they might. You know, I think a big preseason game in Abbotsford maybe dissuaded them from the wiser, the most obvious course of action anyway.

Yeah. But, you know, credit to them, though, they gave him run right off the bat. Like, he led the team in Even Strength Ice Time in their opening game of the season, right? They have given him every opportunity to cement himself. as a top four player for this team. And, you know, he's earned that. He is clearly one of their four best.

Well, you know, and this is the other thing. Like, I talk a lot about this to, you know, some Canucks bloggers and Harman Dile at the, at the athletic. But the story is not Quinn Hughes is the best Canucks defenseman in terms of his on ice results, right? Like, that's not the story for me. The story is where is Hughes league wide? Because he's already having, I mean, we're talking. about a defenseman who, you know, the power play goes from better than Boston to Ottawa when he's not in the lineup, right? And he's second among NHLD, I think it's 25 minutes as a cutoff on the power play in individual points rate. You know, he's, people used to comment about his shot, maybe not being good, but he's got a halitzer now, I mean, a genuine missile. And when he's playing on the power play, he opens up all these different rotations and he opens,

opens up some of the unpredictability and flexibility that we've seen from Petterson. And, you know, he's also good enough in terms of his stick-on-puck defensive game that he can genuinely log a regular shift in an NHL top four. And he only just turned 20 years old. I mean, it's been a pretty remarkable showing from him. And to top it all off, he's extremely fun to watch. And again, I mean, for the Canucks, I do think that's such an important bottom line. And like playoffs or not, if they can be relevant all season and fun to watch all season,

that's, you know, I mean, you and I live locally, so we sort of have a better understanding of it. But the, you know, the test of is the sound on at the pint when the Canucks games on, right? Like that's sort of where they need to be. And, you know, what we've seen from Pedersen in his sophomore season, what we've seen from Hughes or sorry, yeah, from Hughes in his rookie season, that's, you know, so important to this team in this market. Yeah, there's a national relevance. where I had even people who I assume aren't even Canucks fans where it's like I tweet something out like

you know the Canucks a chart of teams how often they're leading in these games like like Carc's like fourth behind like Washington and Boston and Vegas and someone's just like it's weird seeing the Canucks not at the bottom of this list right? Right. And there's like a certain element of that where it's like they're just not a joke anymore which is

goes a long way towards building credibility. How big a deal the Hughes injury was right? Like it was one of the leading items on headlines on Hockey Night in Canada. Between games you know I watched it with the sound off but, you know, just to see that sort of relevance. I mean, that's been unheard of in this market since Tortorella tried to fight Bob Hartley. I was at the game that.

Not in the hallway, but. So let's do a little bit of the caveats then. We've kind of been tangentially referring to the schedule. We already sort of hammer that home. We'll certainly, in November, we're going to find out much more about the credibility of this team. I think health is a big thing. You know, we've already seen Hughes go down a bit, although thankfully it doesn't look like it's a serious thing. But, you know, with Tanev and so his propensity to just, like, have no regard for his body when he throws himself trying to block shots.

Edler, like, these guys are just going to, we know that they're probably going to miss between 10 and 20 games because the past three or four years have indicated that they always do. And so that's going to be an issue. It's going to test this team's depth. You know, they're not relying on Michael Dosato and Eric Good Branson and Alex Beaga. but once you start getting into your eighth, ninth, tenth, defenseman, your Oscar Fentbergs, it's much more difficult to try to sort of piece it together. And so there's an element of that.

I think the goal tending, which we alluded to, their fifth overall, and say a percentage, 11th to 5-1-5, even though Markstrom is doing this for, if you include the past, like 20, 25 games of last year. Yeah. I still don't think they're, him and Demko are like top five in terms of goalie tandums,

which they've been so far. So that's concerning. And the teams are just overall shooting percentage, right? Like it's, yes. I mean, Brandon Sutter's on ice shooting percentage

is not going to end the year at 13.5. Well, they're fourth and PDO at 515, third overall, and it's mostly due to the fact that they're shooting

percentages in the top five. And you're right. I mean, while it's great to be getting five goals from Ben and Sutter, four from Shaller, four from Vertanan,

we don't expect that to like pro rate that over each 15 game sample for those guys to be scoring that much. And so once those come down a bit, it's going to be certainly testing the team's volume. And if they're playing

tougher teams, and they don't have that same volume, that's when this becomes like a really interesting discussion in terms of whether they can piece together enough to win these games. But that's going to be the fun part to watch this then, because they've done like the easy part now and now comes the actual test. Yeah, and you know, their PK, say, percentage, for example, right? Like the Canucks have an elite PK right now, but it's mostly...

Because they're just stopping the puck. Yeah, it's mostly goaltending. And, I mean, I do think they're tough to enter against. Like, I do think they're doing a really good job pressuring entries, but they're pretty passive in zone. And, you know, a lot of that success is goaltending. and by the way, if you ask the likes of J.B., they'll tell you that right off the bat. They're getting great goaltending.

So, you know, they feel it. The, you know, I think there's a lot of things, a lot of areas where the Canucks will regress. Brandon Sutter's shooting percentage, foremost among them. Yeah. But, you know. I need to talk to you about this. Yes. So the game against Anaheim, I don't know what the actual official scoring was, but I was watching this at a bar.

Yeah. And I've never actually seen this before, I don't think. So Adam Goddek gets called up and he plays in that game, right? And there was this weird balance where the puck seemed to go. I don't know who it went off of, but it basically like ricocheted into the net past John Gibson. That was the only way that connects were able to beat Gibson that night. And Brandon Zutter took credit for a goal that I don't think he scored.

In terms of, in terms of... He's celebrating. So when it went in, he kind of acted as if he scored, and then he quickly went as the first guy to the bench to get the taps on the gloves from his teammates. Right. Which I thought was a wild move because... But you saw the... They credited him.

in. They credited him with the goal. But I don't think he actually scored. I watched it like 20 times. They changed the credit for it on Sunday. So they gave it to him. They did give it to him. Belatedly. I just thought I asked him post game. I guess he doesn't score that much, but I asked him post game and he said he hadn't, didn't think he hit it. But I think he probably did think he hit. I think he felt kind of a shame for trying to steal a goal from a guy from really was playing his first game. Well, luckily Godette got another one the next day. Another sort of lucky one. So then maybe he felt. Well, that's that type of veteran leadership there, Brandon's seven things. I love it. No, look, you know, that was funny, man. I'm trying to get you in trouble here. No, I genuinely asked him, right? Like, I genuinely asked him postgame about this exact thing. And he told me, I don't think I touched it. I was like, I think you touched it. He was fired up about it. But you know what? That whole shift leading up to that goal, like, if you watch that whole shift again, my favorite part about that shift is it started with the Canucks second power play unit, which includes Josh Levo as the left defenseman. So on his weak side as a D, you know, stuck on the ice following and icing, right?

So the Canucks win and Silverberg gets a quality chance right off the draw, a really good set play from Aiken's and the Ducks. And the Canucks gather and Brandon Sutter goes to skate behind the net and he drops it except all three of the players, like the left, he drops it to the left D side, but the left D is a right winger who is skating full speed toward the bench to get Jamie Ben on the ice, right? Jordy Ben. Jordy Ben, excuse me. And all the other and all the other forwards have already left the zone.

So there's like this awkward moment and the Canucks turn it over twice before they finally get the puck out. And then it comes the other way and they score. It's the weirdest goal scoring play of the year, especially because the breakout prior to it was probably like the most yakety sacks worthy breakout that you'll see in the entire NHL this season. Yeah. And I guess that's a reason to be.

slightly skeptical of all this team because it does feel like there's been a lot of that now if you constantly have the puck in the offensive zone and you're shooting everything on net totally that tends to happen for teams to do that so and let's not forget that the bo horvett you know bohorvett and his revolving cast of wingers right uh Pearson being sort of the only mainstay you know they've been sort of on the opposite end of the spectrum right their shooting percentage is about the 6% range right bohorvat has one even strength goal this season and it wasn't really an even strength goal. It's just sort of a scoring technicality because he put that, you know, five on three goal against St. Louis a couple weeks ago in just as the penalty is

expired. So, you know, that's his only five on five goal of the season. And, you know, they're controlling play too. They're, they're the matchup line and they're at 55% shot attempt share and doing pretty well on the shot clock and on and on, but they've just had no bounces. So, you know, the first line is a 65% coursey line. So if that continues, they're going to, be able to withstand the forces of regression and remain productive. The Bohorvat line, they should actually be more productive going forward, which will help offset some of the losses. You're definitely going to have some losses from that Brandon Sutter line, though, you know,

with how he's played with Levo over the past week, certainly if the Canucks find a third line that isn't a disaster, that changes the overall, my overall projection for this team, because I thought, well, you know, they should be better, but they're still a wasteland. league worst maybe on the third line. If that equation changes, that's when the Kinecks can really cook with gas. And then, you know, I think they probably, especially if Hughes isn't injured too significantly here, and if he stays durable, I actually think their power play should be better over the sort of latter 70-ish games of the season than it has been to this point. So, you know, looking at a team's overall regression profile here, I see a lot of reasons to be optimistic.

over on the whole that, you know, some of what we've seen from them offensively will last, even as, you know, some of their two-way game maybe atrophies a bit and their goal-tending luck changes somewhat. I'm putting a pin in this. I think I'm full on, wait and see. Like, I'm eyebrow raised, interested. They have my attention. I want to see where this goes.

Certainly, we're going to see that in November with the schedule that's coming up for them. We've talked about a bunch of times. and it's going to be, I mean, there's that relevance where, like, I will, and people will be tuning in to see how they look against St. Louis, against Nashville, against Vegas. And that's a massive departure from the past couple years. So I guess that's what a nine, three, and two star does for you, right? Absolutely. And it gives you that cushion too, right? They're not quite there, but say they are able to, you know, take something like. Don't cite Elliott Friedman's Thanksgiving. No, no, no, I have no time for that. The, but, but, Say they're able to take six of six points from the next four,

which is Chicago, New Jersey, Winnipeg and St. Louis, right? Say they're able to take six of their next four points. You know, then if they're looking at a situation where there's something like 12, 4, and 2, or, you know, alternatively 10, 4 and 4, they are looking at a situation where they can play 500 hockey and probably make the playoffs.

And so, you know, banking these points early is really important, even though we've seen teams come back at a rate, which makes the American Thanksgiving sort of barometer a little bit less relevant, or at least has made that barometer a little less relevant over the past couple seasons. Well, there you go, Canucks Reddit. Eat your heart out. It gave you one hour of overwhelmingly positive. Tom, plug some stuff. What can people expect from you where? Can they check all your work? Absolutely. So obviously they can check me out at theathletic.com slash Vancouver or slash Canucks or just follow my author tag.

I wrote a piece today actually about the sustainability of Vancouver's overall offensive push early in the season. We've hashed out a lot of that here. But if you want to go back and sort of get granular on why Vancouver might continue to be an elite offensive team, you can do that there. Additionally, we've got some good stuff this week coming on the Myers-Edler pair on Brock Bessor's overall sort of of machine-like scoring ability and the persistence of his high shot rate. And then this weekend, I'm actually going to see the Utica Comets play back-to-back game. So look for some in-depth Olio-Levy content coming your way for the VIPs. Additionally, check out the Nux cast with J-Patton Drancer, available wherever you get your podcasts. Wow. You had that all teed up.

You're ready to go. Is this why you're a professional now? Yeah, got it down. This was a blast. Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for hosting the P.D.O. cast. And I'm excited to see it. how this goes and I'm sure we'll check back in with you at some point whether it's this as a team proving that October was for real and they should be considered a contender or whether they come back down earth and we have to re-calibrate there's going to be reason to talk and that's uh that's exciting living here in Vancouver yeah anytime my guy always a good time the hockey pediocast Dim philipovic follow on Twitter at dim philipovic and on soundcloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast